What are the best practices for scaling your POS system as your business grows?

Not all cloud based POS vendors are created equally. Many tie you to long term, high discount, credit card authorization and settlement programs. Be sure validate not only the fees but when and if the fees change in the scope of the contact. Privacy and the ability for the customer to opt out of any tracking is equally important. Many POS vendors collect customer personal information, shopping habits, purchase history and other detail to sell to marketing companies. Privacy is also a hot topic for employees as well. GDPR and PCI compliance should be carefully evaluated in addition software patches / upgrades.

Cloud infrastructure is certainly a great way to scale automatically, including for POS systems. However, the reality is more complex. I see two main challenges related to the scalability of cloud-based POS systems. First, there's the issue of pricing. Using the cloud incurs significant operational costs. As infrastructure scales automatically, so do these costs. This makes it difficult for companies to plan their expenses effectively. Second, there's the problem of offline capabilities. Retailers who operate in a hybrid mode, with some infrastructure installed in-store to maintain offline functionality, will also need to scale this offline infrastructure. This diminishes the benefits of the cloud.

Many POS vendors want to keep your business within their product suite which is fine if your business can utilize their suite of products fully and the cost of the additional modules makes good business sense. In those times where the vendors suite of products don't make sense or are not cost effective the option to integrate with 3rd parties is the only other option. Be sure to evaluate the POS vendors ability to integrate with other systems. How the integrations are done is very important. REST, SOAP, XML files, JSON files are great buzzwords but are not the simplest tools available for smaller businesses to leverage. You may find the cost to integrate is more expensive than it would be to staywithin the existing suite offerings.

Scaling a POS system is unrelated to integration topics. Integrations are necessary to synchronize data and processes within retail operations. When infrastructure grows, the data exchange and process integration remain consistent. If a retailer changes processes due to scaling, it complicates growth significantly.

Training is the most often overlooked part of any new system deployment. When the system being deployed controls the business operations and fiscal responsibilities training should be the #1 element in the deployment strategy. However, people like to focus on where the button is located versus what the button does. Training often becomes burried under many other things. Keep in mind once the vendor has accomplished their goals in deployment they will soon leave. That is not when you want to start to worry about training. The best way to take training on is to integrate your staff in to the deployment process. Training should be a byproduct of you and your staffs involvement.

Monitoring the performance of the POS system is secondary to how well the POS is monitoring your business. Don't worry about how much RAM is in use or the CPU Utilization. Make sure your POS has been set up to monitor your business. The business processea for everything from how cash is handled to how many voids were done. To aligning the voids to cash transactions to find how and who is hurting your business.

The biggest issue I see is having a POS system that supports scaling in multiple directions. One direction is scaling as the company grows, which results in more transactions and increased infrastructure demands. The second direction involves adapting to new retail concepts that retailers implement to grow their business. Ideally, the same POS system should be used across all retail concepts. The POS architecture and functionalities should support this. Adding another POS application to meet the requirements of new retail concepts would only increase complexity and costs.