How to be a proactive technology consumer in your business. 🤓

Cannabis News
1

Continuing the discussion from Best POS system:

How to be a proactive technology consumer in your business.

May I ask the question as a top ten features.

hard requirements

  1. Ease of employee traing and use. How much training. if I have high turn over?
  2. What do I have to own physically for this solution. ROI cloud? iPad/iPhone cash draw printer?
  3. Encryption and security. We don’t to be the next Tran-union with our customer data.
  4. Is there a firewall between client/customer and my sales data? Netherlands or Israel style of DNA data. It means as a key holder. In a disaster, I only have one special file that needs to be distorted. The link file that has client personally identifiable information to a blind customer ID. Most HIPA complete systems this is SOP. Hospitals and big insurance companies.
  5. Encryption end to end
  6. VPN client support
  7. Support for house debit card. :stuck_out_tongue_winking_eye:
  8. Any accounting system I want for management of my back office. Quickbooks for most of us unless. We gross more than $15 million a month.
  9. What platform is your product based on and is it cloud based?
  10. What percentage of the solution is custom code or hardware?
  11. Everyother non-core business process, I will change to your way. But core business process are done the same everywhere. Accounting is double entry. Horticulture production side is ISO 8601 Weeks. That’s core business. If I send a PO to a suppler as a grower and I say I need 100 of x,y and z week fifteen. They know what that means.
  12. Does your product have a public ODBC compliment API for read and protected writes by a controlled by my domain AD roles?
  13. If you can’t answer each of these questions fully I don’t need a demonstration.

These are the questions I ask both professionally as a person in Information technology for 35 years.

All software purchases we create a “Request for Proposals” or RFP for short. The top list is the first thirteen questions in every RFP.
Plus a wish list of features.

Point of sale wishlist.

  1. Cash management.
  2. Client management. I want to collect personally identification information and tightly controlled access. Orange Book level.
  3. Technical support 7/24 15 minute response time.
  4. DR Plan
  5. Maintenance and depreciation schedule. Where are we in the current edition life cycle. Public beta start date of next edition.
  6. How does your product integrate with my CRM system?
  7. How does it integrate with my VIOP system?
  8. Does it have a customer Application for both Apple and Android? I really want the guy checking ID to say as a repeat customer enters. “Hello Mr. Jones, happy belated birthday. Are you going to use your birthday coupon today?” How does your POS deliver on my services SOP for customer experience.
  9. How does your system tie to Positive Inventory control model. (By the way all pot distribution to end users are required to do this. In each legal state, they just call it by different names.
  10. Canned analytics?

Most of the business are in the category of “small” Here are the questions I always ask. Any team asking for technical services.

  1. Buy before you build. Every line cost about $1 to create. As well as the maintenance costs go up each year. $1 dollar a year, year 1. Increase at a 10% APR if you have more than 100 employees. Less than that it increases to its maximum at 25 employees at 25% APR. look at all canned software. Where are the price brakes that come with the number of seats? You can tell the target business size with these numbers.
  2. Change your process before you violate rule 1.
  3. Do you have the fives life expetency in cash on hand to replace your custom solution.
  4. If I am building a custom solution who owns the customization?
  5. Who controls your gold copy of your software if your vendor is not there in six months. :grimacing:. I can not tell you how many times we had to fetch code from software escrow.

From those lovely voices in my head

Ethan :upside_down_face:

@supergrower_matt, @raymond @Farmer_Dan @nick @Growernick, thoughts or additions? Future AMA how small business need to look at software purchase and manage technology for maximum ROI? I think I have a thirty minute lecture, I even know which paper note book. Yes paper for a telipromter. :rofl::blush:. I would need to recreate the PowerPoint, because I know I don’t have that.

@nick and @Hunter post for insights?

1 Like