Retail POS and Inventory Management Go Hand in Hand

Oct 1
11:53

2015

Mohit Singh

Mohit Singh

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POS applications prove to be an important function in Retail. Customers find this as merely a device to prepare the bill. That is definitely the primary function of a POS Application and was the first application that was implemented historically.

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Merging of Credit Card Transactions with POS Applications.

Over the period as technology changed its horizons,Retail POS and Inventory Management Go Hand in Hand Articles developers started implementing more and more applications into the Retail POS system. The use of credit cards was prevalent long ago. The process of realizing the money that was charged on the card by the retailer was a long drawn manual process. With the availability of connectivity to credit card servers over telephone lines, it was possible to realize sales proceeds through card transactions in real time. It was obvious that the next development in Retail Point of Sales System would be to integrate credit card transactions with the POS System.

Integration of Inventory Management with POS Applications

One of the components of efficient Retail Management is inventory management. It was imperative to include it into Information Technology applications in Retail Management. Inventory Management essentially involves close level mapping of transactions of units of inventory items. Entry of inventory items in a Retail segment are in bulk, and most likely the data is electronically available as it is usually generated by the sender or the part of the order data. It is the consumption of inventory that is unpredictable. The POS counter is the obvious point of collecting the consumption data. Any units sold and paid for through the POS system can be deducted from the inventory level of that product. All that was required was a gateway to pass that information from the POS system to the inventory system. Inventory software has to go hand in hand with POS system to be beneficial to the Retail Unit.

The Road Ahead

With the integration of Inventory Management System with Point of Sales Applications, the next logical step was to automatically trigger replenishment orders when the inventory level of a particular product goes below a pre-determined threshold. This order could get aggregated from all retail locations of a chain, and the bulk order may be placed with a business to the business portal. The supply chain can be managed to benefit the manufacturer, the retailer, and the consumer.

Loyalty Management

Lately, we see the introduction of Loyalty programs that provides customers who have subscribed to the Loyalty Programs various incentives and privileges. A simple privilege reimburses the Loyal Customer his parking fees at the Mall. The POS application needs to have the functionality to verify if the customer has the privileges and then deduct the parking fees from the bill.