January 2016 Innovative Retail Technologies
We’re moving rapidly toward an all-out revolution at the POS. A throw-the-baby-out-with-the-bathwater, wholesale rip-and-replace of the transaction systems we’ve known since the advents of POS, ERP (enterprise resource planning), and e-commerce.
That’s an all-at-once exciting and inconvenient truth for retailers.
It’s exciting because a single, omni-channel transaction platform is coming into view. This notion of unified commerce — the convergence of systems necessary to intelligently surface information from any channel to the point of service or sale where it’s needed — is no longer a skunk works operation. Few retailers on the path to omni-channel would argue their common goal: a consolidated platform that eliminates worries about data interchange, multiple interfaces, and disparate transaction engines.
