What's New & Hot in Retail POS Systems?

What trends and gadgets are making a splash in the retail end of Point-of-Sale systems?

Lower Costs for POS systems is a big push these days. That's why IBM is getting a good reception for its Linux and MySQL components, which cost less than Windows and SQL Server.

RFID is a buzz for the bigger guys, but it's not clear that you can cost-justify it for the average retailer. It's also not clear what efficiencies there are for the customer, not just the retailer.

Workforce Management becomes a big issue as you grow. Elephant Pharmacy is growing past 100 employees, so this will be key for them in 2007.

POS systems feed a data stream of what is selling, where, and why, so management can make better employee scheduling decisions. You can even figure out that a given store is having a slow day, and send some of the staff home for the day. You can even check productivity by individual clerk. But Millen warns that you can make wrong assumptions here: A clerk who seems from the POS reports to be less productive than others could just be a clerk who is doing an especially good job of customer service — not something you necessarily want to discourage. So you're getting more, better, and more timely data; but it's still up to you to figure out what it really means.