As an ISV, you are constantly challenged to balance your ability to provide all the features that your users need with your ability to operate profitably. You can deliver new features and functionality via development, which likely means a considerable investment of resources and money. Development also takes time, which can prevent getting to market ahead of your competitors. Development, however, isn’t the only way to meet the demand for new features – you also have the option of leveraging third-party integrations.
What Can You Provide to Your Users with Third-Party Integration?
Developers offer tools that extend point of sale (POS) functionality, such as:
- CardFree: This third-party integration enables consumer-driven pay-at-the-table functionality at restaurants. It leverages customers’ smartphones – and it’s a social-distance-friendly way for customers to pay.
- FOLOS: Food Online Ordering Systems (FOLOS) is a POS system- and processor-agnostic solution for restaurant online and kiosk ordering. With FOLOS, restaurants can accept orders directly instead of paying ordering and delivery services.
- RTO: Real Time Ordering (RTO) provides online ordering to restaurants of all sizes, including franchise solutions.
- Dash Now: This integration adds contactless payments and digital menus. It prints a QR code at the bottom of each check, which the customer scans to make a payment and earn loyalty rewards.
These third-party integrations are examples of proven solutions that are ready to use today. You don’t have to invest your time to start from scratch and develop this functionality on your own – and possibly not equal its quality, especially if these types of solutions fall outside your area of expertise.
Also, you need to consider the financial aspects of a development project. You probably have fewer customers than a third-party developer who could, potentially, sell to the entire market. Trying to amortize the cost of in-house development over your comparatively smaller customer base will probably mean fewer resources that can be allocated. It can also mean a finished product that may not be able to compete, especially when the third-party is focused on setting the standard for a particular functionality.
How Third-Party Integrations Improve User Experiences
Third-party integrations can also mean happier customers. In addition to providing additional capabilities, these solutions can also help your clients streamline their operations. If your solution doesn’t include, for example, online ordering, the merchant will find a way to enable it, possibly by signing with an online ordering and delivery platform or deploying a disparate system. In either case, they’ll operate less efficiently than if they had a fully integrated system you could deliver by leveraging a third-party platform.
Third-party integration also helps your clients manage payments. Providing a total system, including omnichannel payments, eliminates the burden from managing separate processor relationships for card-present and card-not-present payments. One integrated system also means consolidated batching and reporting, which will save time for the back office and improve cash flow.
Don’t Reinvent the Wheel
As an ISV, you have the opportunity to partner with a wide range of companies that produce purpose-built, best-in-class solutions to integrate with your POS system. Of course, you need to find, vet and integrate with those solutions, but the good news is that Datacap has done some of the heavy lifting for you. Datacap has leveraged third-party integrations to provide your clients with additional features they can use today. We’ve also thoroughly tested those solutions to ensure they work seamlessly with our platform.
With technology and the POS industry changing at a rapid pace, you will continually encounter the problem of how to provide your users with the new functionality they need. Before you commit to development to meet their demands, however, it’s a smart strategy to investigate whether someone else has already solved the problem.
