When it comes to the management of a retail chain of business, it involves many stores in different regions. All of them will have a great number of commodities, units, a vast logistics, and distribution network, along with huge cash flows and commercial promotions based on knowledge about consumer behaviors. As we move everything to the Internet of Things (IoT) Era, all the retailers are now able to connect up all the devices and also people who are involved in their business, to better understand the machine-to-machine & machine-to-people communications. It helps us to get a better understanding of their equipment and consumers, and thereby implement more efficient management, and upgrade consumer services.

If your devices in the retail shop or business are connected with an intelligent network, then it paves way for many potential applications. It becomes easy for you to connect with a centralized system by connecting lights, refrigerators, and air conditioners, on a cloud-based equipment management system, and all can be accessed and automated using a remote control at one centralized place. Most of the retails shops will have video cameras in and around the stores; you can even capture images that can be streamed to the cloud to implement image analytics. This is highly used for the security purposes of your shop. There are really a lot of things like connecting your business using mobile device apps, doing automated marketing campaigns, or passing sales information to the targeted consumers so that they can be more interactive and effective with the new generation of retail.

Application Requirements

When it comes to integrating with the IoT it is necessary to have at least one gateway that is required to connect field sensors and equipment. It helps to collect data and push it to the back-end servers or cloud-based platform. Everything is done on a cloud setup which helps to retrieve the data in no time. It can also serve as a Wi-Fi gateway to provide wireless access for the customers and forward promotional messages to the customers via their smartphones or other mobile devices.

Operating systems (OS) need to be deployed at the place of data gateway, interactive digital signage, and POS software to enable applications and data flow. Cloud-based services are essential when it comes to big data analysis on customer age, behavior, people counting and movement flows, etc.

Solution

Advancement in technology is happening day by day when you want to serve your customers with an integrated IoT solution, combining Windows 10 IoT, along with the latest cloud services it gives your customer centralized access for the business at one commonplace.

IoT was designed with a power of a wide range of intelligent devices, from small gateways to larger ones where it has more complex devices like point of sales terminals. They really help us to collect data, store data, and do many processes with the collected data. All of them are designed to work in a way to leverage the existing investments, which enables to the creation of Universal Windows apps which help store owners to connect with their store-to-store app, store-to-mobile app, store to cloud-based things. 

Cloud storage actually works as a ladder that provides you a wealth of tools in building blocks for users to reach their creative cloud-based applications. It gives you all the facilities to make your app richer and possibly integrate with all the things to give you excellent customer support and satisfaction.

Benefits

  • Makes use of the cloud technology to integrate with a universal operating system 
    • All the diagnosis part is done using a Remote based in order to maintain and avoid food spoilage, which are associated with financial loss. You can’t avoid sudden damage, but you can be protected from a lot more security.
  • You are able to develop a few strategies that can be used to reduce electricity bills by monitoring and adjusting the use of lighting and air conditioning at one centralized place.
  • One-stop shopping place for all your retail business needs
  • Using this POS software for Retail store management system helps to improve the customer interactive shopping experience 
  • Cloud-based analytics and data provides intelligence for the retailers to improve their business models
  • You can analyze your business and do the necessary changes that are required to improve your business to the next level

Final thoughts:

Not only from the business perspective can you handle your staff members efficiently, but you can also monitor their performance and encourage them periodically, and a lot more things you can do with the POS system when you have integrated them with IoT.

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