One of the interesting things of being me is that I have been on both sides of the POS coin as having been an owner of venues and also as a software vendor.
I’ve seen business owners who are smart and know where to spend their money when designing a new venue or taking over an existing and then there are the others who are setting up their business and trying to decide on which Italian tiles to put on the bar front or whether to go with the $30,000 rational oven or the $20,000 Electrolux version or to spend $40,000 on the feature lighting.
For some people, much time is taken in deciding the look of the venue including making sure colours, lighting and audio are just right – that people then leave it to last to decide on, what I believe, is the most important part, the POS system.
The POS is the heartbeat of your business. Don’t believe anything else I say but believe that!
What’s the point in having the best looking site or wanting to operate the most efficiently if you cant get orders to your kitchen correctly or bills to your customers in a timely manner because you’ve taken the cheap option in choosing hardware that isn’t fit for purpose or software that runs well in a coffee shop but not suited to your fine dining venue.
With this in mind I am still flabbergasted that people like to scrimp and save on the heartbeat of their business by saying to us, “I have a mate who does IT and he will supply our touch screens, our POS terminals and our ipads and the like”.
Inside me I can tell you the truth, I’m stewing and brewing. It’s got absolutely nothing to do with bossii losing profit on any potential hardware sale because we don’t sell hardware in the first place. It’s because we already see issues with your hardware mate passing the buck on that busy Friday night when a hard drive dies and we are left trying to call him to get him in to fix it immediately.
I get that we all want to save money on unnecessary items however the POS in your business is your heartbeat. If you don’t understand that then take it from a 20+ year veteran that this is the case. Try running your venue without your current system or imagine running your venue for even one day without your current system as bad as it may be right now. How difficult would that be…
I cannot emphasise enough that “mates doing IT” actually aren’t doing you a favour. You’re doing yourself and your business a disservice by taking advantage of this saving of a few hundred or a couple of thousand dollars.
Will your mate who does IT, do this?
- Supply the initial hardware at a fair cost
- Install the hardware at a time convenient to all parties
- Configure the hardware as per software companies requirements
- Warrant the hardware for a minimum of 12 months
- Complete swap-outs of the hardware should anything go wrong with the hardware (you will need immediate replacements as your operation cannot wait for manufacturers service departments to fix and replace) therefore your mate will need access to backup printers, PCs or the like.
- Generally must be on call 24/7 for the hardware environment in case of any network hiccups or hardware lock ups that occur that you will call bossii about and we then determine that this is a hardware related issue that needs to be addressed by your hardware vendor.
- And lastly be able to work with the software company on setting up the network to be both available to trusted devices and unavailable to non-trusted devices and set it up so that the operation of the software is completed as per software company requirements.
If they can’t subscribe to all of this then don’t kid yourself. Don’t do it.
I tell people the analogy between the software company and the hardware vendor is like this. As software vendors we are the brain surgeon and the hardware vendor is the heart surgeon. The brain tells the arms, the legs and the body to do things but with a dodgy heart or heart with clogged arteries how can it all happen?
If you want Dr Riviera (love my Simpsons characters) or “your mate who knows IT” to give you a new heart or to operate on your heart then don’t be surprised when the brain and body stop operating as they should.
That’s my feelings – may not be popular but I will be sending potential clients to this post and if you choose to go down the path of your “mate that does IT” then don’t say you weren’t warned.
Call 1300 805511 or email email@bossii.com
