9DECEMBER - JANUARYto employees and, ultimately, to consumers. From the day I joined The Tile Shop, a key objective of mine has been to improve and simplify the POS experience for employees, making it easier for them to be trained or onboarded and execute the transactions. Another goal is to equip employees with easy-to-use tools that provide the right information to quickly service customers and improve our communication and follow-up. Most importantly, we look forward to removing silos by implementing a unique solution that integrates our ERP, POS, and e-commerce systems. The solution will eliminate the need for data integration and synchronization by using a single database. It will free us from the challenges associated with historic technology constraints. The idea is to undergo a design and implementation phase by Q1 of the next year and ensure final rollout by the second quarter. In your perspective, what would be the future of POS in the next 12 to 24 months?In my perspective, more organizations will continue to look for simplicity, more straightforward employee and customer experiences, and use of cloud capabilities. They will demand fully integrated capabilities to make it simpler to execute and support, truly removing the channel as a concept from the customer experience. There will also be an increase in alternative payment options and a simplification of payment processing. FinTech is bringing numerous capabilities to POS. So, the market will witness the improvement of payment processing as it is undoubtedly an aggressive growth area in the POS space. Apart from this, POS needs to be mobile in the store -- even the traditional POS vendors are working to roll out mobile POS. Needless to say, companies that are not looking to improve the POS experience for employees and customers will certainly fall behind. What piece of advice would you like to give to your fellow colleagues and the upcoming professionals?While driving change and solving business problems, look at people first, process second, and technology third. Technology is just a means to an end. And, if you can't align it with the right people and processes, then it is just an expensive, failed technology. That's why I encourage upcoming professionals to focus on aligning people and processes with technology. At the end of the day, POS is just a means to an end. So, if you don't have a clear understanding of the business problem you are trying to solve, don't start. Companies that are not looking to improve the POS experience for employees and customers will certainly fall behind
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