May the (ecommerce) force be with you

Once upon a time in a meeting room far, far away, an Ecommerce team met about a super-innovative project. Everything was going great until they realised that outdated in-store systems were going to ruin their shiny digital vision. Overnight polling and dinosaur processes with an archaic POS and laggy inventory management was holding the retailer back from achieving omnichannel greatness across the galaxy.

Behold 🌟 Cybertill 🌟

Way back in 2001, the rebels of the retail world, Cybertill, built one of the first cloud-based EPoS systems. Since then, we have been improving the platform to include a whole range of services, helping retailers with physical stores manage their end-to-end business. One of those features is the flexibility we give to our customers for EPoS and ecommerce integration, and how easy it is to manage.

During a dark time for the archaic POS, Cybertill created two software platforms RetailStore and CharityStore, making multi-channel retail achievable to retailers of all sizes, from SME to corporate, along with charity retailers and visitor attractions. Brave retailers who joined the rebellion saw many benefits of integrated ecommerce with a cloud-based POS, including:

• Storing stock, sales and CRM on the one system
• Data available in real-time across all touchpoints of the business
• Managing and integrating branded and pop-up shops, ecommerce, marketplaces, franchises, concessions, and ecommerce
• Ability to offer click and collect, click and reserve and drop-ship from the supplier
• Accessible anywhere, so if a retailer is in the shop, the office, working from home, or visiting Tatooine, they’ll always be able to log on

As part of the rebellion, Cybertill decided to create an API that links directly to a retailer’s website, linking their POS to ecommerce. If an online shopper buys a new pair of shoes, then the system is instantly updated to reflect this, avoiding overselling.

Product Information Management

Retailers can manage product images, descriptions and attributes with the in-built product information management (PIM), providing retailers with centralized inventory when managing and selling across multiple channels. With integrated PIM retailers can add stock to the EPoS system, which becomes instantly visible to any store and on the ecommerce site. Cybertill can also interface to eBay, franchise stores and concessions so all sales are controlled and managed by one system.

Ecommerce and Magento 2

We understand that some businesses need help setting up an ecommerce site, which is why our Web Development team offer a pre-integrated website service, built using Magento 2.

“Cybertill built our website which integrates perfectly into the POS, it’s really good for live updates, so if I change a price on the database, it changes immediately on the website. With the website we’ve had almost immediate success, in the first six months of being live on Cybertill we had more sales than we had in the previous two years.” Andy Smith, owner of Mill Hill Wines, one store and ecommerce website built by Cybertill.

Omnichannel Delivery

Giving retailers the opportunity to integrate stores and ecommerce makes omnichannel delivery options accessible, and the customer journey simplified. The RetailStore platform has built-in delivery opinions, including, click and collect, reserve and collect and drop-ship directly from suppliers.

“With reserve and collect, we’ve been able to tell a customer if something is in-store and we can promise it’ll be ready in 2 hours. If it’s not in-store, we can work out where we can get it from, and a delivery schedule. We’re doing about four times the reserve and collect than previous.” Paul Hinds, IT Director, F.Hinds, Jeweller, 115 stores and ecommerce website.

Omnichannel for the many

We believe in omnichannel for all, and true omnichannel retail becomes achievable with store, ecommerce and marketplace integration. Innovation, service and passion have become the mantra for Cybertill. We empower retailers to manage stock, staff and IT issues efficiently, providing a one platform approach to their retail operation, and importantly, give their customers great shopping experiences across all shopping channels.

“Overall I would highly recommend Cybertill to anybody who wants to link a website to a till system” Andy Smith, owner of Mill Hill Wines.

*UPDATED – September 2019* Why not take a look at the retailers who are making the most of integrating online and in-store by downloading our research report Retail Inventory: Expectations vs Reality here.