Best practices in POS environments

[jcasetnl]

I was wondering if anyone could point me to a list of best practices for POS environments. Reliability is something I'm constantly trying to improve at our retail locations but of coure, money, time and availability are all limiting factors in the POS equation.

 

[thomsonian]

When your running a POS system you want to make sure that the layout of the System is very easy to use, as both a employee trainer and POS admin i can assure you that employees will do everything and anything,

Also make sure that you backup your systems as often as possable.

Security on your system is also a big deal, if you own a small buissness where your transaction totals are small, then you may want to set a tender limit of around $50 and allow more Sr. Employees to overide the limit, also you want to restrict system functions to the system admins only.

Remember that POS systems are speciffically designed to be lite admin'd meaning that they will almost run themselves from a IT standpoint so all you can do is make sure that your systems easy and simple to use and Rule # 1: ALWAYS HAVE BACKUPS

hope this helps

 

[pmegan]

When you're designing touchscreens make sure they flow together well. Buttons that are common to multiple screens should be in the same place on all those screens. Grouping like items together with the same color buttons is another idea. Anything that keeps the users from having to search for the buttons they need.

 

[Shift4SMS]

We recently sponsored a security summit. Here is a link to some of the hand-out and presentation of that summit.

http://www.shift4.com/summit_presentations.cfm

Most of the info has a focus on security (obviously) and how it relates to payment processing, but I think it applies to what you are asking.

Steve Sommers
Shift4 Corporation --

http://www.shift4.com

Creators of $$$ ON THE NET(tm) payment processing services

 

[AkamaiAloha]

I am not sure exactly what you're looking for, or how much retail environments differ from food service, but bad or flakey power has caused us the most head aches over the years... bar none. In the food service industry, we're surrounded by large compressors that like to kick on and off and wreak havoc on the circuits. Blown computers/touch screens, strange anamolies, intermittent problems, you name it... We put power conditioners at every station, no if's, ands, or buts... they accomodate the monitor, printer, and workstation. They are small, but effective. Then a big UPS on the back office.

Ever since we demanded this be attached to devices we sell (minus the Epson kitchen printers... probably not a bad idea to protect those too, but we don't see problems with them), our failure rate of new equipment and strange problems has dimished significantly. Don't be fooled into thinking a "dedicated circuit" (i.e. organge outlet) is enough. I've seen problems with these too, whether it was a botched job or they aren't as effective as people think, I don't know. Find a good brand, like SmartPower, and stick with it.