Consumers are adopting new technologies and shopping behaviors so quickly that it can be difficult for retailers to keep pace. And much as the retail industry couldn’t have foreseen the rapid growth in mobile commerce 10 years ago, it cannot yet know what tomorrow will bring.
It’s clear that both retailers and consumers are shifting more to self-checkout and self-service options. However, what format works best is often unique to the retailer, its store layout, its products, and its customers’ preferences. The growing number of channels, journeys, and technologies is leading retailers to continually test and learn with a flexible approach.
By adopting a modular approach to POS systems, retailers can quickly and inexpensively adapt their systems, scale operations up or down, and meet consumers' evolving preferences.
A Growing Demand for Retail
Self-Checkout Solutions
While self-checkout has been in supermarkets since the 1990s, self-service retail has undergone significant adoption and innovation in recent years. The pandemic has further increased the pace of self-service retail adoption through things like buy online, pick up in stores (BOPIS), contactless payments, and curbside pickup.
One survey
1 found that more than half of retailers are converting cash registers to self-checkout stations. Self-checkout solutions offer many benefits for retailers, including greater efficiency and reduced costs. They help address the rising cost of labor and increasing difficulty in recruiting staff. Self-checkout can also help rebuild shrinking profit margins and address overhead costs by scaling operations up or down depending on demand, time of day, and store profile. In recent years, more retailers have moved from pure self-checkouts to advanced self-service solutions with moveable kiosks and other peripherals.
For consumers, self-service solutions typically offer greater convenience and can help reduce lines and wait times. One survey found nearly three-quarters of consumers prefer self-checkout
2 over staffed checkout lines, with numbers rising to 85% for Gen Z consumers. Many consumers also prefer self-checkout because it offers greater privacy, a seamless customer experience, and the perception of a greater sense of control in the shopping experience.
Adapting to Change with a Modular Point of Sales (POS) Approach
While it's clear that self-service solutions will partly lead the future of retail, what works for one store may not necessarily work for others. Retailers need custom deployments that align with their retail goals, store layouts, and customer preferences and journeys. While retailers often try new solutions, frequent changes to store setups and technologies are typically costly and time-consuming.
One key to adapting to this retail environment is modularity, the ability to fit together components in a variety of ways. Modularity enables retailers to offer consumers more choices and quickly adapt to the most optimal configuration. A modular approach lets retailers use one core system to support multiple peripherals, layouts, and configurations.
This offers retailers two main benefits, one of which is the ability to scale up or down the same modules across all stores, regardless of format. As the retailer can use the same equipment everywhere, this reduces the TCO and limits the learning curve for rollouts and integrations. Modularity also makes it easier to adjust and upgrade hardware to new customer journeys. Retailers can choose the components they need to right-size and customize the solution then easily add new peripherals and respond to changing needs without prohibitive and expensive investments.
Building Blocks of the Retail Experience
Retailers can no longer rely on “one size fits all” self-service and must instead consider a right-sizing approach that adapts to customer journeys. A modular POS system enables retailers to quickly adapt their POS experience to support multiple checkout scenarios with a single platform.
Diebold Nixdorf’s
DN Series EASY platform is compact, configurable, and versatile, enabling retailers to support all customer journeys with the same platform. DN offers multiple head units and base units that work in all retail verticals and conjurations, from grocery, fast food, and quick service restaurants (QSR) to fashion and convenience stores. The
open API software products can also be applied to multiple types of hardware devices with no or little additional configuration. DN’s
service suites integrate services into one model across all solutions. This reduces complexity in service delivery and is scalable, ensuring retailers can obtain expert support from the situation source for installation service for hardware and software.
Compact, configurable, and versatile, the modular design features several options for screens, scanners, and payment terminals. It supports a customizable, ADA-compliant setup to meet the retailer's and customers' needs. This flexibility enables retailers to use the DN Series EASY for multiple applications.
This modular approach enables retailers to continually refine, adjust, and upgrade their POS deployments to meet consumers’ needs – today and tomorrow.
Sources:
1 https://www.retaildive.com/news/retail-self-checkout-technology-replacing-cash-registers/635214/
2 https://gitnux.org/self-checkout-statistics/
HANDEL
