Retailing in India has now matured. The expression ëorganised retailí has become somewhat pass; what we want to achieve instead is modern retail. In modern retail, applications and technologies are harnessed for use as key business tools. POS is no longer point-ofsaleóit is expected to be Point of Service. Customer billing and inventory control have become hygiene factors in any POS solution and the key differentiators are sophisticated facets such as one-to-one customer communication, mapping customer buying habits, and managing prices and promotions.



Customer communication
Though customers are perfectly happy to spend long hours in the store pondering their choices and leisurely filling their shopping carts, they are extremely averse to long and slow-moving check-out queues! To make waiting easier, traditional pole displays are now being replaced by LCD panels which offer the customer a variety of information. Where once they only displayed the last item scanned and the sub-total of the purchases at any point of time, the customer can now view:

􀂔 The complete bill
􀂔 A picture of the last item scanned
􀂔 Prompts about any promotion on that item
􀂔 Prompts on any alternate option to that item
􀂔 An updated account of customer loyalty points
􀂔 Greetings on special occasions such as birthdays and anniversaries
􀂔 Advance information on future promotions planned in the store
􀂔 Entertainment videos, advertising clips or TV channels
􀂔 Scroll feed on stock market, news updates and the like

This business function is known as the Dual Screen Module and itís important that the storeís POS software supports it. Its value is not only to enhance customer service points at the check-out desk but also to increase the aesthetic value of the check-out counters. Today, the drop in prices of LCD panels has made this utility quite affordable.

Nowadays, many stores also use plasma displays all over the store to communicate with all customers. These displays are used mainly to communicate any drop in prices, special promotions or stock updates. The content on these displays can be very creative.



Mapping customer purchases
Just creating a customer loyalty programme is not enough to earn customer loyalty. Real loyalty can only be earned by ensuring that the customer gets the right merchandise at the right price on every visit to the store. Not many retailers can track the lost sales opportunity when products which the customer wants are not available. Instead, they are busy controlling the inventory at the optimum level. The trick lies in making sure that only the products required are in stock and that the inventory is not loaded with non-moving or slow-moving items. To make this happen, it is important to track each customerís buying habits and align these patterns with purchase and stocking cycles. This not only increases inventory cycles but also the level of customer satisfaction and, most importantly, the average basket value of the business. Retailers should make sure that their POS solutions not only collect this data but also collate it in a usable form through which the retailer can take accurate stocking and shelving decisions.

Managing prices and promotions
Optimising inventory cycles is the key to profitability. While in India, promotions are invariably used to dispose of slow-moving or non-moving stocks, modern retailing practices bring far more benefits by applying dynamic pricing to the fast-moving items. Not only will this charm customers but it will also increase the retailerís ability to leverage purchases, thus simultaneously increasing supplier loyalty as well. Many high-traffic retailers also use happy hour promotions to regulate the traffic in the store. Naturally, for this they must have the right solution which will allow them to design and implement appropriate promotions on the fly. Retailers also need to have the tools to plan the endof- season or festival promotions well in advance and inform the customer base in advance. This in turn helps customers to plan their purchases in advance.

Implementing these best practices of modern retailing in a retail business does not cost much if the retailer is careful while designing the business processes with the proper guidance. Following this, retailers need to ensure that they have the right IT tool to put these practices in place.

Apart from these ideas, many progressive retailers across the globe have also chosen to invest in some of the new innovative ideas to enhance in-store customer service. Though most of these ideas are high-investment initiatives, we will see some of them very soon in the Indian retail environment.

Electronic shelf labels
Instead of using shelf labels to display prices, some retailers use an electronic display on each shelf. This virtually cuts away all the time required to update the prices of the items on the shelf. Some of these electronic labels are very intelligent and even display special prices for special customers.

Self-check out terminals
In the west, during peak hours, many large-format stores offer self-check out terminals to privileged customers. These handheld devices can be used to scan each item while dropping it in the shopping cart. So, once customers finish shopping, they donít need to go to the check-out queue. They can just go to a special counter, take a printout of the bill, pay and go.

Queue-busters
Many high-traffic stores deploy additional staff with hand-held POS to walk along the queue to identify smallbasket customers and prepare their bills while in the queue. This helps them to clear the queue faster. This comes very handy once again during the peak hours in the store.

Use of RFID technology
Due to the cost of tags, RFID is still not really affordable in a high-volume retail environment. However, it has established its value very clearly through industrial use. Many retailers globally are using this technology at the warehouse level. It is possible to give every item on the shelves an RFID tag. The customer shops in the store with an RFID-enabled shopping cart. Once an item is dropped in the cart, it is added to the bill using this technology.

In-store kiosks
These are touch-screen information kiosks installed in the store. These kiosks are normally used by customers to seek product information or product availability. These are normally used in fashion, leisure or DIY stores. In India, some speciality stores have already started using this technology. There will be substantial use of this technology in big malls in which such kiosks can be subscribed by anchor tenants to sell or book orders from customers within the mall without them actually visiting their store in the mall. Mall management companies can invest in this technology to create loyalty among the customers visiting their malls.

In-store entertainment feed
In their quest to provide customer-friendly shopping environment to their customers, retailers are now looking at technologies to provide in-store entertainment suited to the customer profile at different hours of the day. POS profiles the customers visiting the store at each hour of the day, which helps it to identify the music or videos suitable for various customer profiles during these hours. The system selects the music/video to be played from the juke box automatically. This can also be a central feed across the chain through the internet infrastructure.

Exploring the uses of POS to extend various aspects of customer service will continue to yield new ideas and new methods of customer service. These technologies are now becoming a reality in mature, technologically advanced markets like the US, Europe and Japan. Retailers in India, too, will soon start using these tools to give Indian customers an international experience.

The author is the CEO and MD of Seacom Solutions India.