The world continues to become increasingly online-oriented but there will always be a place for traditional brick and mortar stores. Each one of these stores needs a Point of Sale (POS) solution, and we are positioned to provide these POSs in the most cost effective and feature rich way possible for our clients.
The catalyst for doing so is that often the outdated solutions that clients have are an impediment to our capacity to sell their products online in an effective way. As a result, providing our clients with POS solutions helps grow our relationships with our clients as well as enables us to provide better e-commerce solutions to them in the future.
An extension of our expertise
It may seem a pivot away from website design but developing and maintaining POSs is actually highly complementary to our core business. This is because the majority of POSs are built on web standards while the databases that power them are also the same as what websites use. Indeed for redundancy and maintaining concurrent information across 2 or more POSs, or systems between stores, most POSs have a backend that is either offsite or onsite in a fashion near identical to the deployment of a website.
In addition, we maintain commerce websites, that have inventory management as well as complex customisation options and payment integration with banks. This means that we already add products and maintain product inventories on a day to day basis.
But of course, there is also the hardware aspect of a POS system but again, we build and maintain hosting infrastructure with 100% uptime 365 days a year. While our business’s heritage is one of computer hardware, building systems and maintain them. Indeed, to this day, one of our network solutions powers a network of over 60 desktop computers in addition to laptops and BYO devices across a footprint of a dozen buildings. This is to say that we have and continue to build complex hardware systems that are designed to have the highest degree of reliability possible.
A different revenue model
We use our expertise and knowledge from website development to source and subsequently, leverage open source software and systems to provide our clients with POS systems that are built on freely available software that is maintained and updated by a community of 1000s of developers and POS operators. This means no upfront or ongoing software costs despite receiving ongoing security, bug and functionality updates.
Now the other aspect of this is that our revenue model for deploying and maintaining POS systems is not tied to software licencing costs, but instead, revenue is generated by setting up and then providing ongoing assistance when and if required. It’s not our core business, and we are not burdened with maintaining the underlying software ourselves.
Businesses that sell in-house POS systems can be categorised into two groups, those who have simply rebranded an open source system or those who have actually developed their own POS software. In both groups, their intent is to sustain their businesses through a revenue model that is built open ongoing licencing fees and support costs. This is simply not the case for us, and our use of an open source suite of software mean that clients are able to freely move to a different provider for their ongoing support needs.
Industry insights
We test our systems and refer constantly to people with experience in using POS systems in the hospitality space to drive refinement of our deployments to the specific needs of each of our client’s businesses. This means we are always looking to bring the products and features needed most to the front of the system, making the day to day tasks and orders need as few clicks as possible.
A quick tour of our POS solution’s interface
Note that this particular interface is optimised for hospitality environments with other interfaces available for other industries.
This is a very flexible POS but here are just some of its excellent features. I would recommend viewing this in fullscreen mode, which can be done by clicking the small icon on the bottom right of the slideshow’s interface.
Our solution’s hardware
There are a variety of different combinations of hardware that we can deploy based on the preferences and needs of each client. However, the two simplest variations is an internet based solution and a local network solution.
In almost all variations of our hardware solutions, we elect to deploy a networked based solution. This enables the greatest level of scalability as well as flexibility in terms of where the hardware is physically positioned.
From a practical perspective, a store will have a network hub from which the local hardware connects to the internet to communicate with the master POS software. The POS system does not require a constant internet connection but instead prefers it as it creates redundancy/backups of inventory and sales, as well as keeps this information in sync between online ordering and other stores.
This same deployment method also enables tablets and other mobile devices to be used as POS systems wirelessly either at a customer’s table or offsite for example. This means that at peak times or events, additional POS systems can be deployed without needing to duplicate hardware, as these wireless POS systems are able to use the same receipt and kitchen order printers as the existing POS without any confirmation beyond authentication.
End to End Managment
We provide our clients with a variety of technologically oriented services and products, and POS systems are simply an extension of this. Indeed, we even provide one client with logistics advice and negotiate pricing on their behalf, reducing shipment costs significantly. This kind of deep vertical integration creates significant synergy and realises significant efficiencies.
In the context of POS systems, we have the capacity to integrate the POS system directly with online inventory and ordering systems. This creates the capacity for food outlets to have orders from their website sent directly to the kitchen. In contrast, external ordering services like Menulog have no capacity to do this in an automated fashion, instead requiring manual confirmation of orders.
24/7 Ongoing Support
As any client of AIC Technologies will tell you, we stand by our work and will work day and night (literally) to fix any problem. We also make ourselves available for phone calls well after the close of business because we understand that our clients are often focussed on the day to day of their business during normal business hours. We are also extremely proactive in our support, and will fix problems normally before a client is even aware that they are present.
We are genuinely committed to providing the highest level of support possible.
Closing thoughts
A POS is a mission critical aspect of your business and it’s also a key pillar to providing a great customer experience. In addition, a POS is also about saving staff time, freeing them up to perform other duties. Our POS solutions are designed to streamline the most common orders and tasks that staff complete on POS systems; at the same time as giving them the flexibility they need to meet the individual needs of customers.
Get in touch today to find out about the solution we can create for your business, either with fresh hardware or existing hardware, and free yourself from ongoing licence costs at the same time as getting a greater feature set, and superior ongoing support.
