Odoo Success Story – Modernizing Retail POS With CDR Naturals
CDR Naturals is Bourbon, Missouri’s leading health food store. Family owned and operated, they offer online sales for pickup and delivery within a limited range. However, the core of the business is a brick-and-mortar shop downtown.
From the start, the store’s registers ran through a bare-bones point-of-sale (POS) system. The POS processed payments, but didn’t have robust reporting capabilities. The owners wanted that to change — and saw a solution in Odoo ERP with a POS integration.
The Problem: Updating Retail POS With On-Site Support
The owners of CDR Naturals were ready to modernize their POS system. They wanted integration with an Odoo retail ERP, but there were some tricky hardware components involved.
The owners sought in-person help getting the new system up and running. Ultimately, that’s what led them to Blue Stingray.
“They found us because we were a local partner,” said Travis Waelbroeck, ERP Solutions Director at Blue Stingray. “They needed somebody to come on site to help them implement the point of sale.”
To modernize this POS system, Blue Stingray would need to solve three related challenges:
- Introducing stronger reporting and analytics systems, covering sales, inventory, and purchasing.
- Integrating physical hardware — scales, receipt printers, credit card processors — with Odoo ERP.
- Ensuring CDR Naturals staff were ready to use the system to its fullest potential.
“They were trying to modernize so that they could do everything that they couldn’t before, from purchasing and sales reports, and more,” said Waelbroeck.
The Solution: Site Visits and Virtual IoT from Blue Stingray
The project began on site at CDR Naturals. Blue Stingray staff spent a day at the store, replacing hardware, training staff, and troubleshooting in person.
“We looked at their registers, their credit card processors, scales, receipt printers,” said Waelbroeck. “We were able to help with all the hardware.”
Blue Stingray solved hardware incompatibility issues with a little-known Odoo capability: The Virtual IoT Box. This software solution allowed CDR Naturals to integrate hardware and the retail backend without buying new, subscription-based IoT products.
“It’s not a widely publicized option for Odoo,” Waelbrock said, “but the Virtual IoT Box gives the computer an interface to pass the information back and forth between hardware and Odoo in a way that’s a little more streamlined.”
The Result: Modern Reporting That “Just Works”
CDR Naturals’ custom IoT pathway offers enterprise reporting without the complexity.
“It’s basically ‘set it and forget it, other than some minimal support needs,” said Waelbroeck.
With the new system in place, the owners can finally run vendor-specific sales reports. That data helps them make stronger purchasing decisions. It’s the sort of effortless insight that frees the owners of CDR Natural to focus on their mission: Making it easy to eat healthy in Bourbon, MO.
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