Let’s Peek Into The EHI Study PoS Systems 2022

Every year, the EHI Retail Institute publishes a study as an overview of the current checkout landscape in German-speaking retail, highlighting issues and trends at the POS. At the outset, Ulrich Spaan and Cetin Acar, who lead the study, confirm that "the checkout touchpoint remains of great importance to retailers even in times of pandemic." They add that "rapidly changing requirements demand maximum flexibility in the process, however, and ensure that investments in POS hardware and software still account for a large share of IT investments."

We summarize the key findings of the study below.

The Results

The trend in recent years of a decline in both the number of stores and the number of cash registers is continuing: 976,900 cash registers are in use in 525,900 stores in the broader sense. The average age of POS hardware continues to increase and now stands at 5.9 years. Only 36% of the retailers surveyed do not want to make any changes to their POS hardware in the next two years. The selection of new POS hardware is linked to important factors such as ease of maintenance, price and the possibility of remote maintenance.

POS software is on average 6.9 years old among the respondents of the EHI "PoS Systems 2022" study. When looking for a new software option, flexibility, cost-effectiveness and intuitive usability of the software are of decisive importance.

With a decline in traditional checkouts, other checkout options are coming into focus. The use of mobile devices with checkout functions and self-checkout systems are seen as the most important fields of action at the POS. Key topics are the introduction and optimization of self-checkout options. All self-service options will be further expanded in the future among those surveyed. According to 59% of the study participants, self-checkout as a "bring-your-own-device" option is a particular focus. 86% of the participants confirm the thesis that "scanning and payment via the customer's smartphone will come".

The study found that 16% of companies from the panel use mobile devices as checkout. 55% of respondents intend to use mobile devices for checkout in the future.

The study also found that a classic store server on premise is becoming increasingly rare. In addition, the importance of linking sales channels has increased: "The companies surveyed currently offer their customers various options for combining purchases across sales channels on the floor."

Lastly, the study highlights that data exchange in neartime (exchange in near real time) is no longer sufficient for the retail companies surveyed. The trend is clearly moving toward real-time connection of the checkouts to the central systems.

Conclusion

 "We are excited about the development at the increasingly digital PoS and that we can support retailers with the Snabble Self-Checkout Cloud! The responses of the participating retailers clearly show that our product makes an important contribution to the retail of the present and the future." 

Patrick Queisler, Snabble

The importance of the self-checkout area at the POS continues to grow. Slowly but steadily, the customer's smartphone and thus "bring-your-own-device" is coming more and more into focus in this regard. Snabble can convince here with its own app as well as with an SDK and the integration into existing apps.

Snabble also extensively supports the development from neartime to realtime. The Snabble software can reflect the processes in the market in real time and makes them easily manageable in analysis and statistics.