What to Look For in a Retail POS Vendor

Your point-of-sale systems vendor is key to your successful implementation. In this chapter of our Buyer's Guide--The Scoop on POS, we get some tips from our expert, Tim Millen, IT chief at the Elephant Pharmacy chain. (Many of these apply to restaurant and hotel POS systems too.)

What to look for in your retail POS vendor:

1. A Help Desk to support the stores, to keep them working, even during evening store hours and on weekends. You can't live without your system; if it goes down Saturday afternoon during a sale, your vendor had better be there to answer the phone and get you back up, or you are in big trouble. A serious vendor who understands the business will have serious support (and maybe charge seriously for it, because it's no joke).

2. Vendor assistance with their software and with the database system. They install it, they train your people on it, they support it every step of the way.

3. Support is the most critical thing of all! Your business will suffer when the system goes down, so get references and invest the time to follow up on them, in depth.