Total cost of ownership
Centegra's point of sales solutions will bring you a lower total cost of ownership.
The cost of any EPOS system will be based on many factors:
- The cost of installation and training
- The on-going support costs
- The life of the system
- The indirect costs, renewed training for new staff, cost of down time, the costs of servers, software, virus checking, security and management.
- The cost of the initial hardware
We feel that in all of these areas we have significant benefits over other vendors.
Installation costs
Our installation costs are low as we have less to do, less work to configure and setup the equipment. Other vendors with PC based system have to install and configure Windows, networks and virus checkers before they even begin to install and configure the EPOS software. With the Centegra solution the tills need no operating system installation, no virus checker and are completely plug and play. This time saving is passed on to our customers in reduced installation costs.
It is fair to say that the time required to setup products, prices and the buttons on tills will be similar between all but the most un-friendly EPOS systems. But if you have selected to use our hosted services we can do this configuration in our offices without the need to come on site, saving the costs in travel expenses, accommodation expenses and travel time. We can therefore pass on these cost savings too.
The life of the system
Well I think we can all work out how the life of the system impacts on the total cost of ownership, but what evidence do we have that the Centegra tills will give you a longer life than others? We have tills that are still in operation today that were installed twelve years ago and are still fully operational.
The reasons for this are down to more than just well made hardware, manufactured to ISO9000 quality standards. It is down to the fundamental design and type of the Centegra solid-state hardware which has fewer components that can go wrong - no hard drives and no fans. Also the electronics inside the tills are not compromised on quality as PC based tills often are. To get the "best price" PC manufacturers often purchase components from the cheapest source, a graphics card from here and memory chips from there, these can run in to quality issues (buy cheap pay twice) as well as compatibility issues and longer term driver issues. There is no "driver" software in our hardware. The hardware produced twelve years ago will work with the back office software produced today.
With PC based point of sale systems you have to factor in the operating system. As we know Windows has progressed from Windows 3.1 to 95 to 98 to NT to XP to Vista and Windows 7 coming soon. With each version of Windows the software tools used to write Windows based software also changes and as most vendors write new functions in the latest versions these newer features tend not to be available on older copies of Windows. Hence new features may require new operating system; which in turn may require new hardware. We all know that the PC industry and Microsoft want you to replace your hardware and software every three years or so, and this fact has an impact on your costs of ownership.
On going support
If you have not read the section on support please do so as we address in more detail why the Centegra system requires les support than others. As the cost of us providing support is less we can pass this on to the customer and at the same time maintain service levels and quality that you expect. We have worked with customers whose support costs on an annual basis have dropped to a third of their costs with their former vendor, and although this may be at the more extreme end of the spectrum it is worth comparing these costs prior to purchase. We believe you find a significant difference between us and others, which will over the life of the system save you money.
Indirect costs
We often forget about the indirect costs of an EPOS system and sales people tend not to talk about them. But owning and managing an EPOS system will require time and costs that may not be evaluated at the start of the project.
For example: you train up a manager and part of their responsiblities include the management of the EPOS tills, this includes the training on how to use the system but also how to check backups, passwords and logins, virus management, network admin etc. then they go and leave! But if you have a Centegra hosted solution the re-training costs are much lower if at all.
What happens if someone breaks in at night and runs off with your back office PC, or the PC goes "pop" one Friday night. If you have the hosted service then you can just go to PC world and purchase a new one, job done. With the online service no installation beyond the basic PC setup is required.
We all know to our frustration that PCs can stop working for many reasons, and if your EPOS depends on them then business is impacted too. Often when you try and get an issue resolved the various vendors start pointing the finger at each other, the CCTV guy blames the Credit Card Company, the EPOS vendor blames Windows and Microsoft (or the manger who just left). With the Centegra hosted and online services you only have to make one call.
If you are considering a new or upgrade to an existing EPOS system, please consider the indirect costs too, they can all add up throughout the life of the system.
Hardware costs
We don't make any claims about being cheeper in this area, but we are certainly not an expensive option and our research has shown us that our prices like for like are consistent with the industry. However we do find that when you consider Windows and virus checkers that often our tills are lower cost and in some cases quite considerably lower cost.
