When consumers are shopping in stores in the post-pandemic age, they seek new checkout experiences that offer the same benefits they’ve grown accustomed to online.
Kristjan Johannsson, general manager at LS Retail, told PYMNTS that unified point-of-sale (POS) technologies and software-as-a-service (SaaS) could help bring on-premises transactions fully into the digital age.
“Some of the changes that happened during COVID have remained — and among them lies the desire for speed and convenience,” he said.
Those desires have paved the way for consumers to embrace self-service and self-checkout technology supported by firms, including LS Retail.
That’s true not just in the grocery store but at merchants as diverse as hardware stores, furniture chains and the hospitality industry.
The merchants have become proactive on their end, embracing these solutions to transform the customer experience and, by extension, their own business, Johannsson said.
“Self-service technology is a big advantage for the merchants because they are able to use fewer staff [at the register] and save on some costs,” he added.
SaaS can streamline the move toward self-service offerings in part because merchants need not rip and replace legacy systems, and they are automatically subscribed to upgrades in the cloud, he said. LS Retail, for its part — where its software and POS offerings are delivered to more than 100,000 stores and 6,500 customers in 157 countries — sees most of its business moving to a software-based recurring revenue model within the next few years.
“We see that Microsoft is really going ‘fast forward’ in the market with their SaaS solutions, and we are following in their footsteps,” Johannsson said. By using Microsoft Azure, enterprises will have more data and service rendered securely in the cloud, “much more safely than when running your old server in the cellar.”
None of this is to say there are not pockets of resistance where some merchants (and indeed some verticals) are resistant to change. And that means that providers such as LS Retail must sow the seeds of education, he said.
“It’s a journey of taking people through this and explaining the benefits and walking them through how [SaaS] will make their life easier,” he said.
That includes better back-end management of systems, and especially inventory, where automation helps replenish stock as needed and just in time. The retailer that has good insight and analytics can optimize operations, he said. LS Retail, by way of example, has a mobile inventory solution that helps scan the stock in-store in the morning and issues summary reports to facilitate replenishment “on the go.”
“It may sound like an upfront, more expensive thing to pay per month, but in the long run, if you take everything into account — the cost of energy, the cost of maintenance, the cost of keeping the lights on in these systems … the equation is going to be in favor of SaaS,” Johannsson said.
The conversation came against a backdrop in which Johannsson assumed his role as general manager just a few weeks ago. And looking ahead, he said the company will target expansion into Africa and broaden what he said is “the SaaS transformation.”
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