Having
to flag down a waiter at your favorite restaurant is often regarded as one of
the most frustrating things about the otherwise enjoyable experience of dining
out and the payroll costs associated with having a large wait staff, especially
at extremely busy restaurants and bars, is one of the biggest budget line items
for proprietors to contend with. Moreover, human wait staff can make mistakes
taking orders and oftentimes key elements or stipulations of an order become
lost in the hectic process of getting an order to the kitchen staff for
preparation. This same phenomenon is also seen at bars, where multiple drink
orders can often get mixed up between customer, wait staff, and bartender,
resulting in disappointed customers who may ultimately choose another
establishment the next time they go out for a night on the town.
Putting
the ball into the customer’s hands when it comes to ordering can significantly
improve the dining experience and increase customer retention, simultaneously
alleviating the cost and complexities for the business when it comes to
ordering mistakes. These factors are collectively some of the main drivers
behind the rise of self-ordering kiosks and even self-checkout terminals that
are now cropping up at restaurants and bars, as well as retailers, all over the
world. However, as the Home Depot breach last year clearly showed, which was
directly linked to security-compromised self-checkout terminals and which
resulted in the theft of over 56 million credit customer card and pin numbers,
while self-ordering may be an amazing innovation, self-checkout minus a human
observer can pose serious security and brand integrity risks.
One
of the leading innovators in mobile payment solutions and transactional
services today, Net Element, Inc. (NASDAQ: NETE), which owns and operates a
considerable global footprint via their TOT Group family of subsidiaries, is on
the forefront of this hot growth sector via their next-gen, cloud-based point
of sale (POS) platform, Aptito. Recently updated to Version 2.4 and optimized
for iOS 8.1, Aptito is an all-in-one software platform centered around Apple’s
(NASDAQ:AAPL) iPad and iPhone, which has been designed to fulfill a variety of
roles, ranging from self-order kiosks, POS solutions and mPOS implementations
with the company’s mobile iPhone version, to comprehensive real-time inventory
management and customer engagement.
Aptito
self-order iPad Kiosks are extremely affordable at only $49 per month and they
sync directly with Aptito’s signature iPad POS system, saving proprietors
thousands of dollars per month on wages, while circumventing the security risks
associated with self-checkout. Naturally, wait staff can also use their mobile
phones to place orders and have them instantly printed out in the kitchen. But
with the self-order kiosks, customers can order, as well as tender payment
directly from their seats, and yet a human presence can still be present in the
loop to verify checkout via the synced iPad POS software, giving proprietors
the best of both worlds. At the same time, the synced software platform
dovetails with the comprehensive Aptito inventory management and sales app,
which not only keeps track of inventory in real-time on a per-order basis, the
app also has time saving features like inventory alerts and auto-ordering capabilities
which remove many of the more complex and taxing aspects of inventory handling,
a real life-saver for typically already overworked managers.
The
automatic inventory feature is one of the most compelling reasons for business
owners to upgrade their business to using the Aptito platform. The time and
energy savings of the Aptito platform’s auto re-ordering feature, as items are
automatically added to an online cart and suppliers emailed, melts away the
complexities associated with inventory restocking, reducing the often difficult
to keep track of issue to a simple matter of a few clicks. The inventory
management app also does one-touch, in-depth inventory reporting, so managers
can drill down into the specifics and really take control of their budget, looking
at relative costs and profits in a highly granular fashion, all within a single
software environment.
From
enhancing traditional POS architectures via iPad-based POS systems and digital
menus that allow customers to see eye-popping, high quality images of menu
items (which has been shown to increase overall sales volume), to
revolutionizing the entire customer flow process with an advanced self-service
approach using tableside or bar-mounted kiosks, Aptito’s affordable platform
execution can increase profits and customer retention with ease. Getting the
system set up and running is also very easy and the company even has a
real-time table reservation app that syncs up with the iPad POS system, helping
to smooth out the service workflow and finish more covers per day without the
hassle of accidently double-booked seating, or having to keep customers happy
as they stand around waiting at check-in.
The
Aptito platform’s potential as a disruptive technology, particularly for
smaller businesses who typically cannot afford to roll out such revolutionary
POS and self-order architectures, was even recently acknowledged by the only
independent business awards program in existence today which is judged directly
by analysts from the press and industry itself, the Best in Biz Awards. Aptito
recently won the Best in Biz Awards silver for Most Innovative Product of the
Year in the SMB category, clearly showing just how powerful this fully
integrated solution is, as Net Element’s Aptito platform beat out hundreds of
other nominees at what was arguably the most competitive instance of the Best
in Biz Awards to date.
Aptito
is just one of the Net Element, TOT Group division’s family of companies, which
also includes Unified Payments, one of the top credit and debit card-based
payment processing service providers in the U.S., as well as their mobile
payment processor and mobile commerce provider, TOT Money, which has developed
a leading presence in the Russian market.
Take
a closer look at this diverse company by visiting www.NetElement.com
Or
check out the Aptito platform by visiting www.Aptito.com
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