Roger Lin, CTO and Ariel Lin, Director Today, intuitive point-of-sale (POS) systems have become an indispensable tool for any modern brick-and-mortar retail businesses, helping them sell smarter while also enhancing their buyer experience. With the right POS system, retailers can manage and control business expenses with greater proficiency, have a better understanding of what products sell best and then refine their stock accordingly, track product performance, and engage customers with loyalty rewards. The challenge, however, remains in choosing the best POS solution. With a wealth of POS systems and software available in the market now, how does a retail business choose the right one for their unique needs?
Enter Flex-Solver with an aim to answer this question. Leveraging the practicing management expertise of the duo, Roger Lin and Ariel Lin, in retail and resource planning, the Singapore-based software vendor guides the path for businesses to enhance their efficiency and productivity through its economical and best-in-class POS solutions.
The company’s inception goes back to the time when Roger and Ariel were University students and decided to put together their entrepreneurial interests combined with their computing and retail knowledge to create a customized POS system for a chain bakery in Singapore, that became their first successful client. However, Roger knew that to achieve fast growth, Flex-Solver could not rely on POS system alone. Thus, the company cherishes every opportunity to expand its offerings. Since then, Flex-Solver has been serving numerous clients in the retail sector beyond POS needs, offering numerous solutions ranging from digital ordering solutions, self-service kiosks to fully customized software solutions. "We offer all kinds of solutions to help our clients enhance efficiency and productivity in their businesses,” says Ariel.
Cost-Effective and High-Quality Software Solutions beyond POS
“We understand how every company is unique in itself,” says Roger, CTO at Flex-Solver, and therefore, the company aims to go beyond a software vendor to be an IT partner. While Flex-Solver has standard, off-the-shelf POS solutions, it goes through an extensive length to understand the client's needs and customize its solutions accordingly. The company's core competency lies in actively engaging with clients in researching, designing, programming, and implementing a precise POS system or reengineering their existing POS processes. Alongside, by integrating the data from the POS systems with a company's CRM solutions, Flex-Solver helps its clients leverage the strategic data and optimize business decisions. At the same time, Flex-Solver also offers complete customer data protection as well as a secure environment for system implementation. Displaying such robustness, today, Flex-Solver has become a go-to POS solution provider for clients spanning across small- and medium-sized businesses, and large scale retail chains. “We guarantee positive ROI and offer schemes to minimize capital requirement, even for a fully customized solution,” says Ariel.
Nonetheless, it is important for vendor to promote technology thoughtfully and responsibly, especially in an era of overwhelming variety of technologies
A Comprehensive but Tailored Package for Retailers
Alongside powerful POS systems, Flex-Solver offers various digital ordering solutions that enable customers to order and pay through their own devices, inventory management systems for different industries as well as e-commerce integrations to synchronize client’s e-commerce platform with in-store activities. “Nonetheless, it is important for vendor to promote technology thoughtfully and responsibly, especially in an era of overwhelming variety of technologies.” Acknowledged Ariel. Indeed, a good IT vendor does not only need to understand the needs of different system users, it must identify redundant requirements on behalf of its clients. Flex-Solver’s ideology is to act like an in-house IT department in every project by carefully assessing the maintenance feasibility and resource requirements of the new system.
To further elucidate the firm’s POS expertise, Ariel, director of Flex-Solver, recalls the case of a bar in Singapore. “We took a very hand-holding approach in planning and implementing to the most suited POS system for the bar,” she says. Flex-Solver provided recommendations on the client’s IT infrastructure, deployed two self-service kiosks, and designed SOP together with the client to make app-based (for iOS and Android) ordering the primary checkout process. These solutions helped the bar in expanding their business fast without having to hire more waiters to serve the customers.
“Such success stories prove how the prowess of effective technology can help retailers today in their menial manpower requirements,” says Ariel. To add to these accomplishments is the recent partial acquisition of Flex-Solver by a global IT consulting company Beyondsoft Corporation. This partnership has opened new doors of possibilities for Flex-Solver to tap into massive R&D resources (beyond POS software). With the help of Beyondsoft Consulting’s strong foundation in the IT consulting arena, Flex-Solver can now learn and rely on the skills and experience of more than 14,000 developers in order to better serve its clients. “We are very thankful for the opportunity to learn and make use of these resources to provide consulting and customized software solutions to a global client base by leveraging present-day technologies such as big data and AI,” informs Roger.
A lot of the company's success is accredited to its hard-working team, alongside Ariel and Roger, that has taken Flex- Solver to new heights. The team, consisting of young enthusiasts as well as experienced professionals in the IT and retail sector, has helped numerous clients. Continuing its innovation streak, Flex-Solver is now paving the path to harnessing the full potential of Data Analytics and AI to revamp their complete POS processes and charge their glory into the future of retail. The company is expected to double its R&D department in the next twelve months, working toward providing more comprehensive solutions beyond POS to a more diverse clientele. “Though the pace of technology advancement varies according to countries, collectively, we all are at the cusp of a paradigm shift in the retail sector, and we are ready to take on any challenges to make the transformation worthwhile in the Southeast Asian countries,” concludes Ariel.
