Great post Daniel.
I am also in the restaurant and bar industry, as a vested partner, not a vendor, to owner operators like yourself, with our placement Harbortouch POS HSaaS (hardware and software as a service) program. We started this program in 2011 and continue to help merchants grow their businesses with scalable, customizable, reliable and flat fixed cost of ownership POS programs for all merchant sizes.
I agree with you as restaurants are an industry that are better off buying a POS system, versus custom building, or even better, getting a customized POS solution from FreePosPros.com and our Harbortouch placement program. Cracker Barrel came to my mind too, as they are a different breed requiring a retail and hospitality POS program. I can program our POS systems for bars and restaurants to do retail on our Harbortouch Elite III Hospitality POS. This is ok, if we keep the retail item categories to around 100 total. For merchants that require more than 100 retail items, we would use our Echo POS, but this would not allow more than 1 remote printer. So, we have to really drill down to each merchant’s needs, and see exactly how much they really need, and what they can do without. This is where the 80% "coverage" decision making criteria comes in: "if the packaged solution does not meet 80% of the known needs it is unwise, as is the case where the known needs represent less than 80% of the package capabilities" (Ledeen, Make v. Buy). Therefore, we have 2 POS program placement options for the different need scenarios, and ultimately let the merchant decide with 30-60-day trial programs to see which system is the best fit.
Additionally, I agree with you hat a lot of the "big name" POS programs and systems are pieces of “work”, as a lot of off-the-shelf POS systems are built to fail or break, as this is how the vendor/dealers earn their income. When merchants call my company on Xmas or New Year's Eve, they do not have to worry about a technician/support fee bill or paying for an overnight equipment swap. This is included in our program for less than $2.90 a day for each Elite III POS bundle. As a vested partner of the merchant, we have an incentive to keep their business POS systems running 24/7/365. By not worrying about SHA1-2 upgrades, software updates, broken screens, cash drawers and printers, business owners can concentrate on growing their businesses and relying on my company FreePOSpros.com and Harbortouch to be their "silent" partner, for less than a cup of coffee per day.
When I think of a customized solution, I think the Aerospace design industry, like, McDonnel-Douglas, Boeing or Airbus, which does not have an COTS (commercial off the shelf system), like word processing. These industry giants have the monies to have customized packages that can drill down to cost per minute to build F-18s or Airbus A380s. Other examples of customized POS solutions like McDonalds and Taco Bell, where they can drill down to how many ketchup packets and ranch dressing ramekins were sold or estimated to been given away (I have many merchants that ask for this capability: I use the 80% rule from our reading).
Again, great post, and a great start to the class, as I will be able to use my POS experiences and programming challenges to write more articles for this class and for my merchants across the USA, Alaska, and Hawaii.
Thank you,
Keith Ragan
1-888-834-2561 Ext.101
