It is the hot trend right now for retailers to build up an omnichannel experience for their business. For Magento users, Magento POS integration is the perfect choice for the newly-built system.
Overview
Omnichannel Ecosystem
Omnichannel is the modern model of retail that requires integration of all sales channels in the back to ensure a smooth shopping experience for customers in the front.
A simplified retail system nowadays consists of at least one online sales channel (e-commerce website), one offline sales channel (brick-and-mortar store or pop up store) and everything in between that link these two (warehouse, delivery services, report, etc.).
Being one of the most powerful e-commerce platforms in the world, Magento has embraced the concept of omnichannel from an early age. Magento is very well-known for its flexibility and scalability – it can be customized to meet the specific requirements of your business and easily scaled as your business grows.
However, as we mentioned before, the web store is just part of an omnichannel retail system. Thus, Magento has built an ecosystem with extensions that provide everything else needed for a complete system, from Accounting, Shipping, Customer Support to Marketing and Reporting (all the extensions are available at Magento Marketplace).
Yet, there is an important piece that needs to be filled in: a Magento Point Of Sale designed with an omnichannel mindset for brick-and-mortar stores.
Omnichannel Magento POS integration
Traditional POS integration
In the era of multi-channel, it was ok to have stand-alone POS because the brick-and-mortar stores didn’t need to connect to the web stores. Now, a unified commerce system is a key advantage and we have many retailers come to us, saying that they want to find a new POS that can synchronize data fully, especially products and inventory, with Magento.
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It helps them save a lot of time and effort in management, ensures information consistency all over the channels and brings a better experience to both shop operators and customers.
On top of that, the customer behaviors have changed and it’s more important than ever to have a sound understanding of their shopping journeys and behaviors.
The traditional POS used to be the point where the flow gets disrupted: it often missed out customer information or was unable to identify them, thus couldn’t map the in-store behaviors and preferences to the data from others. According to research conducted by McKinsey, ‘Inability to identify customers across shopping trips’ is one of the top 4 reasons why retailers still struggle building an omnichannel system.
The new era
But an omnichannel POS will be the game-changer. Thanks to real-time synchronization between POS and Magento, it can identify existing customers and the new customers added in POS will be updated immediately to Magento, so you don’t have to worry if you miss out on any customer.
The new generation of Magento POS integration even goes beyond capturing and synchronizing customer information – it’s equipped with reports that make it easier for you to analyze customer behaviors.
One barrier that merchants often encounter is that they associate “omnichannel” with a “complicated, expensive system” while an omnichannel system is not about how big a system is but how well connected its components are.
And there are some Magento POS integrations that can help you achieve your small but truly omnichannel system at a reasonable price.
ConnectPOS – High-speed Magento POS for Omnichannel
With 8 years of experience working with Magento, we aim to build a high-speed Magento POS integration that will complete the Magento ecosystem, make it 100% ready for omnichannel.
ConnectPOS is compatible with M1 and M2, both CE and EE. It connects to Magento via API (the connector) and synchronizes data in real-time between POS and Magento thanks to the latest technologies used: AngularJS, NodeJS, and WebSocket communication.
The synchronized database enables us to develop omnichannel features, such as to send cart to online wishlist & retrieve items in the wishlist to cart.
In addition, the traditional functions are taken to the next level, for example, Rewards Points and Gift Cards. Traditionally, the points and gift cards will be limited to the only channel used previously to earn or buy them.
Now with these functions integrated into both web store and ConnectPOS, you only need to turn the integration options on in settings and your customers can use and earn their points or buy and redeem gift cards wherever they want, even if they want to mix the channels during the process.
In terms of multi-store management, multi-warehouse inventory is the top problem that causes merchants headaches. Magento lets merchants manage stock at the global level only (which means stock for all the stores).
With a little help from a multi-warehouse inventory extension installed in Magento, you can have different warehouses and set stock level for each. ConnectPOS can then pull the information from Magento and will have separate stock for each brick-and-mortar stores accordingly.
To help merchants manage multi-stores even better, ConnectPOS is equipped with 20+ reports that will let you know the performance of overall business as well as the performance of each store or even cashier. With all data in one place, it’s easier for you to track down the reasons and make decisions to improve the situation before it’s too late.
Also, all the reports of ConnectPOS are cash-based, so in case you need to refund or exchange for a customer, you can do it directly on the selected order without fearing that it will mess up the sales history and reports.
The Magento POS integration you need for your system
We’ve helped 500+ merchants all over the world, from SMEs to big enterprises, connect their brick-and-mortar stores to Magento online stores, so they can manage their businesses better and create smoother shopping experiences for their customers. We believe we can help you too – contact us today for free consultation and demo!