When it comes to PCI DSS compliance, it can be a daunting task to keep your business in line with ever-changing compliance standards.

That does not excuse you from attempting to be as compliant as possible. One of the most-overlooked steps in compliance is the physical access requirements set by the PCI DSS documentation. Below, we’ll outline a few tips to secure physical access and get you on the path to protecting yourself from breaches.

The first place to begin securing data is the office in which the computer that processes and stores credit card data resides. Make sure that the space you have selected for your office area includes a lockable door. Ideally, a keypad or card swipe would be used to access this door, but it must be kept locked at all times. Keep in mind that compliance standards are not completely arbitrary, but are, rather, designed to keep data secure and to track those who do have access to this data. In addition to a lockable door and an access method which, in a perfect world, would log the individuals who access the office space by name and time of entry.

To further secure the data and track users who have access to the credit card-centric computer, it is recommended that security cameras be installed and trained on this computer to record every user who accesses the computer. Essentially, should there be a breach of your credit card data, you must be able to provide information regarding who has accessed the computer and when the individual accessed the information. Obviously, having a camera surveillance system represents several uses, but, should you have an existing system, ensure that at least one of those cameras has an unobstructed view of the office. Additionally, should no camera system exist currently, it may be worth your while to explore the purchase of such a system with an eye towards PCI compliance standards.

Outside the office, any computer networked with the credit card machine should likewise be secured. There are software-related security measures to consider, but, as we are just discussing physical setup requirements, we’ll leave those for another day. The terminals or computers networked with the credit card machine must have limited access, just like the office itself. USB ports should be disabled, preventing a potential data thief from inserting malware of spying software through these access points. Also, the network connections themselves must be secured. The network cable which runs from the terminal or computer to the network hub or switch has to be protected. Many use a box with a lock to cover plates with network connections, and seal the terminal connection so that it may not be easily removed. Regardless, the exposed network port provides a way for a potential thief to connect to the network and steal data straight from the credit card-processing pc.


PCI compliance is a complicated and ever-changing goal, but by examining the physical layout of your business, and thinking, for a moment, like someone who wants to steal your data, you can pinpoint areas of potential thievery quickly. By examining your business with an idea of limiting and tracking those who have access to your network and secure data, you can avoid many of the common PCI pitfalls.

We live, now, in post-PCI compliance world.

If you are unfamiliar with what PCI compliance is and how it affects your business, please refer to the current requirements and basic information on information security here: www.pcisecuritystandards.org. For far too many, compliance and information security is an afterthought to the purchase of a point-of-sale system. By the time the issue becomes critical, it may well be because of a breach to information that was assumed to be secure. To begin the march to PCI compliance, here are a few tips for your first steps.

The first step, naturally, is to familiarize yourself with the aspects of PCI compliance and understand what it means for your business. At its heart, PCI compliance is the set of security standards and practices that you must provide to ensure your credit card data is stored and transacted securely. Because the magnetic strip on the backs of most credit and debit cards is not encrypted, the credit companies have placed the onus of responsibility for protecting that unencrypted data on the business owner. The PCI Security website offers further information on the required steps here: https://www.pcisecuritystandards.org/security_standards/index.php. Many of the required steps must be undertaken by the individual in charge of operations, simple things like the access of personnel to the room in which the credit card-processing computer is located, or the changing of a password on the computer, but many involve initial set-up.

First of all, ensure that the Point-of-Sale system you are purchasing has been approved for compliance, as well as any additional software used by technicians to remotely access your location, and/or credit card software is likewise approved. Beyond making sure that the software you purchase is on the approved list, you must also take care that the operating system used by your equipment is supported. Anything prior to Windows XP is no longer supported, and XP itself is only scheduled for acceptance for the next couple of years.


Illegal access and obtaining of credit card and personal data is on the downswing currently, with retail showing higher numbers in that regard. By familiarizing yourself with the PCI-DSS standards and asking some tough question of your software and hardware vendors, you can begin the journey to compliance with confidence.

There has never been a time when customers had more choice at their fingertips in regards to their purchasing decisions.

Retailers are competing with online outlets, and the internet-based sales giants are gaining more market share all the time. It’s up to the business owner to find those tools which will allow your business to not only retain its current customer base, but to continue to grow in this changing landscape.

The existence of a web presence is now crucial to success. A web site is important, but the manner in which a customer interacts with that web site is equally important, if not more so. In addition to simple applications, such as providing directions and hours of operation, incorporating sales tools through the site matches the larger sites, like Amazon, on its own terms. Obviously no single retailer is going to have the inventory of a big box site, but size does not mean that your business cannot provide the same service. By allowing inventory integration and purchasing via the website, customers can enjoy the benefits of online ordering while driving further business to your brick-and-mortar location through service and convenience. As should be clear, consult your technology partners to manage a secure payment portal and design for such an enterprise. Interacting with customers via Facebook and Twitter is also important, providing real-time feedback and alerting owners of potential service or inventory issues.

Aside from basic sales and inventory management, as well as social presence, the addition of a third-party program, such as Loyalty Lane, allows a retailer to further interact with customers, but in a manner tailored specifically to that customer or group of customers. By using a customer number or card, every sale made to the customer may be tracked, allowing you, the business owner, to predict future behavior. If you want to know what a customer will buy, look at what they have bought in the past. You can then use this information to target customers based on their buying habits, sending mailers or emails that cater to brands or types of products they are likely to purchase in the future. This creates a sense of community between customers and your business, creating a buying experience that is unique to them. This same tool can be used for loyalty programs which provide discounts to customers based on their purchases, which provides incentive to purchase even more. Feature-rich reporting will allow you to determine your best customers, providing even greater marketing tools and rewarding those customers who spend the most in your store.

There are any number of tools available to foster communication and loyalty with customers in an age when the trend suggests more potential customers moving to the web. Yes, that does represent competition, but it also represents an opportunity to increase customer purchases with the use of relatively simple technological tools. As with everything technology-related, ask your technology partners how you can make the move to the web and open up a new space for your sales!

Every business owner must not only please existing customers, but generate new business to sustain for the long-term.

To do so, one must anticipate the needs of emerging customer bases and appeal to those new customers in a manner that is familiar and enticing. With the emergence of the Millennial Generation, or Generation Y, businesses are presented with a new set of challenges to court this market. Generally considered to be defined as anyone born between 1980 and 2000, or roughly 18-34-year-olds, depending on the source. 60 Minutes suggests that there may be as many as 80 million Millennial consumers now, a broad customer base to tap into if ever there was one. We’ll first look at the habits of these potential customers, then discuss the various tools you may employ to bring their dollars to your business.

Due to the prevalence in technology in the lives of members of this generation, Millennials exhibit traits that their parents’ generation does not. In general, Millennials are far more comfortable with technology, seeing it as an expected and necessary part of their lives. Because of the global sense of community provided by the internet, Millennials are less likely to form attachments to brands or businesses, instead seeking new experiences they often share with their web communities. There is a general interest in environmental and issues of societal responsibility in this demographic, far more conscious of the impact of their buying decisions than in any generation prior. This group tends to eschew the traditional in favor of the new, and is quick to adopt new technology or ideology, heedless of whether such a change is necessarily for the better.

What this means for the business owner is twofold. First, tailoring a menu to this new (and highly profitable) group of consumers means being either highly adaptable or developing a presentation and set of features that are unique enough on their own to withstand the transient nature of Millennial interest. In previous articles, we’ve discussed how using the reporting features of your POS will identify items on your menu that sell very well, as compared to those items which show signs of less interest from your customers. Using these sorts of tools, you can determine trends in your customers’ needs that allow you to shift your menu’s offerings to items that cater specifically to them. Obviously, one cannot ignore traditional menu items, but sales reporting will show what one perceives as traditional and time-tested, but may not reflect this impression in sales. Alternately, a business may have such a unique menu or atmosphere that Millennials will seek it out as a new experience. Because Millennial studies have suggested a lack of loyalty, particularly with businesses they perceive as having poor service or providing an experience that is seen as being not worth the value, it is important for management to ensure that the total customer interaction is of high quality. This is nothing new in the service industry, but it bears repeating as Millennials are categorically more sensitive to negative experiences and less likely to offer businesses a “second chance.”

Due to the prevalence of technology in Millennials’ lives, there is not only a familiarity with new devices and applications, but there is an expectation that businesses will provide technological interaction of some type. Whether it is a self-order kiosk or a server using a hand-held device at a table to swipe a credit card, Millennials tend to patronize businesses that use technology to enhance the customer experience. Any service-based business must now have a web presence, a way for the customer to “like” them, not only promoting the business in this fashion, but allowing the customer the ability to share the experience of having patronized your business. The greater the interaction and perceived ease of use, the more likely a business is to maintain a Millennial customer. Ordering online for pickup or delivery, popularized by pizza franchises, is now more and more prevalent. Having your menu on the web is a necessity, and the ability to use this web interface to place an order not only drives up revenue, it gives the Millennial customer the sense of value. The Millennial generation tends to see time as greater commodity than money, and, therefore, will tend to spend more if they perceive value in time-saving applications.


Of course traditional businesses still thrive in today’s market, but we always recommend examining the latest trends in your patrons’ behavior. There is no need to toss out old traditions of business, the baby with the bath water as it were, but being flexible and willing to change to meet new demands is essential in the service industry. Reliance on technology is only increasing, and customers have become, as a result, far less likely to repeat negative experiences, or to patronize places that do not have a web footprint to be found, interacted with and, ultimately, shared as part of social networking. With an eye to the future and a willingness to provide customers with specially-tailored interactions and experiences, your business may grow well beyond the less adventurous competition!

In a recent survey from www.restaurantowner.com, respondents were asked about their satisfaction with their POS systems. One of the surprising numbers in the survey was related to reporting, where out of over 1,300 respondents, more than half said that they did at least some of their reporting on spreadsheets rather than use their POS system.

Why is this, when the average restaurant owner, based on the same survey, spends between $12,500 and $15,000 on their POS system?

As we have frequently suggested in this series of articles, the most key element of any POS purchasing decision is you, the owner, being aware of the services you wish the POS system to provide. Whether it’s the automation of kitchen printing or the speed and security of credit card information being transacted over high speed internet, it’s important for you to understand the gains you intend to achieve with the purchase and implementation of the system. Likewise, you have to be exceedingly familiar with the kinds of information being reported in your restaurant and the manner in which you prefer this data to be displayed. Many owners prefer the “20,000-foot view” of their operations, where they look at total sales and expenditures and ignore some of the more micro-level reporting. If you are this type of owner, find the person who spends the most time with the shift, employee and end-of-day reporting and use their knowledge to inform your decision on your purchase. With the number of reporting features available in most POS packages, how the system is communicating information back to you and how it organizes this information can be one of the biggest boons or frustrations regarding your new POS system.

As always, we’ll be using POSitouch to serve as our example for specifics. Most reporting in POSitouch is done through back-of-house (BOH) operations on a computer dedicated to running POSitouch. There are other configurations that are available, but we’ll be assuming a dedicated “Order Entry” machine, which will run the main executable and serve as the pc which is used to make menu changes, run credit cards, etc. From this machine, we can run and print/save/email the POSiReport, a one-sheet look at the day’s activity. This is usually run at the end of the day, but may be run anytime. This report will give us a look at our sales by category, by shift, discounts applied and organized by type, a brief labor summary, a summary of paid-ins and paid-outs and, finally, a reconciliation portion which breaks down our expected deposit by pay type, including individual entries for credit card types. This report was designed and is usually effective in providing a comprehensive summary in the day’s financial activities.

Other reports, such as the Sales Journal Report, provide similar information, but broken down by sales category and revenue centers. Also, tax is further broken down. Where the POSiReport is one page, the Sales Journal report can be ten or more pages, presenting the same information in a more detailed way. Another report that we find useful is the Item Sales Trend Report, which can be run for a day, week, month or an arbitrarily chosen date range. This report will display a list of all items sold in the specified range, including their total sales for this range. This is a good report to monitor which items on your menu are selling, in what quantity, and the income earned on those items. You may find some items simply do not sell, and may be replaced by other items, or simply identify an opportunity to place a special on a given item to reduce inventory. How you use the report may vary, but the information is always at your fingertips.

You may also find benefit in the use of a report like the “Server Productivity Report,” which lists server sales on specific items, configured by you. This report is advantageous for those businesses which use item sales to hold contests for servers, or to otherwise reward sales of certain menu items.

Front-of-the-house (FOH) reporting is generally expected to be done on the fly, for a manager to see quickly what the day’s sales are in order to gauge labor needs, or simply to satisfy curiosity on those busy days. With POSitouch, the use of “Cashout Reports” will display onscreen summaries of sales for the whole house, or individual servers. You may further refine your onscreen reporting to display category sales and the like. If you prefer more tangible reporting, the same reports displayed onscreen may be printed at any check printer. Much of this reporting was covered in our discussion of closing procedures for fast food and table service environments.

As clever as the reporting may be, you may have a very specific method of organizing your sales information. The reason for the high rate of users who do not completely lean on the POS-native reporting may stem from two cases. In one, the restaurateur did not make clear the reporting needs of the business and purchased a system that reports the general information they need, but not in a manner that the staff is familiar with. In this case, you can eliminate the spreadsheet-style reporting by adapting to the new offerings provided by the system. For those more resistant to change, you may find yourself simply manually exporting the information provided by the POS system into the old spreadsheets, which makes no net gain in productivity. Alternately, some sites require information included that is not generally considered integral by the programmers who designed the reporting. For example, you may wish to include data from server sales alongside labor. While POSitouch does offer a report that does this, it does not do it on its one-sheet POSiReport. Or perhaps you want to see inventory transactions on the same page as your item sales. Again, this information may be found separately very easily, but not on a single report together.


So many business owners find that their purchase of a new POS system leads to unwelcome surprises, such as limitations or unexpected exclusions in reporting. Just because you look at certain information in a particular way does not mean your POS system shares the same view of what is and what is not important data. Speak with your salesperson or technical representative to determine which POS system offers the reporting solution you desire, as well as the ordering and operational solutions. And if you currently own a POS system that does not fulfill your reporting needs, identify those areas where the native reporting fails you and discuss potential solutions with your dealer. With a little pre-planning and persistence, we can bid adieu to those spreadsheets forever and automate one more labor- (and money-!) intensive step in your business.

The service industries are often the hardest hit during times of economic hardship. With the growing demands on the services and goods providers and the shrinking margins in profits, business owners must use all the tools at their disposal to remain competitive and defend their share of the market.

Let’s look at two ways you can receive direct and indirect feedback from your customers and find ways to grow your business while your competitors flounder.

We have discussed how to incorporate social media into your business, but let’s turn now to the big “why” of this integration. Social media, such as Facebook and Twitter, gives your customers a direct line of communication. By maintaining and monitoring your social media presence, you can directly address complaints that are sent to you via these outlets. More importantly, you have the ability to search for mentions of your business, particularly on Twitter, where the use of hash tags may reveal trending views of your business. Obviously, the rare criticism is expected when providing any customer-facing offerings, regardless of the quality of your services, but multiple complaints or mentions give you real-time information about how to adjust your processes to meet the direct needs of your customers. Have several people discussing bad service? You can reach out to these customers directly to identify the source of their concerns. Likewise, you may find that your customers offer menu or presentation suggestions, or perhaps a wholly different service like local delivery, that gives you valuable insight into ways to expand your business to meet the demands of a customer base which increasingly expects services to wrap around their desires. Some businesses may still thrive by presenting a particular niche product that is done so well, or exists in an environment relatively free of competition, that customers are driven to you, but most businesses must find ways to attract new customers and keep their old patrons returning.

Besides the use of social media, do not ignore your own reporting. Most POS systems will have the equivalent of POSitouch’s Item Sales Trend report. As its title suggests, the report shows a listing of all items available on the menu and gives you a numerical total of the number of times these were ordered, as well as the dollar amount associated with these sales. These apply to upcharges, too. The reporting allows you to determine which items on your menu are rising or falling in popularity, and, further, to determine if items are no longer viable. Perhaps you’ll even identify a trend in ordering that allows you to provide new offerings in line with the trend of customers’ orders. Many of our customers have found this report in particular useful in identifying popular and unpopular brands of wine and liquor, allowing them to purchase more effectively and keep enough inventory of oft-ordered items so that no customer would ever be denied their favorite offerings. This same information may even highlight a place where a price increase or decrease may be needed to meet demand.


In short, simply existing in the current market space is no longer enough to keep your business thriving. You must use the available tools at your disposal to see the internal trends within your business, and use the available technologies to identify and capitalize upon customer perceptions. Using the means already at your fingertips, you can not only survive the economic turmoil, you can excel!

While we’ve discussed previously the need for certain kinds of web-based applications to be integrated into your business, there are still those locations which see the web and the associated services as a luxury.

This is simply no longer the case. To compete effectively in an increasingly difficult market, business owners and operators must use all the available tools at their disposal in order to effectively compete. There are three steps in getting your business prepared for the web-based market that is quickly overtaking traditional forms of marketing and communication.

First, you must have a web presence. This means a website that offers your customers (and potential customers) a way to search for and find your business on the internet. It should contain contact information, a map to your location (preferably with an application that provides driving directions like Google Maps) and a menu. Further, having a website means updating. Keep you information current. Post information about upcoming events or specials. Anything to draw attention to your business and away from your competitors. And it’s not enough anymore to just have a website. You have to ensure that the site you’re using to promote your business is optimized for mobile browsers. The proliferation of web-enabled smart phones means more people than ever are using their portable devices to access information. If your website is inefficiently laid out for a mobile user, they’ll quickly move on to a site that is more mobile-friendly. We are truly seeing a tipping point, where analysis is suggesting that, among the service industries, more users are accessing data over their smartphones than any other source. In short, keep your menu up to date, keep your site updated frequently and make sure that your presence is mobile-device friendly.

Secondly, social media is an imperative. When we looked at online reservation technology, we talked about Facebook integration. Most businesses now at least have a Facebook page, which is a convenient way to connect to customers and gather feedback. Now, with the ubiquity of Twitter, that, too, has become a necessity for the business owner. Not only does Twitter allow you to send information out in real time, it also gives you the ability to market beyond Facebook “friends” and reach potential customers who may exist beyond your followers. Many business owners will become frustrated by small numbers of followers on Twitter, or the seemingly small impact when compared with Facebook, but don’t give up. Use trending topics to advertise yourself and look for users who have not connected to you directly mentioning the name of your business. Twitter will also allow for direct communication which could ferret out service issues, or customer complaints. It is essential that you use Facebook and Twitter as companion means of marketing and communication.

Finally, you must integrate all these elements into a cohesive strategy for your business. Make sure the widgets for Facebook and Twitter are easily identifiable and accessible on your website. Your customers are already using these applications, so make sure that they have an organic means to finding information, such as current menus and pricing, as well as location information. Every time a customer leaves a comment, likes a status or mentions you on Twitter, they are effectively doing advertising for you, and potentially generating feedback which could promote new strategies or identify holes in your operations that something like a survey card would never capture.

No matter what type of business you’re operating, the traditional means of advertising – television, radio, billboards – are losing ground to new media. If you have not established your web presence, there’s no time to lose. The number of marketing tools available to you is staggering, but simply by engaging with the two or three most popular, and establishing a website that contains your most vital information, updates regularly and uses mobile optimization and social media integration, you can stake your claim on the web and target your marketing dollars far more effectively.

The web is ubiquitous, touching almost every aspect of our lives. For the business owner, the question becomes how to integrate web-based technologies into your business in a way that best suits your needs.

As we have stated before, the most important part of any new addition to your business is a thorough understanding of your operations, and what aspects may be streamlined or improved through new offerings. What is your role? Are you a hands-on manager who wishes to use web-based tools to enhance your day-to-day processes, or are you someone who owns several locations, and wants a way to access information remotely in a meaningful way? We will discuss several offerings, using specific software, but all of the specific examples may be abstracted to a variety of options.

The most common utilization of remote applications is the access of information via the web. We offer a custom solution, used by both our service staff and clients, that allows a secure connection to the site via any Windows-based pc. This allows our support staff to dial in and access the site’s pc as if the tech were sitting before the computer. The benefits for our staff is obvious, but this same software allows the owner or manager to access the site and monitor activity on the computer, check sales and labor reporting, even settle credit cards remotely. Essentially, anything that can be done in the office can be done from the convenience of a remote location. This same software also allows the secure download and uploading of data on the site’s pc. Instead of simply viewing a sales report, the owner may save the sales report as a file, download it to their home pc and print it out for their records. The same goes for any report or file on the site’s computer. This allows the owner to virtually be at the site at any time of their choosing. One caveat when using remote applications – should you use the free applications available on the web, be sure they are PCI-certified if you are using them to access any computer that transacts credit cards. Using an unsecured solution on such a machine could lead to serious fines and the loss of your ability to accept credit cards at all.

Computer-based monitoring works for reporting and some behaviors, but it doesn’t replace seeing what’s happening with your own eyes. For those who wish to visually monitor the goings-on in their businesses, as well as to have a digital visual record of what goes on inside the walls of their business, we offer a security camera solution that allows remote access. This gives the owner the ability to not only access sales information, but also to see what’s happening in every corner of their business. We’ve incorporated text overlay for some of these cameras, so that, for a bar and grill, the owner can dial in from home and watch a bartender serve the site’s customers, and bear witness to the precise orders being placed in the same view. This security measure can serve as proof should an owner discover an employee behaving dishonestly, or even record an event that occurred in the restaurant that requires objective evidence. There are many available camera systems on the market, and a later article will discuss in greater depth the offerings available, but, as always, be certain that any camera system you purchase is professionally installed and integrates with the software you are currently using, should you choose to explore the text overlay option.

Beyond access and security, there are web services available to further aid in your operations. HotSchedules allows you or your staff to upload employee schedules to a web application. This gives the employees a unique login to access their work schedule at any point, and, further, removes any excuse an employee may forward regarding scheduling. Other applications, such as Open Table, allow your customers to make reservations over the web and feed their contact information directly to your staff at the site, nearly eliminating the need for phone reservations and the use of hand-written reservation lists.


The point is, if you want nothing more than remote access to your site, there are several solutions available. But for any sort of customer or employee interaction you find overly burdensome, there is probably a web application that can accommodate you. Be certain you check with your software provider to ensure proper integration and security. Don’t let technology pass you by while your competitors gain an edge!

We’ve discussed at length the various modules available within most POS systems, but we have not addressed the central question: Why buy a point-of-sale system at all?

Is it a necessity or a convenience? What factors should I consider when taking the first steps towards purchasing, or considering the purchase of, a POS system?

The first thing you will discover when you dip your toes into the world of POS systems is that there are a LOT of options out there. There are do-it-yourself POS systems, there are giant corporate-based POS systems and just about anything you can imagine in between. Before deciding which is best suited to your needs, you have to understand what it is you hope to achieve. It’s a familiar refrain by now, but no one knows your business like you do, and no POS dealer can tell you as precisely as you can which gaps in your business model a POS system will fill. Know your operations, better than anyone else. If this is a new business, even before you hire your staff and order your supplies, you should know precisely how the business will operate. Will it be cashier-based, or will you be doing server banking? Follow the process of a customer entering your restaurant until the time they leave. What will you do differently than other businesses that offer similar services? How will your POS system need to adapt to this? Once you can answer any question about how your business operates, you will be ready to expertly determine how a POS system will integrate into your model!

The first question is the most obvious: Do I need a POS system at all? What about the generations of businesses that have succeeded based on non-web-based cash registers? There is certainly a nostalgia affixed to the notion of the small business with a single cash register on a counter, nothing fancy about it, but perfectly serviceable. If you believe that you, the owner, will be the only one to stand behind that register, handling every dime that crosses the counter, I would say that is a viable model. Assuming you would have a hired employee handle your money, this model has become outdated. As a colleague of mine once stated, if you’re using a cash register between several employees, you should save your money on the register and use a cigar box. There is just as much accountability in that cigar box as the cash register… the register only provides the illusion of accountability. This is the single biggest reason to invest in a POS system. Using security measures we’ve discussed before, only a POS system can manage your inventory and sales in a cohesive way, holding historical data in an easily reportable manner. You could maintain records by hand in a journal, but even this solution doesn’t provide the at-your-fingertips accessibility of data that may be months or years old. Your POS system will not only provide sales data, but time and attendance information that is, in some cases, necessary to resolve a discrepancy; for example resolving employee pay disputes. The big takeaway here is that your POS system not only tracks what’s being sold, who’s working, what’s on the shelves, etc., it remembers it all – forever. And, it allows you the luxury of recalling any of that information at any time.

Along with accountability comes control over your operations. Do you use discounts? Do you have happy hour specials? All of this can be explicitly defined within a POS system, and, further, be limited to certain types of users. You can open up functionality to your managers while limiting access to servers or retail staff in a number of ways. Reporting also allows you to monitor all activities, giving you a global view of your operations that pen-and-paper or cash register-based businesses simply can’t match. Want to make it so your employees can’t clock in early? That can be automated through your POS. How about inventory tracking? With a little programming and time, you can literally account for every penny coming in and out of your business in a succinct way that allows for forecasting and historical reporting in as convenient a way as possible. Gone is the cash register “illusion of control” we discussed earlier, and now you have a real-time method of controlling access, reporting and operations.

One of the biggest benefits is less tangible than our first two topics – competitiveness. Because a POS system often increases productivity, you are able to streamline your business in a way that other businesses cannot match. Beyond the usual POS offerings, almost every POS system on the market offers plug-ins and third-party offerings that further increase the efficiency and utility of the system. If there’s something you want your system to do, chances are someone has developed a program for it. This sort of flexibility gives you the ability to adapt and grow as consumer tastes and trends change. As is often said, the only constant is change, and being able to change with the times is key to keeping your business growing. Computer-based POS systems give you the ability to update and add and subtract features that make your business as adaptable as any competitor’s. Corporate and small business trends suggest further integration in the coming years, not less, and those businesses that reject this model run the risk of finding themselves far behind the times in terms of competitiveness. Whether it’s kiosk-based ordering or online transactions, PC-based POS systems give you opportunities to follow the behaviors of your customers onto the web.

Speaking of the web, the fact that these POS systems exist in an online space gives you, the owner, another benefit – web-based support. In the old days of our own business, providing support meant driving to our clients’ stores to perform maintenance. Depending on the distance, even a minor problem could take hours to resolve. Now, with the ability to provide support over the web, even serious issues can often be resolved in a matter of minutes, sometimes before your customers realize there was a problem at all. Additionally, this web-based POS environment allows you remote access in the same manner as your support staff. Imagine the luxury of being on vacation, and still being able to dial into your business check sales and labor for the day, all without having to make a phone call or step away from your laptop. As more and more data moves to the cloud, expect this level of accessibility to increase.


There is no way to accurately predict market trends over the next decade, but you can lay safe money on the idea that technology will only continue to wrap itself around our day-to-day operations. With a POS system, you’re securing your business for the future, giving yourself access and your support team access, and providing an unmatched degree of control over your revenue. Armed with the knowledge of your particular needs, the variety of POS systems available gives you the freedom to find an ideal solution to your particular needs.

Lets take a look at some of the data published in the 2013 Trustwave Global Security Report.

The retail industry saw a 15% increase in data theft vs 2011. The food and beverage industry dropped 17% vs 2011 and is usually interchangeable with retail increases and decreases. The hospitality industry made strides to resolve security issues after being the hardest hit 3 years ago by tightening security on their HMS.

Don’t make security an afterthought only after a breach occurs. Get protected now and save yourself the hassle and fines of a breach.


To read the entire 2013 Global Security Report visit www.trustwave.com