On 24 May 2008, at 04:40, Chris Travers wrote:
Stroller wrote:On 23 May 2008, at 18:25, Bob Miller wrote:... every article I read suggests that ... using anything less than fully integrated proprietary systems is completely foolhardy.Speaking from experience as an employee of a manufacturer of fully- integrated proprietary PoS systems, it is completely foolhardy to choose some of those. One of the joys of capitalism seems to be that, if the marketing department claims that shit cures cancer, then someone will buy it.Speaking as someone who rewrote the POS module for one of my customers, I think that Stoller has a point, but I want to expand and in some cases clarify these.
[some quoting added above] Hi there,I should add that my comments were made as someone whose lifetime worst-employment-experience was working for a PARTICULAR manufacturer of fully-integrated proprietary PoS systems. I don't mean they're all bad, just that SOME are terrible.
I think this is rather the nature of niche "vertical" markets. (coincidentally, to ensure I hadn't got the term confused with "horizontal", I wikipedia-ed "vertical markets" and PoS terminals are mentioned as the primary example). It just seems that, in markets for stuff that "everyone" uses (word-processors, spreadsheets and web- browsers spring to mind, but there are probably many other, non- software examples that are better), competition produces genuine product improvement, whereas for stuff that only a few people buy, and occasionally at that, you can gold-plate shit and get away with it. When selling PoS terminals, it doesn't matter if you charge £100 more than the competition, as long as you can convince the customer that your product's better - and unless you're a regular subscriber to Point Of Sale Review Monthly magazine, who's to know the truth of the salesman's claims?
In writing this I am reminded of a customer who is the shopkeeper of a jewellery store, and who has what I characterise as "the worst video surveillance system in the world". However, in fairness, the software is ok, and the problems I've encountered probably relate mostly to the cheap PC they bundled the system upon, and the capture hardware for which the system suppliers are probably mere resellers. I would image that there are worse systems on the market - the problem is, IMO, that the bar for these kinds of product is simply too low!
Likewise I have other customers who have ended up with flashy-but- useless and otherwise imperfect telephone systems simply because they assume that British Telecom are the logical supplier for such a thing, or through being oversold stuff by a salesman who comes across with a winning personality.
As things stand Zoneminder looks fantastic if you want to deploy an open-source video surveillance system for your customers. On first impressions the words "open-source" are superfluous in that last sentence - Zoneminder looks fantastic if you want to deploy a video surveillance system for your customers, full stop. Looks to me like it'll compete quite happily with any commercial offering.
I don't know about LedgerSMB's PoS module, so I won't comment on that, but I have seen other open-source-PoS projects - at least one, I think, promising to integrate with Ledger - announced, languished and dead. It looks like there's not quite so much commitment been mustered for POS as that achieved by Zoneminder's author, and if you consider that you need paying customers to make it worthwhile (surely *multiple* paying customers) and the layout of time & energy required before you have a working product, this isn't surprising. It looks like Zoneminder stemmed from the author's desire to to surveil his cats, rather than as a commercial project. Who the heck's going to write POS software, just for fun?
I think that PoS is something that open-source could do VERY well, but ideally a store would be able to buy it from a company that's large enough to guarantee long-term support. It doesn't have to be a massive corporation, but just a handful of employees would ensure that the customer isn't stuffed, should Bob the computer guy get run over by a bus (heaven forbid).
I feel pretty scathing towards salesmen & shitty software - I don't know if that comes across in my earlier comments - but despite my personal negative experience I'm sure there are some off-the-shelf or proprietary POS packages which are very good. In this kind of market, however, would imagine it might be a problem knowing which ones to avoid, so I'd suggest LOTS of homework - I think it'd be easy to get something like this wrong.
Stroller.