|
|
|
                |
What's New & Hot in Retail POS Systems? What trends and gadgets are making a splash in the retail end of Point-of-Sale systems? Lower Costs for POS systems is a big push these days. That's why IBM is getting a good reception for its Linux and MySQL components, which cost less than Windows and SQL Server. RFID is a buzz for the bigger guys, but it's not clear that you can cost-justify it for the average retailer. It's also not clear what efficiencies there are for the customer, not just the retailer. Workforce Management becomes a big issue as you grow. Elephant Pharmacy is growing past 100 employees, so this will be key for them in 2007. POS systems feed a data stream of what is selling, where, and why, so management can make better employee scheduling decisions. You can even figure out that a given store is having a slow day, and send some of the staff home for the day. You can even check productivity by individual clerk. But Millen warns that you can make wrong assumptions here: A clerk who seems from the POS reports to be less productive than others could just be a clerk who is doing an especially good job of customer service — not something you necessarily want to discourage. So you're getting more, better, and more timely data; but it's still up to you to figure out what it really means. Loss Prevention — Sophisticated POS systems, properly used, can make a big difference to loss prevention. First, half of your shrinkage is due to paperwork error — a good POS system will tackle that problem. Second, half of the remaining shrinkage is typically due to employee theft, including fake discounts for friends. If you use the cash management and other features built into your system, you have a chance of detecting this. But you have to have in place strong loss-prevention policies. Otherwise that "override code" will kill you. Promotions can be a big problem too. The software should allow flexibility, and be able to handle count mixes, for example, without the employees having to do the math and without lowering security. You don't want employees giving 80% discounts without filing an incident report. System confidence is the important factor in loss prevention. If everyone is being tracked consistently, and they know it, this helps control theft. www.allbusiness.com Back to Industry News |
