“Democratization of Retail Technology
Companies like Vend, makers of the first digital, cloud-based point-of-sale system, are a case in point. Vend provided many small and multistore store retailers with a gateway to unified commerce during the COVID course correction that many retailers had to respond to in real time.
In speaking with Vend’s founder Vaughan Fergusson recently, he noted “We have been talking about omnichannel for a decade, COVID has been an accelerant for all things omnichannel. Changes that might have happened in five years happened in nine months, and we had to respond by being there.” He went on to say “curbside pickup suddenly required that the retailer know exactly where their inventory was, in the moment.” Vend enabled pick and pack using smartphones as pocket computers to deal with the transactions.”
