Aussie resellers cash in as POS goes cloud and mobile

“There’s a lot of focus on customer engagement and interaction in-store,” says Tony Ignatavicius, managing director of Melbourne-based Datalogic, which distributes a broad selection of POS scanners.

Customers want two things: easy access to discounts or specials when they’re paying, and to pay and exit the store as quickly as possible. Loyalty schemes are a must-have for every retailer but it’s only worth having if the customer can access it quickly and easily at the checkout.

Some scanners will let customers scan their loyalty card or a barcode on their smartphone without interrupting the attendant while they scan their purchases and process the sale.
Other improvements focus on speed. The Magellan range is designed for high-performance throughput to minimise delays and mis-scans, where the wrong product is entered and has to be rescanned.

Digimarc technology should rapidly increase the speed of scanning. US-based Digimarc’s technology prints an invisible watermark all over the packaging of an item. Instead of the attendant or customer fumbling to find a barcode, Digimarcs can be scanned from any angle. Resellers need to make sure they are future proofing their systems for customers by selling them Digimarc-enabled hardware, Ignatavicius says.

Will Digimarc trigger a hardware refresh across Australian retailers? “It’s still early days but it has great potential,” Ignatavicius says.

And no one wants to be stuck in the line at the supermarket tills. One approach to reducing this time is queue-busting. During periods of high traffic, an attendant can approach the queue and scan the items before they reach the point of sale for payment. Retailers can use cordless scanners and mobile printers, such as the Joya mobile computer and an Epson or Toshiba bluetooth thermal printer.

Retailers are also keen to customise every part of the checkout experience to reinforce their branding. Look and feel is extremely important. Some scanners, such as the Heron range, are stylishly designed and fit unobtrusively on the counter. The retailer can add a logo or pattern and even program the audible scanning tones.

Taking this further are handheld scanners that shoppers can cart around the aisles and swipe products as they are placed in their baskets. It takes the customer-driven (and cost-saving) strategy of self-service checkouts to a whole new level. The service has been used at British supermarket chain Waitrose with what it calls ‘Quick Check’.

Apple’s move into payments is also big news. Although Apple Pay hasn’t launched in Australia yet, the imminent arrival of Apple Watch should change that.

The biggest problem facing resellers is choosing which technologies to sell first. And as any retailer will tell you, that’s a great problem to have.