Point-of-sale (POS) hardware is essential to any customer-facing business, providing the fundamental means by which you can ‘do business’ (as in, process sales) at all. It’s also a significant investment, and one that has a big influence both on how you operate and the quality of the experience your customers receive.
Average annual costs for a small business POS system range from anywhere between £1,000 to £3,000+, and keep on rising the more end points you add. This alone makes it critical to spend your money wisely when choosing a POS solution. Make the wrong choice, and it could easily end up costing you even more money in repair bills, paying for early replacements etc.
Here are our four tips for avoiding POS pain and making sure you get the maximum returns possible for your investment.
1. Assess Your Business Needs
Before making a purchase, it’s essential that you carefully evaluate your business’s specific requirements so you can choose a POS solution that will deliver for you. Factors to consider include:
- Transaction volume: How many transactions do you expect to process daily? How many endpoints will you need to meet that? Do individual terminals offer enough processing power? Can you meet peak demand comfortably?
- Scalability: How do you expect your business to grow in the future? Can the system adapt to accommodate this?
- Available space: How does the size of your premises impact the number of POS endpoints you can have? How does that relate to your capacity requirements?
- Staff training: How easy is the hardware to use for your employees?
2. Choose the Right Hardware
Once you’ve identified your business needs, you’re in a position to choose hardware to meet them. Some of the main options include:
- POS terminals: Terminals are the primary devices used to create ‘checkout’ points in retail. Size and space to deploy them are key factors to consider.
- Self-service kiosks: Kiosks provide an increasingly popular alternative to traditional checkout terminals. They are popular with customers, they free up staff, they take up less space than standard terminals and, when used effectively, can reduce wait times and increase the throughput of transactions.
- Mobile POS: POS terminals in tablet form are another great space-saving option. They also help to make service more flexible, allowing you to process transactions anywhere you like. And they can be used as a back up to scale up POS options at times of peak demand.
- Peripheral devices: On top of the main endpoint options, it’s also important to consider any peripherals that will help to meet your business needs. The most common examples include card readers (essential for all businesses these days), cash drawers and barcode scanners.
3. Prioritise Durability and Reliability
POS comes with ongoing running costs as well as upfront investment. One of the biggest obstacles to strong ROI is high maintenance and repair bills, which can very quickly eat away at any positive returns you get from the initial investment. To avoid this, look for equipment that is:
- Robustly built: POS hardware has to endure heavy use and is at risk from day-to-day knocks, spillages etc. Look for equipment that is made from durable materials that can stand up to daily use.
- Proven reliability: Check out the testing specifications to see how long a device is certified to operate for, and under what conditions.
- Comprehensive warranties: Long-term warranties provide protection in case something does go wrong.
4. Optimise Hardware Management:
Finally, even the most durable and robust POS endpoints need a little TLC to keep them running at their best for as long as possible. The better you look after them and the longer they perform at their maximum, the better your ROI will be. The key to this lies in:
- Regular maintenance: Being proactive about maintenance and not just responding to problems will help prevent faults and prolong equipment life.
- Strong security: These days, cybercrime poses as big a threat to digital equipment as physical damage. Protect your system by implementing appropriate anti-malware software, strong access control, firewalls, and keeping software up to date.
- Training and support: Familiarity and expertise using POS systems not only makes a big difference to how efficiently it’s used, it also helps to avoid misuse that could shorten its life.
Performance monitoring: Tracking system performance not only flags up potential issues to look into before they escalate, it also gives you insights into where you can improve POS performance for even better returns.