Welcome to Retail Checks and Balances, a podcast that takes you behind the scenes of the bustling world of commerce and culinary delights to help you grow your business and win. Join us as we explore the fascinating stories, trends, and challenges that shape the retail and hospitality industry, from cozy corner cafes to sprawling shopping malls and everything in between. And now, here's your host, Kevin Spencer.

Hi again, Retail Checks and Balances. Pushing another episode to your phone, your tablet, your computer, whatever you listen to podcasts on. Could be a TV because recently I saw on my TV that you can get podcasts, Spotify to be exact, on my TV. Today, we're going to talk about the evolution of point of sale. POS, computer technology. This is a topic that's pivotal to the retail and hospitality service industry, but it often falls under the radar Because now, when you say point of sale, from a bank perspective, people think it's the payment terminal, where the payment is. But the technology of point of sale is, if we go back to the cash register time, and you heard that song of the cash register going, ding. And if that was a good, song defect. But you know, whether you're buying a coffee, you know, checking in, checking out at the grocery store, you know, using, placing an order at a restaurant, peer systems are everywhere. You know, making transactions smooth and, you know, efficient. And you know, where we, you know, getting into a different story about self-service. I mean, I already did that. But have you ever wondered how these systems evolved and what the future holds for them? You know, let's take a small journey through history, you know, the present and the future of POS technology. You know, If you go back to the 19th century, the intervention of the first mechanical cash register by James Ritty, you know, I just looked that up and found who invented it. To be honest with you, I didn't even know who invented that cash register. But they say this was a time when the industrial revolution was in full swing and businesses needed a way to track sales. and then prevent the biggest thing today, employee death. This RITI model was actually patented in 1883, when a revolutionary device that recorded sales transaction, a series of mechanical wheels. I mean, I've been to some agencies where you actually saw what that looked like. And it was a company called NCR, we know today, which was called National Cash Register back then. Also, IBM was in the forefront of developing machines that could not only track sales, but also perform basic inventory management tasks, believe it or not. And these early systems laid the groundwork for what would become the modern POS technology that we know of today. You know, as the digital revolution came in in the 1980s and 1990s, the significant shift from what we call POS systems moved from being purely transactional to becoming integral parts of our business operations. In the rise of personal computers and the development of software, POS systems began to make and offer advanced features like sales analysis, customer data tracking, and inventory management. And when we talk about these key developments in the digital revolution of POS systems, It's a PC, a computer that has a touchscreen that you can touch. And, you know, when software comes into place of what the power of that software has to run on the hardware of a POS system, we need specific specs, memory, processor. When we go back to even bus speed, things like that, that needs to perform key transactions, you know, and the integration and flexibility with any business software that comes out on the market. Because at the end of the day, these POS systems were in an era where you saw the introduction of barcode scanners, credit card markstripe readers, you know, touchscreen interfaces, which made transactions faster and more efficient. You know, how did these changes make or impact businesses? You know, it was revolutionized a way how the actual business operated, you know. Now inventory could be tracked in real time, sales data could be analyzed and understand customer behavior and the overall customer experience improved significantly. It was indeed a game changer. And, you know, moving into the present day where POS systems sit, you know, they have become even more sophisticated. Today's systems are now connecting to cloud-based, allowing for seamless updates and real-time access from anywhere. They're not just limited to retail, but used across various industries from hospitality to healthcare. Another key development in the integration of mobile POS systems would have been the preparation of smartphones and tablets. Businesses can now conduct transactions from anywhere. So now your mobile phone could be a POS system, right? Using whatever app that it has on whatever platform you use in terms of marketing, whether it's Google or iOS or even Microsoft to an extent, right? You know, whether it's a food truck at a festival or a small shop in a mall, they use some mobile devices that run on Android with an iOS, you know. And mobile systems, mobile POS systems, sorry, are incredibly versatile. They not only provide flexibility, but they also enhance customer experience by reducing wait times, offering more payment options, including contactless payments and digital wallets, you know, like Apple Pay and Google Wallet, just to name a few. And, you know, let's not forget about the role of data analytics. Pure systems gather a wealth of data that has to crunch and drive business decision-making, you know, from inventory management to personal marketing campaigns, because there's so much in terms of that device has to hold a database, whether it's on the cloud or sometimes it's local on the device. Because, you know, we have some, in some cases we have internet connectivity or network connectivity that you don't want to affect your business operation, but it really depends. That's a different story altogether. So what we see the future holds for POS technology, you know, it's, you know, we talk about this artificial intelligence and machine learning, the internet of things, IoT, starting to make their mark, you know, AI can help predict sales trends, optimizing inventory level, and even boosting our customer experience in real time. IoT devices can track inventory with incredible accuracy and automate reordering processes. So having a device that can handle all this technology is really where you want to choose the correct partner. And at the end of the day, there's so many devices out there, so many manufacturers of devices, you got to pick the one that fits. your operations, you know, and you got to make sure that, you know, cybersecurity and adoption of standards like EMV and CHIP and PCI compliance are at the paramount of, you know, of what we consider the security, you know, and especially the increase of data breaches ransomware and peer systems will have to have robust security measures to present sensitive customer data, you know. and you know let's forget about the potential blockchain of technology creating transparent and tamper-proof transaction records we don't make sure we're protected in that way. So it's really exciting time for PX technology and I'm looking forward to seeing how it evolves you know and this is what we got to make sure that we we are around to see how we'll be exploring this in artificial intelligence and where it takes us in the future. So once again, thank you for listening to this short episode along the lines of POS technology. Really didn't want to talk about too much about computer specification and things like that, because we all know once we have a good machine, it will align with whatever POS software specification that you get from your vendor. So thanks again. Have a good day, good night, and thank you for listening once again to an amazing episode of Retail Checks and Balances.