Sales and solutions teams at retail and food‑tech platforms often see promising deals slow down when conversations shift to integrations, data migration, and onboarding. Prospects worry about risk, timelines, and internal effort, which can stall even the strongest commercial fit.

Why integrations slow deals

Most buyers operate complex stacks across POS, ERP, accounting, marketplaces, delivery partners, and marketing tools. When a new platform is introduced, they immediately ask: “How will this work with everything we already use?” Long integration projects, manual migrations, and inconsistent data flows make it hard for champions to push deals through.

A better approach is to treat integrations and migrations as a product, not a project, something standardized, repeatable, and clearly communicated in every sales cycle. Framing integration as a defined motion also makes it easier to align with the kind of automated onboarding and migration journeys described on LINK’s migration page.

What a modern integration layer looks like

A robust integration and migration layer typically includes:

• Pre-built connectors for common systems in retail and food-tech, with the flexibility to customize fields, mappings, and logic as merchant needs evolve. This mirrors how many modern integration portfolios expose connectors across POS, ERP, accounting, and marketplaces, similar to what is highlighted in LINK’s integrations section.
• Automated historical data migration and ongoing sync, so merchants are not starting from scratch. A well-designed migration engine can move data for locations, orders, inventory, catalogs, and customers before go-live, and then keep everything up to date in the background.
• Embeddable, white-label flows that live inside your own product, giving a native onboarding experience and reducing security concerns. This lets merchants trigger migrations and integrations directly from your dashboard.

With this kind of foundation, sales and solutions teams can promise realistic timelines, support multi‑location rollouts, and scale merchant onboarding without overloading engineering. It also becomes much easier to standardize playbooks and SLAs across regions and verticals.

Making this a competitive advantage

When integration is positioned as a known, low‑risk motion – with clear pricing, implementation playbooks, and case‑study proof – it becomes a reason to choose your platform, not a reason to delay. Sharing real‑world stories of complex POS or ERP integrations, multi‑outlet retail rollouts, or restaurant migrations helps buyers see that their edge cases have already been solved. Packaging integrations and migrations with transparent, usage‑based or volume‑based pricing can make approvals smoother. Instead of bespoke one‑off quotes each time, sales teams can reference standard tiers and options.

If you want to turn integration and onboarding into a consistent competitive advantage for your retail or food‑tech platform, explore how a dedicated integration and migration layer can support your GTM and product teams. To see how this works in practice and what it could look like for your stack, review LinkToAny’s case studies, explore how automated migrations are handled, learn more about the integrations portfolio.

You can request a demo from LinkToAny at https://linktoany.com/demo-request-linktoany/ or message our team at sales@linktoany.com

But what happens when a brand has been set up on Omni and realizes Core is actually the better fit? For Cin7 partners managing multiple clients, this kind of migration can become a drain on resources and can waste valuable client time.

That changes with LinkToAny

LinkToAny now offers a fully automated migration path from Cin7 Omni to Cin7 Core, purpose-built to empower Cin7 partners to move their customers and brands to the platform that serves them best — quickly, accurately, and without the manual headaches.

No CSV files. No manual data mapping. No copy-paste marathons. No guesswork. Just a clean, structured, end-to-end migration that preserves your data integrity and gets the brands operational on Core fast.

The real complexity and work lies in mapping the structural differences between two systems. LinkToAny’s AI-led mapping handles this automatically and covers GL Account mapping, Price Tier mapping, Tax mapping, Location mapping, and Payment mapping.

The migration flow covers the full spectrum of business-critical datasets, including Customer, Products & Variants, Suppliers, Sales, and Inventory. This migration capability is a game-changer for Cin7 partners and their customers/brands, helping them move to the inventory management system that serves them best!

How It Works

Connect — Link your client’s Cin7 Omni and Cin7 Core accounts to LinkToAny.

Map — Review and confirm the automated mapping of GL accounts, price tiers, taxes, locations, and payments. Adjust where needed.

Migrate — Launch the migration and let LinkToAny transfer customers, products, suppliers, sales, and inventory data.

Validate — Review the migration results with built-in reporting to confirm everything has landed correctly.

Go Live — Your client is up and running on Cin7 Core.

The best technology decisions should be based on ‘what’s right for the business’ — not on how difficult it would be to switch. With LinkToAny’s automated Cin7 Omni to Core migration, the switching cost is no longer a barrier. Ready to migrate your clients from Cin7 Omni to Cin7 Core? Fill out the Get a Demo form or email us at sales@linktoany.com

Attending Money 20/20 Las Vegas this year validated an important hypothesis: onboarding remains one of the greatest challenges for fintech, especially within the payments and B2B space. The event brought together a vibrant mix of founders, investors, product leads, and innovators, all united by a shared goal to enhance fintech workflows and customer experience.

Fintech Onboarding: The Hidden Bottleneck

The conference reconfirmed that inefficient onboarding workflows are still a significant pain point for major payment platforms. Despite massive growth and scale, many platforms onboarding thousands of merchants still wrestle with complex, manual migration processes that slow down go-lives and frustrate customers. Through deep-dive conversations and follow-ups with product owners, it became obvious that automation and intelligent workflow design in onboarding can fundamentally change how quickly and smoothly these platforms move merchants from legacy processors.

With the right approach, there’s a clear path to both operational efficiency and higher satisfaction scores.

Money 20/20 spotlighted how solving this onboarding problem at scale can unlock value for all players in the ecosystem: platforms, merchants, partners, and investors alike. The push to improve this area isn’t simply incremental, it’s a potential game-changer that can drive widespread adoption and deepen relationships up and down the payments stack.

Integrations & Customization: Less Hype, Real Value

Another ongoing trend is the demand for seamless integrations. While custom integrations will always be necessary as platforms expand into new markets and verticals, the most transformative wins right now are being driven by smarter onboarding flows rather than integration alone. This subtle shift in focus stood out during founder roundtables and in talks with product and engineering leaders at the show.

From Investor Conversations to Founders’ Insights

Money 20/20 isn’t just a gathering of industry titans, it’s also an unmatched opportunity for genuine dialogue. From roundtables organized by leading venture firms to lively breakfasts and serendipitous hallway chats, the event delivered a wealth of perspective on the challenges, opportunities, and emerging trends in fintech innovation. High-caliber investor interest and the ability to connect with other founders proved invaluable for exchanging ideas on customer acquisition, funding, and international go-to-market strategies.

Wrapping Up: Momentum, and Opportunity

Beyond the sessions and networking, the diversity of experiences—from PR shoots to offsite breakfasts, made Money 20/20 Las Vegas a powerhouse for inspiration and action. The conference underscored the urgency and opportunity in reimagining fintech onboarding, confirmed market appetite for automated solutions, and fostered connections that will fuel meaningful change in the months ahead.

As LinkToAny continues to push the boundaries of onboarding automation and merchant migration, the event reaffirmed our commitment to solving these challenges at scale and collaborating with industry leaders driving the next wave of fintech innovation.

Whether you’re a fintech founder, investor, or payments innovator, the key takeaway from Money 20/20 is clear: the future will be shaped by those who simplify onboarding and migration, making it as seamless and scalable as the products themselves.

Building a startup isn’t a straight line. It’s a series of experiments, pivots, and bets—some that work, and some that teach you the hard way.

Over the last few years of building Link, I’ve learned that success isn’t just about having a great product. It’s about how you sell it, how you keep innovating, and how you choose to fund your journey.

Here are three lessons that have shaped the way I run Link and that might spark ideas for your own entrepreneurial path.

1. Sales and marketing: Find the most efficient path to market

As a tech entrepreneur, pushing the boundaries on product innovation is key. But it’s equally important to be nimble with sales and marketing.

When we started, we sold directly to merchants—retailers and restaurants. Selling and scaling into this segment is challenging due to its fragmentation. You either need deep venture capital pockets or an incredibly efficient way to reach them.

That efficiency came when we discovered a better route: selling through the tech platforms that already serve these merchants. Instead of building a large sales team, we made the platforms and their sales teams our customers. They, in turn, connect us to their merchants, our end users.

Once we validated this model with one point-of-sale system, one accounting platform, and so on, scaling became much faster. We now work with multiple platforms across retail and food, and their channels effectively serve as our sales force while LinkToAny delivers value for both the platform and the merchant.

Takeaway: Look for distribution channels where someone else already has the audience you want. It can be the difference between slow, expensive growth and fast, scalable traction.

2. Innovation: Keep research alive while serving your core

Every startup wrestles with the same challenge: how do you push into new ideas without losing focus on your bread and butter?

AI is the latest wave where this question comes up. LLMs and agent-centric models are everywhere in the conversation, but figuring out how to actually use them meaningfully is another matter.

At LinkToAny, accurate and dynamic mapping between systems is mission-critical. So we put two engineers into “lab mode” for months to hammer away at LLM capabilities. Eventually, they cracked it. When we demoed the solution to one of the largest point-of-sale and payment companies in North America, they immediately saw the value. We’re now taking it through the next stages of market rollout.

Takeaway: Even when it’s hard to justify in the short term, consistent R&D pays off. Your prospects and customers are exploring these same technologies—if you’re not, you risk becoming irrelevant.

3. Funding: Take only what you need; keep control where it counts

“How much should I raise?” is a question every founder faces. One thing I’ve learned is that it’s not just about the number—it’s about control and flexibility.

It’s tempting to think you need to raise $50M or more to have a shot at a billion-dollar exit. But in many cases, you might only need $7M to reach profitability and still execute well beyond that. That can often be done with angels and smaller funds, without giving up too much board control or company rights.

Why does this matter? Markets fluctuate, obstacles arise, and founders require the ability to make flexible decisions. Once you give that away, it’s difficult to get it back.

Takeaway: Raise in smaller chunks, choose your investors carefully, and keep the door open for future funding by nurturing long-term relationships.

Technology is influencing every aspect of the dining experience as the restaurant industry enters a new era. The Point of Sale (POS) system, which has developed significantly beyond its initial function as a straightforward payment processor, is at the heart of this change. Today’s modern POS platforms are intelligent, cloud-driven, and customer-focused, offering tools that streamline operations, enhance guest satisfaction, and drive profitability.

The future of point-of-sale (POS) systems is expected to transform restaurant operations as innovation picks up speed. Below are five emerging POS trends and technologies every restaurant owner should keep on their radar.

Contactless and Mobile Payments

The popularity of mobile wallets and contactless payments has raised expectations among diners. Customers now prefer the convenience of settling bills via Apple Pay, Google Pay, QR codes, and near-field communication (NFC). This trend, fueled in part by the global shift toward hygiene and speed, makes touchless technology essential for restaurants. By offering mobile-friendly checkout options, businesses can provide a secure, seamless payment experience that enhances guest confidence and loyalty.

2. AI-Powered Analytics and Insights

With more intelligent POS analytics and insights, artificial intelligence (AI) is transforming the restaurant sector. By analyzing customer behavior, sales trends, and menu choices, AI-driven POS systems help restaurants make informed decisions. These insights support:

• Personalized promotions to increase loyalty
• Accurate demand forecasting for better inventory management
• Menu optimization based on real-time data

Platforms like Toast and Square are already using AI to empower restaurants with predictive analytics, ensuring strategies are no longer guesswork but data-backed.

Cloud-Based POS Platforms

Cloud-based POS systems are becoming the standard for restaurants seeking scalability and operational flexibility. Unlike traditional systems, cloud platforms allow managers to update menus, access reports, and monitor multiple locations from any device. This mobility is especially valuable for growing chains and franchises. Cloud POS also reduces hardware dependence, cuts upfront costs, and delivers real-time data that supports better decision-making.

Integrated Online Ordering and Delivery

The demand for online ordering and food delivery is not slowing down. Restaurants now require POS systems that integrate digital orders directly into their operations. This integration ensures that orders from apps or websites connect smoothly to kitchen workflows, inventory tracking, and delivery dispatch. Providers like Square and Clover have already expanded their solutions to support full omnichannel restaurant operations, making it simpler for businesses to serve customers both in-house and online without disruptions.

Enhanced Customer Engagement Tools

Modern POS platforms are giving restaurants more than transaction support—they’re equipping them with customer engagement tools. Built-in loyalty programs, CRM capabilities, and targeted marketing features help businesses strengthen relationships with guests. By personalizing offers and rewarding frequent diners, operators can foster repeat visits and build genuine customer loyalty.

The Road Ahead

The future of point-of-sale (POS) systems is about more than just speed; it’s about smarter, customer-focused operations, from mobile payments to AI insights and cloud-based flexibility. Restaurants that adopt these technologies will not only keep up with industry trends but also stay ahead of the competition.

Discover how the right POS system can transform your business – Click here

What is iPaaS?

iPaaS is a cloud-based integration solution that helps businesses connect all their applications, data, and services without needing complex coding. Think of iPaaS as a bridge that allows different systems to “talk” to each other and share data automatically.

The best part? iPaaS comes with prebuilt connectors and ready-to-use templates. This means instead of building integrations from scratch, your IT team can quickly set up connections using a simple, user-friendly interface.

How does iPaaS work?

Imagine this scenario. You use Salesforce to manage customer relationships and QuickBooks for accounting. Without integration, your team would need to manually transfer customer and order details between these two systems, which is time-consuming and prone to errors.

With iPaaS, you can connect Salesforce and QuickBooks in minutes. The data flows seamlessly between the two platforms without any extra work.

But iPaaS doesn’t just connect apps. It also takes care of:

• Data mapping and transformation: so information is formatted correctly between systems.
• Workflow automation to manage processes that involve multiple apps.
• Monitoring and alerts :so you know your integrations are running smoothly.

Why should businesses care about iPaaS?

iPaaS offers much more than convenience. It brings real, measurable benefits.

It saves time. Your developers no longer need to write endless lines of code to keep systems in sync.

It ensures real-time data sync. Updates happen instantly across all connected platforms, reducing mistakes and delays.

It grows with you. As your business adds new tools, iPaaS makes it simple to expand integrations without starting from scratch.

It cuts costs. By automating workflows and reducing manual tasks, iPaaS helps teams work smarter, not harder.

The bottom line

If you’re still relying on manual processes to move data between your systems, it’s time to rethink your approach. iPaaS eliminates integration headaches by enabling real-time connectivity and automation, which means fewer errors, faster workflows, and happier teams.

As businesses continue to adopt more cloud applications, having a reliable integration platform is no longer optional. Whether you’re a growing startup or a large enterprise, iPaaS can be the solution that connects all your tools and data in one seamless flow.

Ready to explore iPaaS solutions? Start by identifying the apps you already use and where data silos are slowing you down. From there, look for an iPaaS platform that offers the right connectors, automation features, and scalability.