The retail industry lives and dies on margins, with managers on a never-ending quest to increase revenue and decrease costs. Technology is an area of intense focus as a way to accomplish both goals. Nowhere is that more evident than in POS systems for retail, which are evolving as they incorporate multiple functions.
Retail point of sale systems typically contain a computer, monitor, cash drawer, receipt printer, customer display and a barcode scanner. Many also include a debit/credit card reader, a signature capture device and a customer pin pad. These all-in-one POS units run sophisticated software that handles several functions including sales, returns, exchanges, coupon validations, layaways, multiple payment types, gift cards, quantity discounts and more.
Obviously, it’s vitally important to keep a POS system for retail up and running efficiently. But that presents a management issue. A POS system for retail can be widely dispersed and is not integrated into a traditional LAN environment, making it difficult to monitor and manage. Many network management tools either aren’t designed to handle that situation, or are too big and complex to roll out. Additionally, they don’t recognize the monitoring and management needs of your retail IT software and specialist hardware.
More than 60% of retail IT departments have POS issues that require on-site visits. Even if you could solve some of those issues remotely, you’d still have to tackle them one at a time, which becomes a never ending break/fix cycle.
This POS management challenge can be resolved by distributing software updates to local download points, without disrupting business, and by actively monitoring update processes for your retail IT software’s specific requirements. Light-weight monitoring from any device to any other device means no VPNs or network overhead, and no special site requirements.
By the very nature of this industry, POS systems for retail are widely dispersed, only tenuously attached and business critical. This creates special challenges for retail IT professionals. But it doesn’t have to…
With the proper retail point of sale system, you can proactively monitor and manage IT environments anywhere, anytime, whether in or out of a domain, which includes POS and peripherals, software and process through log parsing, backup applications and servers, mobile devices, tablets, scanners and kiosks and desktop migration.
Free white paper: Top 5 Retail IT Challenges and Solutions. Download this white paper to learn more how to proactively monitor and manage a POS system for retail.
Reference: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Point_of_sale
