POS systems do more than process orders in your retail store. As your business grows and your physical footprint expands, most retailers quickly experience shortfalls in their current solution.
Online shoppers might visit your store only to find that the product they wanted to buy is out of stock. Maybe your retail associates have grown tired of how long it takes to process an order. Long checkout lines have become the norm.
Enterprise POS systems solve these challenges by unifying your business data into one platform. They offer more advanced features to sell omnichannel, process various payment types, integrate other apps, and secure sensitive data.
This guide shares how enterprise POS systems work, their key features, and the benefits of switching to one as your retail business grows.
What is an enterprise POS?
An enterprise point-of-sale (POS) system allows retailers to sell products from multiple locations. It achieves unification by connecting with other systems via APIs and integrations. This gives you one centralized view of your retail operations.
Here’s what makes an enterprise POS system different from traditional setups:
- Scale and complexity of operations
- Multi-location management
- Integration capabilities with ERP, ORM, and CMS apps
- Omnichannel inventory and order management
- Ecommerce platform to sell online and offline
- Payment processing with competitive fees
Key features of enterprise POS systems
Omnichannel selling
Today’s shoppers are omnichannel. They might view a product online and buy it in-store. Perhaps the reverse is true: they ship a product they bought in-store back to your fulfillment center using your online returns portal.
An enterprise point of sale system can offer seamless experiences across multiple channels by unifying customer data.
That includes selling and fulfillment options such as:
- Endless aisles. Treat your retail stores as showrooms that let customers interact with your products in the flesh. If an item isn’t in stock, take their order and process their payment in-store, then use ship-to-home features to send the order to your fulfillment center. It’s then picked, packed, and shipped to the customer’s home.
- Buy online, pick up in-store (BOPIS). Increase ecommerce conversion rates and inventory turnover, and drive more foot traffic by letting people pay for items online and collect them in-store.
- Buy online, return in-store (BORIS). An enterprise POS system can update inventory quantities in real time if you’re processing a return or exchange. It should also be able to refund the customer using their original payment method or issue store credit, which can be redeemed online or in-store.
Shopify offers a unique feature called Split Cart, which allows retailers to offer different fulfillment options within a single in-store order.
“In the past, there’s been a little bit of transaction friction, where they may have to do two transactions,” says Kevin Harwood, CTO at Tecovas. “A customer purchasing an item that they're going to leave with, and another transaction for the item that they want to ship. But now with SplitCart functionality, we're actually able to do that in one single transaction.”
Omnichannel order management
Retail isn’t as simple as letting customers exit your store once they’ve paid for an item they’ve taken off the shelf.
Perhaps you’re fulfilling orders from a private warehouse from your online store. Maybe orders from customers who’ve placed orders in a retail store through a ship-to-home option are fulfilled by a third-party logistics (3PL) partner.
An enterprise POS system unifies these orders to give you one point of reference for all incoming orders—no matter where they were placed or how you’ll fulfill them.
Shopify POS offers advanced features such as dynamic order routing. This uses the customer’s shipping address to choose a fulfillment method.
For example, online orders from people within a 15-mile radius of a retail store get routed to the location for fulfillment. In-person orders with ship-to-home services might get routed to the closest 3PL warehouse—provided there’s enough inventory on hand (which you’ll see through a warehouse management system integration).
Advanced inventory management
As your retail business grows, you’ll likely progress to a standalone inventory management system (IMS) or enterprise resource planning (ERP) software. While native inventory management features are important, integrating these additional solutions is imperative for an enterprise POS.
Shopify offers native inventory reporting capabilities to track stock across multiple stores. It saves retailers over 10 hours per month on inventory management through automation.
Shopify’s global ERP program connects your inventory data with leading retail ERP vendors. Inventory management apps like Stocky offer detailed stock reports to optimize inventory levels, and integrations with warehouse management systems (WMS) pull data from third-party logistics partners. You’ll have one unified view of your inventory data—regardless of where it’s stored or the external tools you’re using to track it.
Take Offbeat Bikes, a sporting goods retailer that previously had a Squarespace website and used Square POS. Owner Mandalyn Renicker said this approach was fraught with complications: “If a bike or a certain part had just sold out at the shop, our online shoppers weren’t necessarily aware of that. That led to us overselling items and having to manually cancel orders and issue refunds.”
Offbeat Bikes migrated to Shopify’s enterprise POS system to unify its inventory data and improve the customer experience. Its retail team has saved four hours per month manually counting inventory and increased year-over-year bike accessory sales by 400%.
Customer profiles and insights
To offer personalized retail experiences at scale, knowledge is power. However, data accuracy is a problem for most businesses. According to Segment, 61% of companies are concerned about inaccurate data compromising the effectiveness of their personalization strategies.
Shopify’s enterprise POS system solves this problem by unifying every data point you’ve collected on your customers into a single dashboard. It’s no surprise that Shopify retailers see an average 5.5% increase in retail transactions associated with customer information.
Shopify’s unified commerce solution offers detailed customer profiles that highlight:
- Stores they’ve visited
- Products they’ve bought
- Sales channels they’ve used
- Email campaigns they’ve engaged with
- Items they’ve returned
- Loyalty points they’ve earned
- Feedback they’ve shared
You can use the mobile POS system to reference customer data from a shopper’s profile mid-conversation—without forcing sales associates to remember every last detail.
For example, a shopper might visit your store to find a new pair of sneakers. Your sales associate locates their customer profile on the Shopify POS app. They see that the customer has already bought a pair of New Balance sneakers and a branded hoodie in the last two months. It’s also their birthday this month.
This insight lets the sales associate personalize the retail experience. They could upsell a more expensive pair of New Balance sneakers, or offer a birthday discount to redeem on their next purchase. Both retail clienteling strategies encourage repeat purchases and increase customer lifetime value, while giving the personalized experience that today’s shoppers expect.
Staff management and permissions
Labor costs are one of the largest retail expenses. Enterprise POS systems can ensure you’re spending your money wisely.
Staff management features let you plan rotas and arrange cover if a retail employee is absent. Shopify also lets staff clock in and out of shifts within your POS interface, and integrates with HR and payroll apps like Gousto for accurate and timely payouts.
But it’s not just the logistics of arranging cover for your retail stores that matter. Shopify’s enterprise POS system protects your sensitive data with staff PINs and permission settings that only allow users to complete specific actions.
For example, retail associates might only be able to do the following things with manager approval:
- Process a return or exchange
- Open the cash register
- Apply discount codes
- Edit tax settings
Shopify’s enterprise POS also offers a “Training” permission level. This acts as a safety net for new retail associates. New hires can get to grips with your POS interface without changing your default settings. They can avoid mistakes like accidentally editing inventory levels or discount code criteria.
Contactless payments and digital wallets
Cash is no longer king in the world of retail. Over half of all US retail sales happen electronically using digital wallets, contactless cards, or buy now, pay later services such as Shop Pay Installments.
An enterprise POS system is capable of accepting these various payment methods. Through one unified platform, it can facilitate all types of transactions—whether for in-store, online, mobile, or pop-up sales.
POS systems can also calculate your tax liability and apply additional fees at checkout where required. There’s the option to disable taxes or set custom tax rates for a specific product or order too.
Customization and extensibility
The fewer taps your retail associates need to make on the enterprise POS system, the quicker you can breeze through transactions. This helps avoid lengthy checkout queues that deter shoppers from buying.
Shopify’s low-code and third-party integrations simplify custom solutions for diverse retail needs. The Shopify App Bridge, for example, is an SDK that develops custom apps for bespoke use cases. Shopify POS UI Extensions also help retailers extend the functionality of an app—whether built using App Bridge or installed via the Shopify App Store—to Shopify POS.
For example, retailers with an omnichannel loyalty program could use an app like Smile. It integrates with POS, so you can add the custom tile to your POS Smart Grid. Retail associates using the enterprise POS system can now click the tile to see how many points a customer has earned and automatically redeem rewards on their next purchase, without manually cross-checking eligibility and applying discounts manually.
Pet brand Tomlinson’s implemented this with its Pet Club Annual Membership program. Before moving to Shopify POS, it had no easy way to redeem loyalty points on in-store purchases.
“Checkout took too long because each transaction probably had two to three times the amount of taps that should have been required,” owner and operator Kate Knecht says. “On busy days, lines would start to pile up.”
Now, Tomlinson benefits from the complete automatic application of promotional discounts—without any additional taps required. The retailer has experienced a 56% reduction in in-store checkout times since migrating to Shopify POS while decreasing new hire training on POS operations by almost a third.
Comprehensive analytics and reporting
Historical data from your enterprise POS helps you make smarter decisions based on data-driven insights—which products to stock, where to fulfill orders, or which in-store promotions influence sales the most.
“Shopifyʼs unified approach to data management leads to a substantial decrease in the time technical resources spend on maintenance, eliminating the need for middleware by up to 60%,” says Corey Hnat, Director of Marketing at Pepper Palace.
The added benefit is that tax liabilities become much easier to calculate. When your sales history funnels back to one platform, you don’t need to reconcile data from various external payment processors. This reduces operational complexity and potential reporting errors.
With Shopify POS, you know exactly how you’re paying transaction fees, where your revenue comes from, and your tax liabilities for each state.
Cloud-based POS for remote management
As your physical footprint expands, an enterprise POS vendor should allow you to manage the system remotely via an internet connection.
This enables you to complete the following tasks on each store’s POS system without physically touching the hardware:
- Add new users
- View and change inventory quantities
- Add new products
- Install new apps
- Customize the POS interface
Data security and compliance
An enterprise POS system collects a wealth of customer, payment, and product data. Cybercriminals know this, hence why POS systems are a prime target for scammers who want to intercept private data.
POS security breaches can result in financial losses, damage to your reputation, and regulatory penalties. Your vendor must invest in POS security features to avoid these consequences. That might include:
- Regular updates to POS software and hardware
- Data protection measures such as two-factor authentication to log on
- Compliance with industry standards like PCI DSS
There are also things you can do to bolster POS security. Encourage staff members to keep their PINs private, use antivirus software, and maintain a secure WiFi network for POS devices and payment processors. You could also install CCTV cameras beside the checkout desk to monitor physical tampering and insider threats.
Benefits of enterprise POS
Improve operational efficiency
Instead of hiring retail staff to manually oversee each cog in the retail wheel, lean on automation features inside an enterprise POS system to improve operational efficiency.
Our data shows that automating tasks like inventory management and data reconciliation saves retailers up to 15 hours per month. New research from EY also concluded that operational improvements created by Shopify POS enable up to a 5% GMV uplift.
Oz Hair and Beauty is one retailer that scaled its physical presence with Shopify POS. It launched seven new stores within 18 months and has experienced a 484% year-over-year revenue increase since adopting Shopify.
“Shopify POS has empowered us to transform our business from an ecommerce seller to an omnichannel retailer practically overnight, with the flick of a switch,” Anthony Nappa, CEO and chief customer officer. “Because we no longer need extensive developer input and third-party POS integrations, we quickly grew the retail side of our business and launched seven stores easily.”
Better customer experiences
Omnichannel isn’t the future—it’s today’s table stakes. Modern consumers are already using different channels to interact with brands and buy their products, and they’re willing to spend more with retailers that make it easy to do so.
With unified profiles and omnichannel capabilities, enterprise POS systems drive better shopping experiences. Customers can redeem discounts, apply loyalty points, and view inventory quantities at any shopping destination (online or offline) when their data is unified in one backend.
Cost savings
By unifying POS and ecommerce in one system, Shopify claims a lower total cost of ownership (TOC), with reduced implementation and maintenance costs compared to competitors.
In fact, retailers using Shopify POS benefit from a unified commerce strategy that increases sales growth by 8.9% annually, on average. They also reduce ongoing costs by 16% and lessen the total cost of ownership (TOC) by up to 7%.
Pepper Palace is just one retailer benefiting from these POS cost savings. Since implementing the enterprise POS system in its 100+ stores, the food retailer has experienced a substantial decrease in the time and resources spent on technical maintenance. The brand eliminated the need for middleware by up to 60%, which resulted in cost savings of $20,000 per year.
Reliability
Downtime isn’t just frustrating for retail staff—it interferes with the customer experience. The last thing you want is for your enterprise POS system to go down when an in-store shopper is ready to checkout. How likely are they to wait for it to come back online?
Before choosing a new enterprise POS system, ask the POS vendor for their uptime report. The higher this percentage, the less risk there is of your systems shutting down. Shopify POS, for example, has 99.9% payment uptime. You can accept payments confidently with minimal downtime and keep the customer experience friction-free.
Long-term growth and scale
An enterprise POS can support a scaled business and further growth and scale. Whether that’s opening more stores, selling more products, or processing a higher payment volume, the right vendor offers POS features that prevent the need to migrate to another system further down the line.
“In a period of rapid growth, the ability to set up and control a store POS system with a single click was a game-changer,” says Pepper Palace’s Corey Hnat. “It allowed us to open 60 new locations in a year.”
Considerations for implementation
Speed to launch is the North Star metric for POS implementation. The sooner you can get the new system up and running, the quicker you can experience the benefits of a full-stack enterprise POS solution.
Shopify POS has a 20% faster implementation time than other POS systems. Let’s explore the components that influence this metric.
Training and support
The complexity of some enterprise POS systems can be overwhelming. Many have a steep learning curve that ultimately increases the platform’s TOC.
Consider how easy the enterprise POS system is for stakeholders and retail associates. You could struggle to get buy-in from people who will be using the POS solution regularly if they're unsure of how to use it, ultimately extending the speed to launch.
Monos benefited because Shopify POS can manage all aspects of retail operations under one system. “We train our retail staff not only on POS but the full online experience as well, which helps them understand how everything like order processing, refunds, and promotions work,” says Mike Wu, director of ecommerce and customer experience at Monos.
“Having it all on the same platform makes it much easier to connect the dots and fully understand the business, which results in better customer service.” This helped Monos reduce training POS time for retail staff to half a day.
Data migration
TCO inflates when you’re combining multiple tools to cover basic POS functions. When core components are unified in one centralized system such as Shopify, data migration issues—such as inaccurate data or delays in synchronization—become a thing of the past.
If you’re already running your ecommerce business through Shopify, for example, sales, customer, and inventory data is already inside your backend. The enterprise POS implementation process becomes much faster. Everything’s already there to get you up and running in record time.
“If you’re a brand in the consumer product space, I feel confident saying 80% to 90% of your use cases will be solved with a unified solution like Shopify,” says Rohit Nathany, chief digital officer at Mejuri.
Scalability and customization
If you have grand plans to scale your physical footprint, you’ll need an enterprise POS system to grow with you. Multi-location management, omnichannel inventory, and integrations with ERP systems are critical to get new stores operational quickly.
“Adding Shopify POS was extremely easy if you compare it to having a completely different POS system that would require creating more integrations to either Shopify or NetSuite,” says Edwin Portillo, VP of Technology at Good American. “With Shopify, everything happens seamlessly.”
Continuous innovation
Retail is constantly changing. Today’s best practices likely won’t apply in a few years.
A vendor's job is to get capabilities in a retailer's hands fast so they can enjoy the value of those features faster and not have to build it internally. This reduces the total cost of ownership and ensures you’re well-positioned to take advantage of emerging technologies and trends.
In 2023 alone, Shopify invested $1.7 billion in R&D. We’ve shipped over 200 platform features and updates yearly since 2021 through Editions—biannual updates that optimize all areas of the Shopify commerce stack.
Choose an enterprise POS that grows with your organization
Implementing a new enterprise POS system is no small feat—but an experience you’ll only undertake once if you choose the right one the first time.
Shopify POS is already trusted by enterprise retailers like Alo, Kotn, Gymshark, and Allbirds. Get in touch with our experts today to see how the unified commerce operating stack can benefit your growing business.
Enterprise POS FAQ
What is enterprise POS?
An enterprise POS solution unifies your sales, customer, and inventory data from multiple sales channels into a single platform. It offers flexible reporting capabilities, supports omnichannel commerce, offers multi-location management, and integrates with software like retail ERPs, CRMs, and fulfillment tools.
What are the three types of POS?
There are three types of POS systems:
- Legacy POS, which runs from a fixed countertop terminal
- Cloud-based POS, where the POS system runs on an internet-connected device, such as a tablet
- Mobile POS, which turns your smartphone into a POS system by downloading the vendor’s app
What is a POS rental?
POS rental allows you to take in-person payments without paying upfront to own the hardware. A multi-store retailer, for example, might lease a countertop POS terminal for each location to reduce upfront costs.
What is the difference between ERP and POS systems?
ERP systems are comprehensive tools that pull data from all aspects of retail operations, including the supply chain, HR, and finance. A POS system, however, has a much narrower focus. The combination of hardware and software allows retailers to process in-store transactions, manage inventory, and collect customer data.
