Some familiar names are reshaping the point-of-sale market. Rob Carney had no doubt in his mind about the point-of-sale market when he launched EVT Systems just over a year ago to sell Microsoft's entries in that field.
A former Microsoft employee, Carney says there are two appealing attributes to the Microsoft Retail Management System, which is designed to serve businesses with one to 25 stores. "First, it was a complete product that I could sell from Day One," he says. "Second, the retail industry is a huge market. There is a huge opportunity."
In its short life, EVT has grown to eight employees, and also moved quickly to developing add-on products for RMS, including a Web store that provides central system administration from the Web. End users can utilize the add-ons to develop target mailings for customers from the POS database.
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EVT's quick entry into vertical markets with products for wineries and wine stores, and apparel, gift/novelty/souvenir, and sporting good stores, and the hardware and lumber business, explains why POS is one of those rare software markets: a place in which the number of packages available is growing, not consolidating. There are a lot of different businesses with a lot of different needs.
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POS: Not for Part-Timers If you think accounting software is mission-critical, think about how critical a point-of-sale system is to a retailer. "That's part of the learning curve," says Dave Beck, CEO of SystemLink North America, a Herndon, Va.-based Accpac reseller. He recalls one of the firm's first clients when, "on the first Saturday morning in their busy season, their system went down and they were looking for us," he says. SystemLink was able to help; learning quickly that while support for accounting clients can be conducted from nine to five, POS clients need help desks to be available around the clock. "We had to put in special support agreements where they could get help on Saturday or Sunday until 8 p.m." he says. SystemLink eased into the POS market about four years ago. "We started playing around with it for clients who were wholesale distribution clients who wanted a small POS at the warehouse for their customers who came in to buy things," says Beck. SystemLink installed Accpac's ePOS, which operates both on the desktop and via the Internet. Beck says Accpac's combination of POS and accounting has a big advantage over competing products. "Most traditional POS systems have accounting built in anyway. Then, you have to throw in an integration piece," he says. Because most of the functionality in the Accpac system is in the accounting system, "the POS module is fairly inexpensive." The ePOS module is priced at $2,000 per license, plus $1,000 per register. The ePOS system is also extremely reliable because the Internet connections rarely go down. When they do, retailers with multiple locations can continue to sell, completing transactions locally and synchronizing when the Internet link is restored. |
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