Looking back, retailers and service providers have constantly been challenging to adapt to the circumstances, by changing market strategies, accepting diverse clients’ needs, their different values or the emerge of new technologies... The current situation caused by the pandemic seems to be the challenge of the century and appears as an accelerator of several trends and forecasts:

At Partner Tech, we observe and follow all trends and developments very closely and have been accompanying them for many years as a technology leader. We predict that current trends will continue to accelerate and that the challenges towards retail and hospitality will intensify even more. Our plan is to implement trends faster, in a more agile way and more innovative than others. Customers’ expectations of quality have increased during the pandemic and will continue to do so after. Sustainability, time, conscious and selective consumption - buzzwords that will stick for many years to come.

The intensified and, above all, new in form competitive situation is creating digitisation pressure, but is also inspiring customers to explore "niches" and innovative solutions. In recent years, the so-called "customer journey" has been heavily promoted by marketing experts, but rarely implemented. In many cases, the introduction of a CRM has been recognised as a success in the customer journey. However, the subject matter refers to much more than meeting customers’ new expectations, it is the ability to walk customers through their shopping journey in an agile way without imposing on them. The story behind a product or offer is becoming more and more important. There is an increased importance of well-informed customer, whose expectation is to have access to clear and precise information.

The importance of precisely identified customer or specific need group remains. The view has to be aligned economically, so that the enterprise’s mission and goals do not fall behind. Goals should be thoroughly defined, constantly monitored and agilely adjusted if necessary. Consumers have become more sensitive and demanding, therefore as a result will be less forgiving of mistakes in the company or product story than in the past.

Digitisation is necessary, even in a variety of existing and newly conceived business models, but it is never an end in itself. The demand for the required know-how on integration and IT user specification will become increasingly profound and personalised.

It is indisputable that billing and payment options will always be needed in almost all forms of retail and hospitality. The basic focus of the POS will not change significantly (appearance, specifications, etc.). Adaptations to the latest technologies (processing power and memory for AI applications, for example) and design will continue to develop.

However, the point of sale or simply "the cash register" will certainly remain the the point of contact with the customer and the will occupy the relevant position within digitisation and data management. People like to talk about omnichannel. At Partner Tech, we call it customer centricity. The customer no longer distinguishes between various channels, but treats it as one eco-system. Together with our implementation and technology partners such as MS POS, our strategy is therefore to devote ourselves increasingly to customer centricity and offer this mentioned eco-system: that the customers can carry out the information and actions required for them, feel comfortable doing so and thus remain or become regular, satisfied customers.

Of course, we offer and develop the right billing system for every application:

We are already seeing a very high demand for integrated service offerings, which will overcome system downtimes. In the catering industry, we are observing great demand for additional services (pre-orders, deliveries, self-service terminals) and the associated reorganisation and digitisation of kitchen control system. In retail, we see increased demand for self-checkout as well as transformation of the checkout system itself, not just as a billing point, but as a point of information.

We are not just a manufacturer of POS hardware, but an internationally operating partner for our system and technology partners as well as the common users. Certainly, burying our heads in the sand and hoping the storm will pass is not a strategy. In this situation, we can only appeal to all market participants to see the changes, no matter how dark and destructive they may appear at the moment, the opportunity they bring is to adapt companies and offerings to the new awareness of customers and to help develop them as the supreme discipline.

Short profile guest author Philip Banz

We are pleased to announce our next guest article by Philip Banz:
How a product is created from an idea or market analysis and how quality, service and sustainability are already taken into account in this process.