Importance of the right POS hardware and software

I have already covered before the importance of the right POS hardware and also the software. Yesterday I visited one of India's largest supermarket after a long time. The checkout process was very frustrating and knowing the details of the retailers systems I know that these systems were designed and implemented by consultants who had no prior experience or understanding of how critical is for them to do the right choice. It took me over 30 minutes just to check out out of a moderate line not even a big queue. The actual transaction took a frustrating  15 minutes with a average basket of about 60 SKU's. The poor cashier was struggling to operate the software and the hardware had literally fallen apart as the retail chain does not believing in using a hardened POS machine but uses standard desktops as POS machines. One of the customers had a big fight when he realized that his debit card could not be used in the integrated EDC machine as it did not have the option of typing in his PIN and he had to go to another counter just to get the payment done. The same customer came back when my bill was being processed and then the billing software went into hang !! frustrating both of us!!!! I dont think I am going to visit the particular store again and the same was voiced by the other customer. The only silver lining in this was that the pricing was pretty good and my better half was happy she got a decent deal :) 


Last week I also lost another argument with a CFO of a leading hypermarket in India on my recommendation to go with a robust POS hardware instead of a lower end POS machine, looking at their future plans and volume of bills at their 80,000+ sq feet hypermarket. The only reason being a cost difference of just 10% over a IBM retail hardened POS machine compared to a local model. The importance of customer experience, ability to get better ROI was ignored by the CFO over a immediate small saving which the local vendor was giving. I probably lost the argument because I had no support from the operations team who according to me have no experience in the longer term operations gain from using a robust POS. Lets hope they realize it for their next store... 

Private Label initiatives in Indian retail.

During the recent months, Indian retailers have increasingly been concentrating on the private label sales in the stores. A visit to any Indian retail hypermarket would reveal a sudden increase in private label brands promoted by the retailers. Major CPG brands like Knorr, Kissan, Maggi etc.. are being replaced by secondary regional brands or by the retailers private label brands. This is the result of the margin maximization drive by the Indian retailers.

But are the retailers really upto the mark in quality compared with the established brands? My personal observation is not yet. I sampled some private label products across retailers and think that the non processed food products seem ok as private label but the processed food still have a long way to go in terms of quality. I had very bad experience in using ready to make soup of a major private label brand of a retailer. The soup taste was absolutely yukkk and the quality of the same was horrendous. I don’t think I am going to touch any other product of the same private label !!

I think the retailers don’t seem to have realize the importance of quality, consistency and product lifecycle efforts which are needed in a consumer product manufacturing. Repacking rice, daal or any non processed food is ok but making jams, soups, tooth paste, butter etc needs quality infrastructure investment and don’t know if the Indian retailers are investing in the same.

Regarding systems, most of the retailers are configured for basic repacking but private label manufacturing is a different cup of tea… lets see how the Indian retailers cope with this.