Is Your Credit Card Company the Best Place to Buy Your POS?

A high quality point of sale system can help you effectively and efficiently run your small business by enabling you to easily process orders, manage inventory, track customer buying habits, and even run reports on your business performance.  It can serve as a critical component to your business and will allow you to do more, with less.

Equally as important as selecting the right POS system, is who you purchase it from.  You can procure a system from your credit card company but you may find that route somewhat cumbersome and impersonal.  While they may offer what seems like attractive financing, you will likely find a number of hidden fees once you dig a little further.

A far better option for your needs is to purchase or lease your POS from a company who specializes solely in installing and customizing point of sale hardware and software for small businesses and retail stores.  These firms know precisely what you need, their solutions are far more affordable and you are not locked into lengthy contracts.

Purchasing a POS from a Credit Card Company

Here is a look at some of the advantages and disadvantages of purchasing your POS equipment from a credit card company:

Pros:

• They tend to offer affordable and flexible leasing options for cash constrained businesses or those with poor credit.
• They do not charge for POS hardware or software support.

 Cons:

• You are typically locked into that processor for 3-5 years.
• They offer no onsite service.
• They offer remedial, poor set up, programming and go-live support.
• You are dealing with a behemoth company and will likely struggle to get a human on the phone when you have a question or issue.
• Once the contract is up you will still incur high software and merchant service fees.
• You will likely be assessed a 10% buyout charge at the end of the term.
• You are locked into their proprietary solution and have minimal options for customization in order to meet your specific business needs.
• The system is complex and takes time to learn and successfully operate.

Purchasing a POS from a Small Business POS Specialist

Pros:

• You pay month to month and are not locked into any long term contracts.
• They offer timely onsite service.
• They completely set up and program the POS terminal and software for you.
• You always deal with a human voice when you need support, rather than an impersonal automated voice system.
• There is no buyout charge.
• They offer non-proprietary POS terminals and you have a number of point of sales software solutions to choose from.
• Your highly intuitive POS touchscreen is easy to learn and simple to operate.

 Cons:

• They do not have the same name recognition as the behemoth credit card companies.
• They charge a small fee for POS support.

 It is important to keep these stark differences in mind when shopping for your POS system.  If you would like help in picking the very best POS solution for your needs, please visit www.htg-solutions.com.

Choosing the Correct Loyalty & Customer Engagement System

As a restaurant or retail business, employing a customer loyalty and engagement system can be the difference between business growth and business stagnancy.  These POS-integrated applications help you establish and maintain customer relationships, personalize the customer experience and increase sales revenue.

When choosing one of these systems, it is important to first seek answers to a few questions, such as:

1.    Can I integrate the software with my POS system for optimum customer service and marketing performance?

You want to be sure the software can easily integrate with your new or existing POS system so you can track and analyze all customer data in one place.

2.    Can I easily capture/track customer purchase history and buying preferences?

One of the major advantages of a customer loyalty and engagement system is its ability to “learn” about the customer.  The right systems enable you to automatically track order/purchase history (date, items, cost, etc.) and also capture and store customer preference data (I hate hamburgers or my favorite shirt color is forest green).  These capabilities enable you to personalize and significantly enhance the customer experience.

This is far more effective than the usual blanket offers or reward coupons. You can give rewards to people who will actually want and use them. For instance, Jim comes in to my restaurant and always orders a beer and an appetizer. This system allows you to send specialized beer offers to Jim.

 3.   What capabilities enable me to track my return on investment?

Your customer loyalty and engagement system should allow you to easily and accurately track sales revenue, number of repeat customers, offer redemption rates, order size progression and so on.

4.    Does the system include customer relationship management integration and/or capabilities?

A customer relationship management solution is an intelligent master database that lets you track anything and everything related to your customers and often provides the functionality to communicate directly with them.  You want to be sure your new customer loyalty and engagement system includes many of these CRM-type features so you can open and maintain a dialog with your customers that offers them discounts and specials and keeps them loyalty to your business.

5.    Does the solution offer an integrated POS/desktop and mobile application?

You want to be sure you can manage your customer relationships through an on-screen dashboard from your desktop or POS terminal.  You also want your customers to be able to connect with you through their mobile phone for on-the-go convenience.

6.   Can the software automatically reward my loyal customers to help me keep them for years to come?

Your repeat customers are the Holy Grail of your business and you want to reward them for their loyalty to ensure that they keeping coming back.  You need customer loyalty and engagement software that tracks repeat customer data for you and automatically sends rewards and special offers to your customers, so you don’t have to.  This helps you keep your most loyal customers close and not forgotten, especially when you become bogged down with other things.

 7.   Am I able to more easily and successfully engage new customers?

Generating new business is paramount to the success of your business, and unfortunately, we all know this can be the most difficult aspect of any business. You want a new system that will help you identify and bring in new customers by reaching them through e-marketing, with new offers based on the personal preference data they entered into their mobile app, for example.

For more information about our loyalty programs feel free to call 1-888-932-4369 or vist www.htg-solutions.com

Streamlining Your Small Business with Point of Sale Systems

Small to medium sized retailers and restaurants today must operate as efficiently and effectively as possible to attract and retain customers.  Today’s successful business owners rely on innovative and easy to use point of sale systems (touch screen terminals) to maintain complete control over their business.  These restaurant POS systems and retail POS systems can help any business perform the following functions from a single terminal:

• Manage inventory and customers
• Process and track orders
• Run instant performance reports

The result is a more productive and successful operation, which translates into:

1. More customers
2. Higher revenue
3. Happier patrons
4. Lower operating costs
5. More productive staff
6. More informed decision making about running your business

What is Point of Sale (POS) Software?

Point of sale (POS) software or checkout is the place where a transaction occurs in exchange for goods or services. The point of sale (POS) often refers to the physical electronic cash register or dedicated POS hardware used for checkout, but the POS is simply the location where the sale is conducted, money changes hands and a receipt is given, which can also occur on a smartphone, tablet, laptop, or mobile POS device when the right hardware and POS software is combined with the mobile device.

What is Cloud Integrated Point of Sale Software?

A cloud integrated point of sale (POS) system is accessed from the Internet and is usually compatible with most POS hardware (cash drawers, printers, etc.) Cloud integrated POS systems are less expensive because you can use a laptop, smartphone, iPad and have them up and running in a matter of minutes.  They’re convenient because merchants can access their data from anywhere with an Internet connection. This is not only convenient if you’re a small business who sells in a brick and mortar store but it can used at a farmer’s market, trade show, food truck – anywhere you have an internet connection or cell phone service with web service.

Why use Point of Sale (POS) Software?

According to Intuit market research, “by using an affordable, integrated POS system, an independent retailer with revenue of $300,000 can cut costs by close to 10 percent, saving an average $30,000 a year.”

The days of running your small to medium sized business with analog cash registers and Excel spreadsheets are gone.  Today’s era empowers you and your business with easy to learn, use and maintain point of sale systems that help you operate faster and more profitably.

You will turn complex transactions (such as order processing, financial performance tracking, etc.) into simple screen touches.  You can better manage your inventory through automated alerts that remind you when it’s time to replenish supplies.

HTG offers both retail POS software and restaurant POS software to help you more effectively, efficiently and profitably run your business. Our reliable software solutions are intuitive, easy to learn and simple to operate.  Whether you use one of our terminals or run our software on your own, we can show you how to improve performance and reduce your cost of ownership.

Retail POS Software

Retailcloud provides retailers with a way to increase sales, better manage inventory, provide relevant information to customers, all of which improve profits. This cloud-integrated solution ensures your data is always accessible, backed-up and updated to the latest version. To see retailcloud in action click on the video below.

Restaurant POS Software

Dinerware is easy-to-use point-of-sale software that delivers all of the benefits of modern technology and lowers your cost of ownership. Restaurants are complex businesses. Finding ways to manage costs can be difficult and expensive.  Dinerware is your solution. It’s an easy to use, yet powerful POS system.  Developed to be affordable for restaurants of all sizes,  Dinerware helps manage your business effectively and increase your profit.  For more information visit www.htg-solutions.com.

Time for that Point-of-Sale Upgrade?

The sales reps are telling you that you need to. The magazines that generate revenue from related product ads are telling you to. But your 10 year old POS seems to work fine. You and your staff love that old POS system. So it should be good for another ten years, right? Whether we like it or not, technology comes with a lifespan that is a good bit shorter than you want and manage your restaurant business to be. Here are some of the determinants you want to consider for upgrading, or not:

• The POS system goes down more often – causing operational delays, increased hardware replacement and labor costs to bring the system back online

• The hardware and operating system is no longer supported by the manufacturer (i.e. the POS software is running on the Windows 95 or 2000 platform)

• While your hardware may be in good condition, it is not powerful enough to run the newer software. This also means that the older hardware is not going to perform as well as newer hardware, in terms of speed and up-time, or availability.

• Features from the latest point-of-sale technology are not available for your older system, which could mean you are missing out on additional efficiency and automation techniques. For example, the laborious effort it takes to program a menu or make regular configuration changes to the system, as well as training new staff. Beware! – There can even be supposed “new” technology that is still using old database and computing models – essentially putting a 2010 sticker on a 1990 POS system model.

• A critical concern about older systems is credit card transaction and personal data security if you are running credit cards through the pos. As of June 2010, your older system could be violating the PCI DSS Compliance standards. .

These are some primary considerations when determining when to replace that outdated point-of-sale system. Of course you always want to consider the ROI on replacing the old pos as well. Knowing how much the old system costs you over time, including warranty and support costs, average losses, accounting time (labor) costs, etc. ROI elements of a new pos system, some of which are reflected from the considerations:

• Durability and extended warranty of hardware
• Reliability of software, as well as money saved from a critical software update program
• Less time managing the system
• Less down time
• Lower risks of loss and theft
• New or advanced abilities to extend the system with 3^rd party software for accounting, automation, food costing, inventory, marketing, etc.

Upgrading POS for Credit Card Security Requirements

The issue of keeping consumer’s credit card information secure and private is now a main driver of upgrading outdated point of sale hardware & software.

According to Visa on their website, “Acquirers”, or payment processors, should ensure that your customer transactions are compliant. There is the need to makes sure your technology products and live configurations pass compliance requirements as well. However, this is only part of the standard process. The restaurant owner or merchant has the main responsibility in making sure that the elements for PCI DSS compliance are understood, implemented and followed at his or her establishment.

The best way to get started is to visit the PCI Security Standards Council About page on their website

You can also visit the CISP, or Cardholder Information Security Program page at Visa’s website.

Once you have learn what is required to protect your customers’ credit card information, work with your payment processor and technology provider to check and resolve any outstanding issues.

Welcome to the HTG Café Blog

In line with our recent launch of our new online presence, we want to start with a brief article on what we hope this hospitality blog will provide for readers and, more importantly, what you, the reader, would like to see, hear and discuss.  So what would like to know about, or discuss more when it comes to hospitality technology? We have some ideas and we’ll be putting them out here. However, we want to hear from you in regards to relevant topics and discussions on the challenges you are having. We’ll hold active discussions on our Facebook page.

We are first and foremost about how technology can, as Jim Collins states, be a “catalyst” in moving your hospitality business forward towards greatness; great restaurant and hotel operations, great customer service and resulting loyalty, great returns on your investment.  So whether you are just starting out with your first location, or operating a multi-location restaurant or hotel chain, your technology only can help in relation to how it is being used to further your current operations and processes. Yes, it can greatly improve efficiencies in operations, resulting in lowering costs, as well as increasing revenue – but the efficiencies of actual operations themselves matter much more at times – especially when considering the implementation of new or updated technology.

Our guidelines for approaching an overall hospitality technology strategy:

POS at the core – it is where the day-to-day operations get managed, and data from it can clue you in to where the challenges lie – all of the other technology segments, with the exception of bringing new customers in through an effective online marketing strategy/implementation, hotel reservation management (and maybe a few others) directly relate to the Point of Sale.

Operational Security- keeping your risk at a minimum with security plan and can include configuring employees’ roles and jobs in the point of sale system, a video surveillance system  and, or a video surveillance system that integrates with the POS to record transactions

Credit Card Transaction Data Security – while most of your customers do not pay close enough attention, you still must ensure that their credit card data is secure. PCI Compliance may seem like a big hassle, but it is one of those necessary pains to not only limit risk to your customers, but risk to your hospitality business as well. It is now a critical demand from Visa and the credit card industry as of June 2010.

Customer information tracking: for loyalty and marketing to bring in new customers – knowing what they ordered and when, how many times they came in; adding the personal touch with special offers and information; optimizing your menu to offer the hits and remove the misses.

Integration and Automation of POS data to other critical operations, such as accounting, payroll, food costing and inventory control can greatly reduce the time spent managing this information. Whether solely owning your business, or overseeing franchisees/managing partners, this can be most important when managing multiple locations and, or concepts for centralized data organization and management. Integration and automation allows you to start building business intelligence data for strategic and tactical decisions that help your hospitality business to succeed.

HTG will be discussing these topics in future articles, so stay tuned.

So what is your overall strategic and tactical approach? Feel free to comment here or on our Facebook page.