Mobile Application Question

[Jay247uk]

Hi all,


Thanks for reading this message and apologies if this is posted in the wrong section.

I'm a final year university student, studying IT and Computing, as part of my final project I'm basing it around a mobile application designed for use in small business, such as food vans or exhibition displays.

I've done research and found that most POS solutions seem targeted to larger businesses and often come with high up-front fees or ongoing monthly costs.

The application I'm proposing to develop would run on current hardware, such as a phone or a tablet and will feature a simple touch-button interface for recording sales and possible integration with third-party payment terminals for secure transactions.
It will incorporate a database for stock level and sales record management.

Can I ask if you do fall into this market segment if it's something you think would be useful to yourself?
The idea behind it is to be really simple and easy to use, and something that you can at the end of the day see and export sales or certain items along with money taken.

Thanks in advance for any time taken to read and reply to my post.

 

[fisicx]

There are already loads of apps that have this sort of functionality.

To be useful it needs to integrate with existing stock management and accounting software.

We use a sumup reader. Really simple and easy to use. I enter the value on my phone, they tap their card in the reader and it’s job done. Money is in the bank account seconds later.

 

[skaracay]

You want to turn a phone or any device into a POS. Is right? This is a model that has a regulation and certification (EMV) process. The other way is to use the Stripe terminal application. You can create a top layer on the Stripe terminal and enable it to be used as a POS.

 

[bovine]

As an epos reseller for more years than I care to say, there a few things wrong in your statements and what you're looking to achieve. I would say most pos systems are probably more aimed at the small to medium size market. Micro companies do want the sort of thing you're looking at, but the trend now is to include it as part of the card processing. Card processing is where the money is so it is quite common to offer micro vendors a solution with the basic pos application free of charge. Card processing suppliers have bought up and integrated pos companies specifically to do this.

Traditional Pos hardware is typically not cheap, but it usually has a hard life and needs to last - our kit is usually in place for well over 5 years. Some resellers will include the hardware at a heavily subsidised rate or for free and look to the ongoing revenue from monthly software subscriptions, commission from card processing etc. There are cheap android devices available designed for this market, but phones and tablets can and do get used.

It is a really good IT project to look at, but not necessarily a good business to start. Functionality and requirements for different sectors can be quite demanding and the business model for something like this would be challenging.

If you want any specific feedback, more than happy to help.

 

[garyk]

There are already plenty of offerings in the market doing this for small businesses. Heck even mobile coffee/snack vans have them now.

What you *could* do though is find say the top 10 solution providers then see if they are on trustpilot and go through the 1 and 2 star reviews to see if there are any recurring themes with regards to pain points and target those.

Good luck!

 

[Nick@Daydot]

Hi Jay, I'd say first off well done for seeking input to the concept at this stage. I don't think everyone does that. I'd be interested to know how your project will be assessed as academia isn't always rooted in the commercial world. As you're doing an IT degree I'd assume that you'd be assessed on the technical build and capability. But it sounds like you're doing the interface design too, have you had any training on that as it's not an IT function (although some companies may be structured that way)?

 

[Jay247uk]

Thanks for your comments guys I really appreciate the time taken to feedback to me.

The application itself is for my dissertation, degree in Computing IT with a Software specalism.

So, technically it being a great idea for a business doesnt entirly matter, its more the IT project side of things that's imporant.

Thanks again,