Fully Managed POS for When Ecommerce Gets Physical

As legendary online brands like Warby Parker and Amazon expand into physical retail, they face a highly complex process of integrating their established online infrastructure with their emerging in-store infrastructure. And for other smaller retailers who are expanding to physical stores and looking to implement click-and-collect, they require a system that interfaces with both their ecommerce site and physical store payment systems.

However, as these growth-minded online brands venture into physical retail, they will be competing with retailers that have already existed in the brick and mortar space for decades. They can’t afford to make costly mistake, but simultaneously require a higher level of expertise than startup-oriented systems often provide. These systems limit features or control, but the retailer doesn’t yet have the need yet for on-premise solutions. But what else is there?

Rent the Expertise

When it comes to most applications, point of sale included, retailers looking at new formats and markets are best served by investing in fully managed cloud services that deliver enterprise functionality without needing to build out their own expertise or infrastructure. Features such as buy online, pick up in store connectivity and unlimited scalability can be guaranteed with ease. By investing in a service that is fully managed, retailers are essentially “renting” the expertise that is essential for their success.

For example, as retailers start expanding to physical stores, they do not have staff readily available to understand or operate on-premise solutions. With GK’s fully-managed cloud software, retailers can obtain the same level of expertise as established retailers with large IT teams. Regardless of team or store size, retailers can be confident about expanding to brick and mortar stores without a massive upfront IT investment.

While cloud services come with a standardized configuration, there is still a freedom for retailers to develop their own parameters and functionalities with ease. This allows for retailers to maintain a friendly user interface, but still be able to create distinguishing factors that help them stand out against competitors.

If you’re an online retailer considering opening stores, or rapidly expanding your store count, I highly recommend that you consider a fully managed cloud service as opposed to an on-premise solution. It requires a fraction of the internal resources to deploy and manage, leaving you to do what you do best: sell products.

Please feel free to reach out to learn more about GK’s managed POS services and how we can work together to achieve your expansion goals.