Overview
POS (point-of-sale, AKA tills) is the workhorse and the powerhouse of your business. Getting this right can enable your teams to focus on customer experience, because they don’t have to waste time on using a slow or unintuitive system. Get it wrong and expect to see frustrated staff and angry customers.
There is a vast and growing array of POS providers, making evaluating different products bewildering. We can broadly divide POS providers into two categories: ‘legacy’ and ‘software-only’. Legacy providers tend to have been around longer, and combine hardware, software and support into a single contract. Software-only providers ask the merchant to source their own hardware (typically an iPad or other consumer tablet), and run their software as either as an app or from a website.
Legacy POS
Legacy POS terminals are typically purpose built, robust and long-lasting. They are extremely dependable, with near-guaranteed uptime, few outages and little need for maintenance or support. As a result, they can be a little ugly, though recent models have become slimmer and more elegant. Legacy POS providers typically have their own maintenance crews, so if something does go wrong (or someone spills a pint of beer into a card reader), they can send someone out with a replacement part and have it installed quickly.
The other reason legacy POS systems are so robust is that they are typically hard-wired to each other, and to their peripherals (like receipt printers). Software-only options typically rely on Wifi and Bluetooth to connect to each other, to the internet and to peripherals. This results in legacy systems being much more reliable, especially in venues where Wifi is patchy or shared by customers. They also tend to cope without an internet connection for a long time, whereas ‘offline mode’ is not something software-only POS does very well.
Software-only POS
Software-only POS providers are increasingly popular (and increasing in number), especially among small companies (<5 venues). This is because they are designed to be extremely quick to set up, with even the most technophobic operator able to configure most systems to their requirements. If you can buy an iPad and connect it to the internet, you can generally set up your POS terminal in an hour or so. Software-only POS providers can often be very agile, quickly pivoting, scaling and adapting their product to meet evolving needs or emerging trends.
This strength is often their weakness: consumer tablets like iPads are not designed to be hammered in the same spot over and over again with wet fingers, so their life in service can be very short - often only six months or so. They are very easy to break, and very tempting to steal, if not housed in very robust counter-mounts, which in turn make them look much like the legacy terminals they’re trying not to emulate.
Support options are often very limited (especially if the problem relates to the hardware it runs on, or a peripheral like a receipt printer or cash drawer). Don’t expect anyone to drive out in a van - you’re responsible for your hardware. And, if the product develops a fundamental flaw, or you need a critical new function (like integration with a new third party system), it could be a while before the problem gets resolved if the development team consists of two guys working out of a shared workspace.
Finally, keep in mind that there is a compromise between an easy, flexible and user-friendly interface and a robust, sophisticated admin and reporting system. As a result, larger operators (even with just five or six venues) may quickly find that software-only systems give too much flexibility to venues to set their own product range or prices, or even require them to undertake maintenance tasks (like installing price updates) that you’d prefer they didn’t touch. Make sure you're clear on what you need your POS system to do, and exactly who will be responsible for setup, maintenance and support, before you start shopping.
Critical functions
The principle difference between retail POS and hospitality POS is that retail POS tends to understand the concept of garment sizes (the same product coming in small, medium and large etc), whereas hospitality POS understands tables and courses (i.e. needing to group items by location or time). Hospitality POS also tends not to be very good at knowing when products will run out, as most hospitality businesses will tend to be limited by demand, rather than stockroom capacity (the opposite of retail). It’s therefore worthwhile thinking about where on the retail - hospitality continuum your business sits; grab-and-go venues, for example, might do better to look at retail-oriented POS systems.
The sorts of functions you need to consider are:
A simple user interface for FOH staff - is it easy to quickly ring in typical orders? Can they easily make corrections, change options and handle atypical requests ('dressing on the side', for example)?
A simple user interface for head office staff (or whomever is setting up products, updating prices etc); is this easily done? Can different venues have different ranges and prices? Can it be locked down (if needed) so venues can’t make unauthorised changes? Can product and price updates be pushed automatically, so all venues are on the latest version?
Table management, floor plans and reservations
Conversational ordering (particularly for coffee-centric venues that might have thousands of permutations of style, caffeinated/decaff, milk type, syrups, temperatures and so on)
Support for the types of discounts, promotions or loyalty schemes you already run
Important integrations
To consider integrations, think first about what printers or production screens your POS terminals will feed - barista station, kitchen printer, coordination station and so on. POS terminals will need to be linked to all of these printers, plus receipt printers, cash drawers, PIN-entry devices, barcode scanners and more. It can be helpful to draw a diagram which shows the connections between each piece of hardware (here’s an example). Keep in mind these relationships might be one-to-one (e.g. one PED for every POS terminal), many-to-one (e.g. three POS terminals sharing a single receipt printer) or many-to-many (all POS terminals can send tickets to three kitchen printers). All of this hardware needs robust connections: only the smallest and simplest setups can rely on Wifi for this. For anything more complex, you should aim to be using network cabling, proper sockets and switch boxes to maintain connectivity.
For operations, you need your POS system to link to your inventory management system, so you can do accurate stock takes and (maybe) predictive ordering based on sales data. You might want a connection to your food database, e.g. to populate allergen information or nutritional data. You may also have a sophisticated kitchen production system, i.e. software that uses algorithms to tell the kitchen what to produce.
For marketing purposes, your POS system should be able to integrate seamlessly with your loyalty scheme (maybe via QR code scanner) and/or CRM system. You might also want it to incorporate your reservations system, so floor plans, table availability and guest management can be handled using the POS screen instead of a separate device.
For finance, you may use your POS terminal to inform time-and-attendance (aka clocking in), which might require the use of a secret code or biometric scanner (e.g. a fingerprint reader), which in turn will inform payroll. You’ll also want your POS system to be fully integrated with your card payments system, to avoid team members needing to manually rekey transaction amounts (make sure you read the separate section on card payments before you look for a POS provider). You will also want your POS system to integrate with your financial accounting system, so you can automatically upload and reconcile sales data with banking and financial reporting.
Users
Your POS users are likely to be your FOH staff, in whatever role they fulfil. If you use POS terminals to enable time-and-attendance (‘clocking in’) for payroll purposes, you’ll need to train all venue staff, not just FOH colleagues.
If you manage POS at a head office level (i.e. you have multiple venues and they don’t change products or prices locally), you’ll need at least one ‘POS champion’ who is responsible for updating screen layouts, products, prices, discounts, promotions and so on. This function should ideally sit in operations, but lots of organisations put this in finance or IT, for no obvious reason.
