Retail technology is the software and hardware that a shop uses to sell to you in person: the billing counter, the store system behind it, and the cameras and data that check its shelves. It is also called store technology, or in-store retail software. Its buyers are retailers of every size, from supermarket chains to fuel stations, and the consumer-goods brands whose products stand on their shelves.
Here is a typical case. You are at a supermarket in Hyderabad on a Saturday morning. You pick up a 5 kg bag of rice, two bars of soap and a packet of biscuits.
Earlier that morning, a sales representative from the biscuit company photographed the biscuit shelf on her phone. Shelf image recognition software read the photo with computer vision, software that recognises objects in images. It checked that the company's biscuits were in stock, placed where the company had agreed with the store, and priced correctly. The agreed layout of a shelf is called a planogram.
At the counter, the cashier scans the barcode on each item. The billing software is retail POS. POS means point of sale, the place where a shop takes payment. The software looks up each price in the store system, adds GST and shows the total: ₹740. Some stores let you skip the cashier, at a self-checkout kiosk or by scanning the items on your own phone with scan and go. A cashierless store removes the counter completely. Cameras record what you take, and you are charged after you walk out.
You pay the ₹740 by scanning the store's UPI QR code, or by tapping your card on the POS terminal. The payment side of the counter is explained on the page on in-store payments.
When the sale is complete, the store system reduces its stock of rice, soap and biscuits, and adds ₹740 to the day's takings. That night, out-of-stock detection software reads the day's sales from every till. It looks for products that usually sell, but sold nothing that day. A product with no sales may be missing from the shelf, even though the stock records say that it is there.
The counter works differently at a fuel station. There, fuel station management software controls the fuel pumps as well as the shop's till. In the United States and Europe, it also sets the fuel prices. In India, the oil companies set the price of petrol and diesel.
A shop can sell only what is on its shelf. So retailers and brands use this software for three things: to keep the right products on the shelf, to charge the right price, and to bill each customer quickly.