Bielefeld, October 2021
Thefirst self-service market as a precursor of today's widespread supermarket was opened in Germany almost 100 years ago. Today, supermarkets and discounters dominate the image of German food retailing, and the principle of self-service is also dominant in other sectors. In many cases, customers only encounter a store's staff at the checkout. Here, too, much has changed in recent years. Cash registers are now state-of-the-art, efficient computer systems, and paying with cash is increasingly being supplanted by cashless methods.
"As much as our shopping habits have changed over the past decades and will change in the future, a payment process and thus a POS system will continue to accompany us."
Tarek Hussain
Sales Manager POS Solutions at ANKER
“No matter how much our shopping habits have changed in recent decades and will continue to change in the future, the payment process—and thus the POS system—will remain a constant in our lives,” emphasizes Tarek Hussain, Sales Manager for POS Solutions at Anker GmbH. “In this context, self-service payment will continue to gain importance and, in the long term, will establish itself as beneficial for all parties involved.”
Even today, more and more large retailers are using self-checkout registers—at least as a supplement to traditional POS systems—where customers scan their purchases independently and preferably pay cashless. As a long-established German company, ANKER GmbH develops and distributes hardware for the checkout counter. With this, ANKER is ANKER present in the stores of large grocery chains as well as among small and medium-sized retailers across a wide range of industries.
“The concept of self-checkout is still primarily a topic that large chain stores are grappling with,” notes Hussain. “However, companies with two- to three-digit numbers of branches are increasingly realizing that there are good reasons not only to keep up with the times on the sales floor but also to modernize the checkout area.”
Building on its many years of experience in the technology sector, ANKER GmbH is responding to this foreseeable trend. Accompanied by the acquisition of the Berlin-based software company LocaFox, ANKER is ANKER expanding its portfolio and repositioning itself as a comprehensive POS system provider for hardware, software, integration, and related services.
A key reason for market-leading retailers’ decision to invest in self-checkout systems has traditionally been the associated potential for savings in labor costs. In addition, the growing shortage of qualified checkout staff is now motivating small and medium-sized retailers to develop new strategies.
“The use of self-checkout systems offers retailers of all sizes the opportunity to implement modern consulting strategies,” explains Hussain. “They can specifically expand consulting expertise on the sales floor without increasing staffing requirements or costs. At the same time, self-checkout systems are proving to be an appropriate response to the growing labor shortage in retail.”
With growing interest and continuous technological advancements, self-checkout kiosks are becoming increasingly attractive both technically and economically. Mass-market-compatible prices and hardware and software increasingly designed for usability and customer experience now make self-checkout a customer-oriented alternative that can hold its own strategically.
"In the long term, self-checkout will become a matter of course in more and more stores"
Tarek Hussain
Sales Manager POS Solutions at ANKER
By expanding its hardware range to include a wide range of consulting services, including comprehensive project management, ANKER Kassensysteme is consciously presenting itself as a full-service provider in the future. In this way, the long-established company from Bielefeld aims to make the possibilities of modern, user-oriented self-checkout solutions available to a wider range of customers. The focus here is on retailers of all sizes, away from the dominant large chain stores.
Cloud-based self-checkout terminals from ANKER based on Android, Windows or Linux enable both use as a standalone solution and implementation in existing ERP systems.
"In the long term, self-checkout will become a matter of course in more and more stores," predicts Hussain. "Factors such as convenience and time savings are what count most for the customer. For small and medium-sized retailers, our full-service offering creates not only costing security but also a convenient and reliable way of mastering a technology that continues to focus on the customer, binds them and overall generates a profit that can also be measured economically."
