MICROS reveals 3 key factors to a resilient POS system

Find out the company’s formula for zero-downtime solutions.

Operations grind to a halt whenever a QSR’s point of sale (POS) system goes offline, and the affected stores are left licking their wounds from the resulting profit losses as customers forego their orders.

Even worse, POS system disruptions allow loyal customers to wander their gaze to competing stores that may offer them better deals and service. And once those customers are lost, it would be an uphill battle winning them back.

“Not having access to the POS system creates a huge operational problem for any restaurant, which has a direct impact on profit,” said Christopher Adams, MD, MICROS Australia.

“Productivity comes to a halt, transactions cannot be processed, critical applications go offline and employees can’t serve customers. In addition, liability and fraud exposure increases with the loss of records and make-shift manual processes that accompany a disabled network,” Adams added.

This is the reason why QSRs now place a high priority in a resilient POS system – one that is able to keep operations running in the event of a network failure and has the ability to run key services at a local level.

3 factors to resiliency

With this insight in mind, MICROS developed its Simphony POS solution that ensures zero downtime.

Adams said Simphony owes its market-leading resilience to three factors.

First, the system employs local data storage so that stores can continue taking orders even if the central network is offline without fear of losing valuable transaction data.

“In the event that the connection to the data centre is down, Simphony stores transactional data locally and seamlessly resynchronises this data when the system comes back online. This means the system can continue processing transactions and no data is lost,” said Adams.

Second, Simphony offers stores the ability to operate their workstations in stand-alone mode. Similar to the local data storage solution, each workstation can keep transaction data until the local network returns to normal operations.

“If you lose your local network in the store, MICROS workstations can work in a stand-alone mode so you’re able to process transactions and serve your customers.”

The third and last factor that makes Simphony extra resilient is its ability to run critical operations locally. Adams said that this feature becomes useful especially during internet outages and other issues that cuts off the store from the data centre.

Normally, stores will not be able to process credit cards or use their remote printers, effectively crippling operations and reporting processes. However Simphony is designed to keep these services local, ensuring constant business continuity at the front line.