Introduction
For new electronic point of sale (ePOS) there are hundreds of base business requirements that should exist in the product. From how operations should complete, to the cosmetics of the exterior; from where icons should be placed and how they look, to the type of electrical plug the unit requires. This document will highlight a select list of high priority items that have the most impact to the outside stakeholders. Those requirements are; Touch screen technology, retail hardened hardware, inventory and category management, identification checking and blue law compliance, and electronic journaling. For more through discussions of these items, please reference the paragraphs below.
Touch-screen Technology
Touch-screen technology has proven to increase cashier productivity, as decrease the initial training time of new employees. A touch-screen monitor of appropriate size, 12 to 15 inches, is required. The monitor should be flat-screen LCD since CRT monitor are too bulky and generate too much heat. The touch-screen technology should be capacitive verses resistive; capacitive screens are more durable, as well as, they all for foreign devices, such as styluses, to operate the touch-screen.
Retail Hardened Hardware
In the convenience industry, various environmental conditions will exist; dust, grime, heat, humidity, vibration, liquid spills, electrical issues, and other outside contaminates are common. Any ePOS system installed into a retail outlet should be retail hardened. Retail hardened is defined as a system, that by design is fit for purpose, robustly engineered, and resistant to environmental contaminates. It should be able to resist liquid spill, and humid environments. It should prevent against electromagnetic field (EMF) interference, and be resistant to bumps and vibrations. The hardware should be capable of normal operation, without special cooling or heating, in all but the harshest of retail outlet conditions. Additionally, the hardware should have redundancies; these redundancies should include dual hard drive RAID system, uninterruptible power supply (UPS), and automatic database backup systems.
The Research paper on Retail Operation Information Technology
This paper presents the applications of Information Technology in retailing. The retail market is a state of exponential growth. Retailing includes all the activities involved in selling goods or services for the final consumer. These activities include demand and sales forecasting, inventory management, store management, transportation etc. This paper focused on how Information Technology may be ...
Inventory and Category Management
Unfortunately, a serious aspect of convenience store retail is theft. In order to help mange the shrink or total loss of product, the ePOS system should require scanning systems for inventory tracking that is compatible with the ePOS systems. The scanning system should allow the ability to compare their physical inventory with their ePOS system and the facility’s back office system, to see where the discrepancies lie. Additionally the scanning system should function by scanning inventory into the facility , when deliveries are received, and scanning out of the store, when a customer buys a item. Beyond theft, another benefit to inventory tracking is category management, this is the ability to see when a business needs to be restocked with a certain item. The category management functionality will enable a business to know immediately when to reorder. Similarly, businesses will be able to see when they are overstocked, when a particular item is not selling as predicted, and when an item needs to be substituted. Category management gives business the ability to make necessary decisions based on accurate data provided by the system.
The Business plan on Management Information System
Answer: MIS is popularly known as the Management Information System. MIS is considered as one such method of generating information which is used by management of organization for decision Making, control of activities, operations etc. During the period 1940 to 1960 computers were commercially used for census and payroll work. This involved large amount of data and its processing. Since then the ...
Identification Checking and Blue Law Compliance
When working in the convenience store environment, the sale of alcohol, tobacco, and lottery is a main sales staple. Unfortunately, the sale of alcohol, tobacco, and lottery present certain age limit laws, depending on the state the store is located. In the state of California, no one under the age of 21 can purchase alcohol, no one under the age of 18 can purchase tobacco or lottery, and the sale of alcohol is prohibited after 1 am in most communities, sometimes even earlier. Our business requires an ePOS that caters to the various sale restrictions. In the past when checking identification, businesses relied on employee’s good judgment and sometimes strength of character. The ePOS system needs to have the capabilities to validate the age of a customer when purchasing items that have age restrictions. This will eliminate the costly possibilities of missing an altered I.D. or allowing friends to “skate by” which could bring penalties that could threaten the financial health of an establishment. Also, the ePOS needs to validate the time of day that an age restricted item is being sold; thereby preventing an age restricted item from being sold after the allowed times.
Electronic Journal
The ePOS system needs to have the capabilities to track, or journalize, every transaction including voids, cancellations, over-rings, price changes, and programming changes into an electronic form that can be viewed, searched, and printed. This electronic journal must be encrypted, un-editable, and secure. The system must continually backup the journal to prevent against data loss. The ePOS system should be provided with the proper hardware to make hard backups of the data on a regular basis.
