The same is true for POS systems which, over the years, have rolled with the punches of technological advancement by integrating changes--such as touchscreen panels and barcode readers--to make transactions run smoother and faster.
The world is at yet another cusp of change involving POS systems, according to Winston Quesang, co-founder and managing partner of iMarket.ph, an e-Commerce platform provider, during Computerworld Philippines' executive briefing on Point-of-Sale Systems in August.
While today major end-users of POS systems are cashiers and sales personnel, Quesang predicts that in the near future, it will be the consumers who will largely use POS systems. "In the near future, [the former] is not the way it's going to be. We are going to put the customer experience at the center of POS," he shares.
This bit of information is crucial for businesses that employ POS systems, because technology will eventually revolve around that philosophy. Businesses must, therefore, take into account the technology lifecycle of their systems, which often go on the decline after reaching maturity. Future-
This is why firms must, Quesang suggests, do a little bit of technology forecasting in order to gauge the shelf life of their systems. Technology forecasting, he shares, is "the prediction of how some characteristics of a technology will evolve within a certain time frame in the future and with a certain probability of realization."
The retail world is currently transitioning from Shopping 2.0--fueled by the participative style of Web 2.0 and the social nature of e-Commerce 2.0-- and into the future of POS with Shopping 3.0, where semantics AI--or, simply put, a more intelligent system which responds to basic human interactions such as gestures--dominate.
In the middle of the two is Shopping 2.5, a phase dictated by current developments in mobility where information and transaction processing are done using only a handy and portable device, Quesang noted.
Mobility--or, more specifically, enterprise mobility-- is the realm of expertise of Motorola, which develops solutions tailored to the retail industry. "Motorola coined the term enterprise mobility. It means capturing the information at the point of activity, using barcode scanning or any other methods, and moving information through mobile infrastructures," relates Don Herana, territory manager for the Philippines for Motorola's enterprise mobility solutions.
Herana says the enterprise mobility architecture brings about business continuity and delivers real-time information at the hands of users.
He shares that companies often implement enterprise mobility solutions in their firms in order to expedite the POS experience; transform the customer experience; maximize the supply chain's efficiency by minimizing the occurrence of no stocks; and drastically improving associate effectiveness by giving them the right information through the right tool.
One are where mobility is being implemented in retail is through the mobile POS, which, according to Herana, is good for queue busting. Basically, it integrates the POS system and the scanner into one device, which can be used by sales assistants to process transactions during high traffic times.
Handheld POS systems are also good for serving the clientele, Herana adds. "[Through the device], they can get inventory information and purchasing history of the client, which promotes customer loyalty. It acts as an electronic client-sales book," he shares.
In the near future, as Quesang notes, shoppers won't have to queue during checkout, the would just have to push their carts onto an electronic gateway and the contents of their carts will be recorded, the payment deducted from their bank accounts.
Microsoft is currently developing a technology called Microsoft Surface, which, according to Quesang, can possibly revolutionize the customer experience. Microsoft Surface is essentially an intuitive multitouch screen surface that can be adapted into many situations, and can respond to various gestures and objects it comes in contact with.
With these technologies in the pipeline, one can only be reassured that the second coming of the POS is definitely at hand.