Pickcel Develops On-Screen Promotions, Booking Capability For Emerging “Salon Suite” Industry

December 1, 2022 by Dave Haynes

The Indian CMS software company Pickcel has developed an interesting application aimed at what it says is a new spin on wellness and beauty salons – suites in the U.S. and Canada that are licensed to a single specialist.

The company has developed a custom solution for My Salon Suite, a franchise operator that has more than 200 sites rented to self-employed entrepreneurs who determine their own rates, work schedules, and booking terms. Therefore, a customer would require to book the expert services individually.

The operator wanted a digital display solution that shows real-time information about each wellness expert, such as available slots, suite numbers, expert names, phone numbers, and additional promos on screens that are installed inside each suite.

“My Salon Suite’s requirement was unique and challenging,” says Pickcel CTO and co-founder Basudev Saha in a press release. “They needed to show exactly two pieces of content on each and every screen: their service directory and dynamic promotions. Pretty simple, right? Well, there was a catch. Not every screen would show the same information directory and promotional media.”

The solution was data and APIs, which Pickcel suggests in the PR was “ingenious,” but is something pretty widely done. Pickcel says it “tagged every screen with the suite’s unique ID; using API integrations with the My Salon Suite’s Salesforce CRM, it retrieved the precise data of each suite’s ongoing business. Further, it developed two custom apps: the Salon App and the Salon Media App. Once these apps were configured, they identified the unique store IDs and automatically delivered the exact content assigned to the specific store display.”

“Now, if you are inside a salon suite getting your hair done and you decide to get a message, you can simply look at the screen, check which masseuse is available, call them up, and set an appointment. Done!”

It’s nice to see digital signage in these kinds of environments being used for purposes other than pure brand and services marketing. There’s a role for digital posters that are driving margin beauty products available in the salons, but these kind of operational screens that are tying in with a CRM open up some interesting opportunities, like cross-promoting and enabling booking of other specialists who use the mini-salon at that location.