Its Retail Assist point-of-sale service is designed to improve businesses' customer service by putting information at sales assistants' fingertips.
There's a new player in the point-of-sale market: Optus has announced Retail Assist, an as-a-service offering that is said to be suitable for small and large retailers.
Optus Business says Retail Assist can help businesses to improve their customer service by putting various types of information at sales assistants' fingertips.
For example, Retail Assist will allow employees to use a mobile device (iOS, Android, Windows 10) to check stock availability (rather than having to visit the stock room to see if the desired size and colour is there), look up product information, process sales and handle 'click and collect' purchases.
Importantly, sales assistants no longer have to be tied to the counter.
Admin functions such as end of day reporting and sales performance analysis are included.
"Optus Business developed Retail Assist in response to requests from retailers for better ways to service their customers. We were mindful that retailers typically already had sizeable investments in various point of sale, customer management and other systems, so we designed Retail Assist to integrate all these systems, ensuring they complement rather than replace existing technologies," said David Caspari, vice president of business technology and solutions at Optus Business.
Exactly which systems can be readily integrated with Retail Assist was not made clear. All we know is that the integration capability comes at an additional cost, although the package works with payment terminals from the major banks and may be able to take advantage of existing cash drawers and receipt printers.
Retail Assist is offered on a 24-month plan, but there's no indication of price – though that will probably be highly variable, because retailers can choose from a range of modules and hardware.
Other details are also sketchy at present, but the concept sounds interesting, especially for retailers who would prefer to leave as many of the IT chores as possible to an outside provider.
