Point of sale (POS) systems have become part and parcel of every business venture: restaurants, retail outlets, supermarkets, bars, online shopping, mobile payments, or even touch-screen information systems. Businesses still using manual cash registers and account books will be far behind in the race for profits. Electronic management of inventory and sales has become essential for survival in the modern computerized world. Budgets and profits have to be recorded error free and be easily accessible for proper business planning. Getting a POS system is indeed the need of the hour. POS systems basically cater to the retail and hospitality sector with hardware and software cut to their specific needs. Systems for the retail industry will speed up cash transactions and standardize inventory and pricing, but the hospitality software and restaurant POS have a completely different set of needs. For example, handheld systems and touch-screen ordering can take a food order directly to the kitchen via computer, thus reducing the error management and saving time. And a supermarket will have all products carefully bar-coded and linked to customer accounts, taxes and discounts. Since the needs of each of these vendors are so varied and so unique, software for each is also different. Hence, vendors first set up minimum required hardware like cash drawers and automated bill printers. This is supported by software that acts as the interface between the physical devices and the computer operating systems. Once the basic POS system is installed, vendors move on to more advanced systems that are cut to the specific needs of their particular fields of operation. Hardware and software for POS systems are standardized under OPOS and JavaPOS that set device standards for integrating hardware into Windows and Java respectively. This standardization takes care of the different, but unique needs of each POS user without compromising on device standards. UnifiedPOS develops system-independent device interfaces that are then mapped into Windows and Java. |
