Every year our partners at Software Advice -- a retail software research and reviews site -- interview thousands of retailers that are seeking the right POS solutions for their businesses.  This provides them with a great deal of insight on the key factors driving the POS buyer’s decision making process in today’s market.  Software Advice recently conducted research on some specific metrics and provided the full results in the form of a special report called Retail Software Buyer View 2014.  The report focuses on 3 primary areas of the POS buyer’s decision drivers:

1.       Deployment Preference (on-site VS cloud-based)

2.       Existing systems in place prior to buying POS

3.       Primary reasons for buying/upgrading POS

Surprisingly, most current POS software buyers are still seeking on-site deployment despite the “to the cloud” movement that seems to prevail in most other market segments.  Software Advice found that of those buyers who did express a deployment preference, 66% of them preferred on-site deployment VS a cloud solution.  Based on my conversations with business owners regarding POS, I would comment that most of this mindset comes from the fact that POS is mission critical to these buyers.  They feel that any down time will cause panic and be disastrous for their core operations.  They fear that cloud solutions introduce additional points of potential failure that might cripple their operations during peak periods of business volume. 

In this research, Software Advice found that 33% of POS buyers are currently using a POS system and looking to upgrade it or switch to another provider.  Surprising to me was the fact that 25% of the buyers had no POS system in place while an additional 14% used manual methods and an additional 18% used basic cash registers.  So, not only are these business owners reluctant to utilize cloud technologies to run the business; many have been reluctant to use any modern technology whatsoever.

In terms of reasons for buying/upgrading, Software Advice found that there is certainly a correlation between the current systems in place and the reasons for shopping.  39% of buyers indicated that they are seeking to gain/improve efficiency.  This comes as no surprise with large numbers of buyers using manual methods and/or no systems at all.  Another 20% of buyers were seeking more functionality.  This indicates that many of these buyers are using older legacy solutions or have growing businesses with growing needs that require more robust POS solutions to maximize ROI.

To view the full report from Software Advice, please visit https://www.softwareadvice.com/retail/buyerview/report-2014/.

For tips on POS software selection, download our free guide at https://www.posprophetsystems.com/index.php/request-your-download?view=form