Infodart Technologies - Because System Integration Requires Precision
Infodart’s core value system is built around becoming partner to client business and actively adds value to their business. Pawan Kalra, CEO, Infodart explains that client-vendor relation is pure commercials and that Infodart heads straight to go up the value chain and become integral part of the client business. It is only following this that the organization wishes to add value by thought leadership, and integrate with their client’s team.Mitigation of the GST Non-uniformity
Present market shows; most of the retail POS systems provide basic reporting capabilities but are incapable of providing in-depth information and ease of capturing sales reports. To not just survive, but run the race in this volatile market, retailers need to deploy POS systems that can facilitate sales reporting and analytics to enhance business operations. More so, while GST implementation aims to streamline business and protect consumer interests, it has given rise to the need of a sustainable- one stop solution in finance and accounting. Infodart’s retail application, infoPOS is developed to be GST compliant that enables faster and smooth implementation. Adhering to the government regulations and compliances, the application applies accurate GST for different merchandise before printing retail invoice. In a way, this also allows to record all basic data required for future audit trail and reporting.
Integrating the Front and Back End Processes
POS still is a billing application heavy on transaction. It needs an ERP at the back end to generate various accounting reports and ready template to file GST returns as required by GSTN. Having designed store solutions for multiple large fashion and grocery retailers over the years, Infodart has developed a better understanding of various facets of the store operations.
While designing a comprehensive application for retailers, Infodart has ensured a very user-friendly and functionally rich front-end POS to be used by cashiers for continuous billing. Equal consideration was also given to keep the back office application robust and well integrated with front-end POS application to support all its operation smoothly. The back office application ensures that each transaction is preserved for future audits and analytics and also to maintain a sound accounting system till trail balance. This back office application also takes care of all stock related operations and its movement to ensure stocks are well accounted.
Besides this basic retail features, matching pace with technology and industry trends, Infodart has a well-in-tegrated ecommerce application and mobile based POS to the application to provide the last mile edge. Now, a customer is able to either shop on web and get the goods delivered at a specified address or pick the item from a designated store. This provides a modern shopper a convenience in shopping. Additionally, MPOS provides an edge to adding more cashier counters on the fly when the crowd is more during high seasons.
The product, being compatible to run either on handheld barcode scanning devices or Android tablets, is not only used as a queue-busting solution to reduce billing time for the customers but also a full-fledged billing application. At the same time, Mobile POS works in conjunction with Retail Store Solution where items are scanned/deleted in the transaction and the completed transaction is retrieved on Retail Store Solution.
POS Server Application’s Integration Capabilities
From warehouse management, Master data management, Central Office, and Inventory to tender management, a robust and flexible POS server system is prerequisite for a perfect integration. “It is essential to understand what a retail customer wants and then also important to understand what Retail business wants to fulfill the needs of retail customer”, explains Pawan. Infodart has, time and gain shown its ingenuity of having understood these factors and has fine-tuned them into a comprehensive well architected solution. Keeping up to the business requirements in retail, a solution was conceived as an integrated system where stock movement and customer management were given equal attention. This gave way to a system that integrates warehouse process to front end billing application seamlessly. Moreover, it ensured the data security and integrity with a central repository of all transactions created in a Central Office application. Therefore, E2E transaction involving tender is preserved at three places simultaneously, at store server, Central office and back end MDM thus maintaining audit trail, while ensuring proper accounting of tender and stock in an integrated environment. “This was an initial vision that resulted in such smooth and seamless integrated Retail system”, adds the CEO.
In a complex heterogeneous system like the present day billing procedures in stores, a sudden rush due to various events or festivals makes it difficult to increase the POS terminals in same proportions for two reasons. Space constraints and investment or cost associated being the two. To overcome this anomaly, Infodart retail architect worked to add an integrated MPOS to the solution in order to segregate the additional crowd.
Now, astonishingly, rather than customers coming to the billing counter, mobile cashier can approach the customers for convenience to fast forward the check out and spare the queue dilemmas. It doesn’t end there. Since Infodart’s MPOS solution is well integrated into back end system and also synchronized to common database of merchandise, price and tax; upon scanning the item, IoT helps get the same price, same promotion and same GST information required to complete the billing.
Centralized Promotion
Modern retailing emerged in the west and USA was a big promoter of large modern retailing. Modern retailing means a nice welcoming environment in the store to attract customer, give him a unique experience so he remembers the brand and would like to come back again and finally ensures system is well oiled so stocks are available when required and can be audited to ensure fraud or pilferage is avoided.
An essential part of this customer experience was a special discounts and promotions to back some benefits of cost reductions or reducing the inventory to create space for new upgraded stock. So when the modern retailing as a concept came to India, it brought along this concept of promotions but Indian retailers were wary of initially passing the promotions freely to customer for fear of misuse. So a concept of centralized promotion engine was conceived by Infodart in their product so that retailers can derive the benefit of customer loyalty with control of enabling and disabling this at their headquarters and also the customers get the overall benefit of cheaper product to buy. This brings the global feel to customers that they get the global feel of experience and benefits.
Benefit was visible as smooth movement of data from POS to MMS and better control on promotion creation process. Authorized team can create promotion centrally for all or selected stores. This approach reduced turnaround time of creating promotion having bulk items and better visibility of the project in terms of designed solution and overall implementation. “Infodart’s arrival into the Oracle 360 commerce Point of Sale project was like a breath of fresh air for us, the project was at a stage where we were contemplating abandoning but with the help of Infodart we could turn around things” quotes Vineeth P, Business Head Technology, Hyper CITY Retail.
“In this fast changing, technology driven world and customer needs, it’s imperative for organizations to transform and re-engineer them to adapt to the business dynamics”, quotes Pawan. Doing business by the ethos of ‘Excellence in Execution’, Infodart understands the complications – and benefits – associated with intertwining legacy systems and solutions. With such stellar innovation and ideas, Infodart earns a safe bet to become a global technology leader leveraging on advance technology for a better and digitally connected world.
Now, astonishingly, rather than customers coming to the billing counter, mobile cashier can approach the customers for convenience to fast forward the check out and spare the queue dilemmas. It doesn’t end there. Since Infodart’s MPOS solution is well integrated into back end system and also synchronized to common database of merchandise, price and tax; upon scanning the item, IoT helps get the same price, same promotion and same GST information required to complete the billing.
Centralized Promotion
Modern retailing emerged in the west and USA was a big promoter of large modern retailing. Modern retailing means a nice welcoming environment in the store to attract customer, give him a unique experience so he remembers the brand and would like to come back again and finally ensures system is well oiled so stocks are available when required and can be audited to ensure fraud or pilferage is avoided.
An essential part of this customer experience was a special discounts and promotions to back some benefits of cost reductions or reducing the inventory to create space for new upgraded stock. So when the modern retailing as a concept came to India, it brought along this concept of promotions but Indian retailers were wary of initially passing the promotions freely to customer for fear of misuse. So a concept of centralized promotion engine was conceived by Infodart in their product so that retailers can derive the benefit of customer loyalty with control of enabling and disabling this at their headquarters and also the customers get the overall benefit of cheaper product to buy. This brings the global feel to customers that they get the global feel of experience and benefits.
Hyper CITY Retail, a premier player in Retail Chain Store has major challenges as they need to implement ORPOS integration with MMS (JDAs Merchandising System), developing Centralized Promotion Engine which is not available out of box by Oracle, turbo entry required for uploading items in a bulk for promotion. Challenges includes performance improvement due to high volume of transactions and large number of SKUs per transaction and integration with 3rd party system for Credit Card authorization. Infodart faced this obstacle head straight and gave an output of new sales interface to extract sales information in a flat file which later gets consumed in MMS system with Trickle Polling methodology. Centralized Promotion Engine and turbo entry module was developed to provide facility of uploading CSV files having items to be added in promotion which reduced manual effort of adding items one by one.
Infodart’s retail application, infoPOS is developed to be GST compliant that enables faster and smooth implementation
Benefit was visible as smooth movement of data from POS to MMS and better control on promotion creation process. Authorized team can create promotion centrally for all or selected stores. This approach reduced turnaround time of creating promotion having bulk items and better visibility of the project in terms of designed solution and overall implementation. “Infodart’s arrival into the Oracle 360 commerce Point of Sale project was like a breath of fresh air for us, the project was at a stage where we were contemplating abandoning but with the help of Infodart we could turn around things” quotes Vineeth P, Business Head Technology, Hyper CITY Retail.
“In this fast changing, technology driven world and customer needs, it’s imperative for organizations to transform and re-engineer them to adapt to the business dynamics”, quotes Pawan. Doing business by the ethos of ‘Excellence in Execution’, Infodart understands the complications – and benefits – associated with intertwining legacy systems and solutions. With such stellar innovation and ideas, Infodart earns a safe bet to become a global technology leader leveraging on advance technology for a better and digitally connected world.
