Mobile point of sale deployments and omnichannel sales strategies are the new normal for the retail sector according to Mark McGeachen, chief executive officer of AdvanceRetail Technology which supplies retail software across Asia Pacific.

Auckland-based McGeachen said that as a result of the internet, “today’s consumers are often better informed than the people on the floor,” noting that there had been a “wreckage of retail brands that have disappeared….because of the disintermediation of the internet”.

However he said that retailers were now responding with a range of different approaches, including everything from attempting to charge a try-on fee (deducted at the point of sale) in order to dissuade people from trying on a garment or shoes, then buying it cheaper over the internet – “It’s not going to fly”, he warned – to traditional online retailers such as Amazon opening physical and pop up stores in order to provide an immediate retail experience for customers.

McGeachen said that for modern retailers, “mobile technology is the leveler of the playing field” as it put sales information and the ability to take payments literally in a sales person’s hand. Mobile retail solutions and omnichannel approaches which delivered a “seamless path to purchase for the consumer” were not retail fads but “here to stay”, he said.

Data analytics was also increasingly important to retailers, he said, adding that, “we have a project underway with mad Russian data scientists” intended to take retail transaction data and use that to come up with meaningful predictions that a retailer could use to shape their business strategy.

AdvanceRetail Technology has this year installed an iPod-based SmartStore retail system for jewellery business Pandora which integrated with its existing eftpos system. Described as a “queue-buster” to speed the sales process during busy periods around Christmas, Mothers’ and Valentines’ Days, the system has now been permanently deployed in Pandora’s 15 own stores and will be offered to franchises. Pandora is also planning to trial a mobile eftpos system, probably using iPads which will unleash sales from the fixed till.