Using xyzmo in the Retail Arena

Returning customers are one of the main measurements of a business’ success, particularly in the retail sector. Therefore a satisfied customer is the main goal of every business. On the other side, the retail arena is facing high cost related pressures that require more and more automation in the POS area in order to reduce the cost structure.  xyzmo’s solution for the retail industry helps achieving improved customer satisfaction rates whilst ensuring lean processes, by offering simple and secure electronic signature solutions, that solve the challenge of signing electronic documents securely while simultaneously reducing the costs and labor associated with paper-based processes and improving the time required for doing business at the POS.

With the combination of the “slim” and secure SIGNificant Generic POS Connector used at POS in retail outlets and the SIGNificant Server infrastructure used in the datacenters, expensive traditional paper-based processes efficiently transform into full electronic processes. This cutting edge solution is tailor-made for POS systems, characterized with a generic interface supporting any POS system.

Paper-based business transactions are time consuming and expensive as they require slips to be printed twice, one slip to be signed by the customer for archiving purposes and another to be given to the customer. The customer signs the paper slip and the POS system sends the slip’s raw data to the company’s back-office, while the signed paper slip is sent via physical mail to the back office or third parties. At the next stage the signed paper slip is scanned and archived with the raw data or manually archived in a physical archive.

The fully electronic process is done easily and intuitively. It starts with the customer’s handwritten signature on a signature tablet and followed with an option to verify the signature with the SIGNificant Biometric Server. Then a customer copy of the slip can either be printed by the POS system or be sent to the customer via email by the SIGNificant Server. At the next step the SIGNificant POS Connector encrypts the raw data and signature data and transfers them to the back-office. In case a network connection is not available, data is cached locally and retransmitted when online connectivity is achieved again. The SIGNificant Server converts the raw data into signed and sealed PDF slips at the back-office and then sends the PDF and raw data to the archive.

Advancing to a fully electronic process offers companies in the retail arena the benefits of a secure paperless environment. These valuable benefits include elimination of costs associated with paper-based POS (reduction of between 50%-100% in paper slips printing; reduction of 100% physical mails and scans), acceleration of business processes, avoiding lost slips and enabling retailers to perform transactions faster compared to their competitors. Additional benefits include fast and easy integration, thanks to the similarity of this process to the current paper-based process and the generic interface suiting any POS system and any archive at any IT environment. Furthermore, by adopting electronic signatures in the retails industry, companies provide customers with an easier, less time consuming experience and enable the generation of an audit trail necessary for compliance. Finally, last but not least is the significantly improved security aspect, based on automatic data encryption at the POS side and secure identification of customers.