Each retailer often relies on their own proprietary Point-Of-Sale (POS) interface for their transaction processing because each retailer has their own specific transaction processing customizations and unique features. However, because third-party vendors offer a variety of data rich tracking, monitoring, and data integration features, the retailers often desire to integrate some of these industry-available product offerings into their POS interfaces.
This integration requires a non-substantial amount of software resources, which are usually supplied by both the retailer and the vendor. By and large, the retailer's POS interface is interacted with through a customized application supplied by the vendor with the customer-facing interface being a customized vendor interface that links between some of the native POS interface features with some features of the vendor-supplied product offering.
The customization is rarely complete and some POS interface features are not mapped and linked to the vendor's product. This is particularly true for native administrative features of the POS interface. Often what occurs is when the administrative interface needs to be accessed by a retailer, the customer-facing interface has to be exited and the native POS interface initiated to access the needed administrative features of the native POS interface.
This scenario is not ideal and processing context is often lost when the customer-facing interface is exited and the native POS interface initiated.
USPTO Backgrounds
USPTO Backgrounds