The Importance of Mobile POS in Today’s Store Environment

Technology drives the in-store experience your customers have with your associates. We’ve all been to a store where the associate is clearly flustered and struggling with a point of sale device, oftentimes saying, “we’ve been having issues all week”. Usually, the main interaction your customers have with your store associate is at the point of purchase. This experience should be seamless and engaging, but most importantly, fast.

Mobile devices help your store associates provide your customers with an engaging, yet fast experience. Mobility allows your associates to get out from behind a traditional cash wrap counter and get on the floor where they can better assist a customer where they are. When a customer can’t find their size or the color they are looking for, a mobile device can bridge this gap and empower the associate to offer alternative options. All of this flows best when it occurs where the customer is shopping.

So you might ask, should we be ripping out all our older cash wraps and go with more mobile pack and wrap stations in our stores? Maybe, but maybe not. Your stores may already be deeply invested in this existing technology so a phased approach may work better. So what would this phased approach look like? Perhaps an initial phase is to affect an all-new store design by getting away from fixed lanes or at the very least reducing them. This will give you extra selling space in your new stores. Then, as the technology in your stores reaches the end of life, instead of replacing those devices, it’s probably time to evaluate your store traffic and determine whether or not you need to keep those lanes around any longer or can move to a mobile-only store.

Mobility in the hands of your associates can be powerful, but you need to ensure that you set them up for success with a solid POS solution that can truly serve the customer regardless of their needs. For a customer, nothing is worse than waiting for an associate only to learn that they need to go to a different part of the store because the associate can not accommodate their needs at this device.

The path to achieving a mobile solution is unique to each retailer, and a POS solution that is flexible and adaptable to your needs is important. With JumpMind Commerce, our solution is built to provide all functionality needed to operate and thrive in today’s stores. Our point of sale is built with a responsive web UI that can be leveraged on a handheld device or tablet. We are completely device agnostic supporting iOS and Android. Additionally, our solution is built on lightweight microservices that enable you to operate in offline situations that can arise in store.