Make your POS solution IOT-ready
How Utenzl translates “thing speak” for point of sale systems.
The increasing importance of POS integration.
POS integration is turning what was once a tool for processing payments into an indispensable enterprise management system. In the food service industry, the POS has achieved new levels of system integration with table management, order management, accounting software, inventory control, and table side ordering mobile devices. The development of open standards and API integration have made all this possible but integrating IOT in a POS system presents a unique problem. For each IOT service, there is an application with specific requirements and for each application there could be one or more device(s) that meet those requirements, and each device (called a thing) transmits data using a lightweight transport protocol. There is, of yet, not one dominant standard for transmitting data that has emerged for IOT things. If this wasn’t enough to deal with, each thing maker encodes data in a vendor specific way. Luckily, there is a way to handle this babble of “thing speak” and that is to automate device on-boarding with our platform’s Device Gateway. Once the device is on-boarded we bridge, secure and register every data source and then use the same API standards we’ve all come to know to integrate with existing POS eco-systems. What does it all mean for the POS vendor? In a very seamless way we can add an IOT “as-a-service” application to your POS system.
A POS system that secures the premises.
Utenzl is powered by an internally developed IOT application engine (IOT engine). This is a fully managed platform that securely connects globally dispersed devices (called things) to the Internet and then integrates these connections to cloud services. The platform not only accelerates solution delivery but also allows for seamless integration. When a restaurant chain wanted to develop an alerting system that reminded employees of scheduled tasks, we went one step further and added a full on-premise discreet alerting system. A discreet alerting system is not a security alarm system connected to a central office, it is a way to be alerted of small emergencies before they become big ones. For example, cold storage malfunction, cash room breach, facilities flooding, water leakage, backdoor breach, flaming events, ventilation malfunction, etc. These events are reported in real-time, and logged with analytics to improve operational efficiencies. The biggest advantage is the alerting system is seamlessly integrated with an existing POS platform, extending the platform’s use and leveraging an existing installed base (CAPEX). Utenzl’s value stack is: The DEVICE GATEWAY automating sensor (thing) on-boarding, securing all thing connections, and building all retro-fit kits, and The APP CONTAINER a containerized way to create the app that sends alerts to smart phones and integrates with the POS eco-system. Integrating with the POS system allows alerts to be presented and configured on any POS user interface. Learn more about how our platform handles hundreds of communication protocols (ThingSpeak), and integrates cloud services (EUX).