Streamlining Retail Payments: Can a POS Be Integrated With an ERP?

In today’s dynamic and ever-competitive retail landscape, both brick-and-mortar and online retailers alike can benefit from cross-channel engagement at scale. Uniting your Point-of-Sale (POS) and Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) systems can help to build a rich harmony throughout your operations. 

Synchronizing your accounting and finance data alongside core metrics surrounding inventory, pricing, shipping, and logistics can pay dividends in helping you steal a march on your industry competitors. 

But how exactly can ERP unite with your POS to bolster performance? And how can these systems benefit your existing operations? Let’s take a deeper look at how POS and ERP can combine for cutting-edge retail efficiency: 

What’s the Difference Between POS and ERP?#

There are some key differences between a POS and ERP. Notably, a Point-of-Sale system helps to capture in-person, physical, and over-the-counter sales while processing payments via cash or credit cards. This means that they are essential tools for retailers and just about any other customer-facing or B2B trade companies alike. 

Enterprise Resource Planning systems, on the other hand, are responsible for centralizing core business operations like financial management, accounting, inventory, sales, manufacturing, and project management. 

This can help an organization to report on its business data to automate key processes in a unified manner. 

How ERP Compliments POS#

Enterprise Resouce Planning helps to ensure that your digital POS systems achieve more enriched insights based on their capabilities. 

ERP solutions help to combine component models to help provide operational clarity throughout countless departments. 

While your POS can work to monitor stock levels, your ERP can work alongside this data to calculate your liability for sales or value-added taxes to better monitor your obligations, for instance. 

Supported by a functional Enterprise Resource Planning system, you can also monitor your bills to manage outgoing payments more efficiently.

There are many ways that your Point-of-Sale and Enterprise Resource Planning system can unite to bring more process optimization for retailers. With this in mind, let’s have a look at some of the key perks that can be found in uniting POS and ERP: 

Real-Time Data Management#

The strongest benefit of uniting POS and ERP systems stems from the real-time data visibility retailers gain to work alongside effective business data updates while limiting instances of human error or unforeseen trends that could impact performance. 

While both your Point-of-Sale and Enterprise Resource Planning system can work together to achieve better management, silos can emerge if the two systems operate in different formats. This could impact the ability of staff to integrate departments and use data in their decision-making processes seamlessly. 

Synchronizing a change of reporting information on your POS system, for instance, will instantly prompt an ERP update to ensure the interdepartmental consolidation of information. Subsequently, employees are free to track their activities while boosting their efficiency. 

Enhanced Forecasting#

Integrating POS and ERP can also drive far greater profitability for retailers. The ability to create accurate forecasts for factors like revenue, industry management, customer trends, and other performance-based insights can help leverage more informed business decisions alongside tangible results. 

With modern POS technology possessing the ability to accurately forecast sales based on sales metrics over time and their potential impact on inventory, retailers have more control than ever before over predicting their supply chain needs and subsequent sales revenue. 

An ERP can then use this data to liaise with financial departments to offer actionable insights into the long-term cash flow implications of variations in sales trends and their impact on the long-term profitability of the business. 

These insights can then be used to craft revenue-driving strategies that benefit both brick-and-mortar and e-commerce storefronts for your business.

Driving Customer Satisfaction#

The result of integrating your POS and ERP systems also helps you to offer customers a more diverse range of shopping options. 

For instance, integrating the systems can pave the way for a transformative brick-and-mortar shopping experience that incorporates a more ‘phygital’ attitude to shopping thanks to the cross-channel synchronization of customer data in real-time. 

This means that more customers can make orders online to collect in person, and with far greater accessibility surrounding customer information, your store can keep up with the constantly changing expectations of consumers as new shopping trends emerge. 

This builds customer loyalty and encourages leads to return to the store. With a diverse range of phygital options to choose from, you pave the way for greater flexibility on the highstreet.

Centralising Your Business #

The problem with organisational data for retailers is that it was historically messy and hard to locate when dealing with masses of physical documents. 

While the digital age is helping to put an end to overwhelming paperwork, the decentralisation of data is hurting retailers by making it harder for decision-makers to locate the insights that they need at the right time. 

Integrating POS and ERP systems can help to form a more centralized approach to data, storing various core metrics in a single, easy-to-access, location for ease of reference. 

Not only does this centralized approach improve ease of access for store owners, but quick access to customer data allows for strategy adaptations on the go and greater personalization when it comes to crafting unique customer experiences.

Building a Symbiotic relationship#

It’s not only possible to integrate your Point-of-Sale with an Enterprise Resource Planning system, it’s an essential technical upgrade that can help your retail store to break down internal silos and manage your cash flow with unprecedented ease. 

Using an ERP integration to enhance an omnichannel retail strategy is the key to connecting with customers in a phygital shopping landscape. With the ability to manage data in real-time, enhance forecasting and centralise your insights, you can review both your in-store and online sales data in one place.

Finances can be extremely complex to monitor across retailers that have both a brick-and-mortar and digital presence, but a POS and ERP integration not only makes key data more accessible, it also empowers more businesses to use high-quality information to unlock data-driven strategies.