Technology is constantly changing; it is one of the few things that never stands still
. Advancements are always being made and one area that has experienced a large deal of development over the last decade was the EPOS retail sector.
For those of you who might not know what an EPOS retail system is, it basically stands for Electronic Point of Sale, which in effect means that it is a checkout till. Although checkout tills have been around for a since the early 1900's there was very little change between the systems over the first 50 years of their life, but then it appeared as though the market decided to spring to life as the industry realised that there was a lot of unused potential that could be utilised from the systems.
Initially the system went from mechanical to electronic and then from analogue systems to digital. As the systems continued to become more advanced there was a need for these shops to take out support contracts that would allow the companies to enjoy close to 24/7 uptime. Obviously every moment that a till is out of order is potentially a moment when the company is losing revenue, which is why working in EPOS retail support can be extremely commercially successful.
As we entered the new millennium there were a number of companies that continued to advance and enhance the potential of the systems. Clearly there was more potential that could be squeezed out of the EPOS retail environment. The latest incarnation of the system is the self service till, which has allow supermarkets and stores around the country the opportunity to free up staff members and utilise their time more wisely.
The new EPOS retail tills are very complex machines indeed. There is a very complex computer placed at the centre of the machine which stores on it a number of databases containing information concerning the price list and also the weight of the products. When the customer scans a item through the barcode is checked against a database and the product is displayed on the digital screen for the consumer to check.
Once this stage of checkout has been completed the till will ask the user to place the item in the baggage area. In the baggage area is a set of scales which has been cleverly hidden away to ensure that the items that are placed in the bags are the items that have been scanned. It does this by checking the items against another database. These new EPOS systems are changing so quickly and are becoming so advanced that it is more than likely that in five years time you won't see any sales assistants, all you will have it an electronic assistant.