Carpe Diem: It’s time for retail to make the most of every customer opportunity

Three simple words: “Seize the day.” In an increasingly unpredictable world, the Roman poet Horace’s famous words from 2,000 years ago may have never been more relevant to retail than they are at this moment. Retail today is as volatile as it may have ever been. Trade policies are erratic. Supply chains are fragile and shifting. Consumer sentiment is all over the map, and consumer confidence is fleeting.

One look at a few remarks in a recent post on my friend and colleague Nikki Baird’s (always excellent) Retail Pulse Report tells you pretty much everything you need to know about how little we can predict what will happen tomorrow:

“July sales, according to the Census Bureau, were up more than expected, to 3.9% year over year (and up over the 3.7% YoY in June). These results do not fit with the narrative that many (to be fair, including me) had started building: that consumers rushed to bring in sales ahead of anticipated tariffs, but that this spend was exhausted and starting to wind down.”

“Markets freaked out over price index data, but not the one you’re thinking of. I don’t look at the Producer Price Index (PPI) all that often as it usually is boring. However, in July, the PPI and the consumer price index (CPI) diverged – the PPI showed very strong inflationary trends (up 3.3% YoY) when the CPI was more modest (up 2.7% YoY).”

“The first half of the year saw a net import growth, so this overall decline hides even more drastic numbers in the second half. While July is expected to come in with growth – retailers scrambling to bring in product ahead of the next tariff deadline – August is expected to be down single digits and September is expected to be down double digits.”

Given all these conflicting indicators, mistaken projections and general handwringing about what comes next, it’s clearly time to make sure retailers are as prepared as they can possibly be to make the absolute most of every customer opportunity.

And despite the decades-long whispers of the “imminent” demise of brick-and-mortar retail, the store continues to play a critical role in the vast majority of customer journeys. It follows, then, that if we hope to seize the day, we need to ensure our stores have everything they need to do just that. Associates must have the tools they require to engage every shopper, empowered and informed with anything they might need to convert a sale.

• Deep product information that gives them a fighting chance at knowing as much as the customers do about the products they are evaluating.
• Inventory visibility to allow associates to find the product, the size and the color each customer wants, no matter where it lives in the chain.
• Fulfillment tools to help ensure orders placed for customers in other locations are delivered to the customers as expected.
• Customer profile, purchase history and loyalty status to help associates make the most of every opportunity with personalized recommendations, cross-sells and rewards.
• Device flexibility with a seamless transition between devices so associates can engage customers wherever they are in the store, armed with everything they need in the palms of their hands.

A daunting list, to be sure. Or is it? Five years ago, the answer would have been a resounding yes. IT teams all across retail were forced to spend an inordinate amount of their time trying to collect, connect, integrate, interface and keep current all the data from all the various places it lived in the enterprise to give associates some of the items on that list. And then, once they got that all sorted, they had to turn around and make sure any transactions that occurred in the store made it back to all those various places around the enterprise. Plus, they had to keep all those integrations working together whenever one of the enterprise systems changed.

Fortunately for IT teams everywhere, there now is a better option.

Advances in cloud technology have made it possible for POS systems to help stores better keep pace with the modern customer. These POS systems go by many names, but several vendors seem to have settled on calling these modern POS systems designed to take advantage of modern technology “modern POS.” It’s shocking, I know, when technology vendors name new technology in a way that makes actual sense and refrains from mind-numbing acronyms, but believe it or not, modern POS is where we are today.

I would go so far as to suggest that modern POS is actually a generally accepted term with generally accepted consensus on the definition. Even most of the AI assistants concur. Here’s how Microsoft’s Copilot answered the question “What is modern POS?”

As Copilot indicates, modern POS is built to empower associates. Modern POS is built to integrate. Modern POS is built to be omnichannel. Modern POS is built for personalization, and, yes, modern POS is in fact built for device flexibility.

But perhaps I should clarify just a bit. Because in true technology vendor fashion, many people have named their POS systems modern POS, but far fewer have actually delivered modern POS. Modern POS solutions, when built well, can give your stores the tools they need to fully capitalize on every customer opportunity. But if POS is “modern” in name only, it will struggle to deliver the same outcomes.

Aptos has invested heavily in a truly modern POS solution with Aptos ONE. Built for the cloud on a microservices-based platform, Aptos ONE is designed to empower associates to deliver the types of integrated, informed and personalized experiences today’s shoppers expect.

In closing, when evaluating an investment in modern POS, whether you include Aptos ONE in your process or not, proceed with vigilance and caution because no two modern POS systems are alike. And not every POS solution called modern POS will actually help your stores seize the day.

Which is increasingly more important than ever, because, as Horace also said, we simply can’t put our trust in the next day.