The name "front office" itself is of English origin and means a division of a brokerage company or bank that deals only with transactions. In other words, the front office represents the side of the business that the client sees and that is responsible for the work between the client and the customer.
On the front lines
The front office is a technology for quickly fixing all sales, which ensures the accuracy of the incoming data and increases the speed of customer service. The functional system of this division also includes preparatory measures for the formation of prices, a system for accounting for goods with price tags, control over commodity circulation, price analytics and the availability of goods in warehouses. The specialists of this office, as they say, are at the forefront. They represent the face of the company, the success of the entire enterprise depends on them.
Front office is contrasted with another concept - back office. The fragmentation of offices can occur at the software or hardware level. In short, the separation takes place on one of the devices, which has different modes of operation, or on computers. The back office can carry out its work without giving the client full information, while the front office maintains settings, for example, discount cards, takes into account the turnover and price setting.
Any information base has its own special structure and location of terminals that organize information. In this case, the terminal itself can be located at any distance or, conversely, quite close to the back office. It follows from this that communication is established between devices with real carriers of information data or with the help of an Internet system.
Interaction
It should be said that the front office, which is located at a distance, does not have a stable connection between the front and back offices. Their cooperation takes place using online verifiers or through external files. In other words, there is no need for continuous communication between offices, since the pricing for the accounting of retail goods occurs at the beginning of the day. Next, the turnover is recorded for a working day, and the next day, sales are recorded.
Among other things, it should be mentioned that the formation of a stable connection between offices involves the use of expensive software solutions that allow you to work in the order of multiple users. The connection of a temporary type does not make it possible to timely correlate, for example, prices with a card index or receive reports on the turnover for the past day. The choice of a front office directly depends on the goals of introducing the automated system and the needs of the client.
