Low Cost Point of Sale Systems and Software


by Edward Duval - Date: 2006-12-11 - Word Count: 502 Share This!

Now the last thing I want is for this be a shameless promotion of the software we develop. But my position gives me a unique insight in the business models followed by different software companies. We produce a no cost point of sale software package and can testify that the free and low cost software model is a viable enterprise. Instead of focusing on selling the product and slowly building a user base and then relying on selling upgrades to continue the momentum we're finding that charging a steady monthly fee for support and updates actually reduces customer cost and increases the quality of service we can provide.

Look at the commercial viability of Linux and you understand what's going on. Free software is free to use, but if you need help (and everybody does) then support plans are available from industry experts for a monthly or single incident fee. By sending software out into the world you capture a large audience and can quickly establish a presence on the market.

Point of Sale systems can be especially expensive for small businesses and most resellers offer so many options that it can be easy to get lost. You not only have software to consider by the wide range of hardware available. We focused our products on two vertical markets; Computer Service & Retail Point of Sales and Restaurant Point of Sales. Both businesses can be very expensive to setup and maintain. Saving costs and increasing profits is vital and many software companies position themselves to provide Point of Sale Software that forces you into expensive service agreements and fees. Often times this goes beyond the reasonable fees assumed for support. A small business should not have to pay for an entire support division just for their point of sale software.

Business managers need to look at the lifetime cost of the Point of Sale Systems. Is the hardware efficient or overpriced and way too powerful for the task? Is the software streamlined for my vertical market? Will it increase costs and lower expenses? Will it provide statistical sales data that can be imported into accounting packages? What is the true cost and savings of the system? What kind of support is available and is it priced reasonably? If you can answer those questions and feel satisfied with the answers then you've found the right system for you.

So the price of the software is only a concern for those tight on budget for getting started. The real cost is in the efficiency of the software and the support network it provides. Take time and evaluate several of the tools available on the market for your point of sales system. Learn what makes each one special and has the features that most closely match your business. Find out what kind of support you get and decide if email only is really support. If every business took the time to evaluate their point of sale software and the true cost then we'd find a lot of companies changing software.


Related Tags: restaurant software, handheld point of sale, pos, point of sale software

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