For hoteliers, having a POS system implementation plan is essential in order to ensure that your point of sale is properly set up and that your staff are prepared to use it optimally. A smooth payment journey is one of the most important parts of the guest experience. From the time they book a room, to when they stay with you, to the moment they check out, the whole process should be seamless.
We’ll look in further detail about how to create a plan for implementing a hotel restaurant POS system at your hotel, and how to do it in the most effective way possible. The more effective the process and the more you involve your staff in its implementation, the more your hotel will be set up for success. So, let’s get started.
How to create a plan for implementing a POS system
It can be daunting to set up a point of sale system from scratch, whether you're transferring from a traditional point of sale, or starting directly with an ePOS. Follow this step-by-step guide, and you’ll be set up for success. Learn more about an ePOS.
Analyze your requirements
The first step in implementing a point of sale system is establishing your hotel’s requirements, both in terms of system capabilities and hardware. Hardware usually comes in the form of a tablet, a mobile device or a fixed terminal, but you need to design a strategic plan as to how many you need, and where you need them. Your requirements will depend on your hotel’s size and services you offer, whether you have a pool, a restaurant, bar, club or similar. Smaller hotels typically won’t need as many hardware devices.
Ideally, you will have terminals at your front desk, restaurant, and bar, and have mobile, or tablet devices spread throughout the different strategic payment points at your hotel. You also need to decide what actual capabilities you need to look for, such as: inventory management, sales and reporting, customer management, employee management and checkout tools – among many other features – and establish your budget.
Meet with your team
As a hotelier you may have an idea of your own requirements. Things like reporting and analytics are a must, but nobody has a better picture than your staff about what’s really needed for their department. Meet with each of the department heads and get their point of view of the must-have features and pain points they have from current payment methods, and find out how implementing a new POS can address these needs.
Once you have their input from the department heads, it’s time to look at the provider selection process. Definitely be sure to involve your teams in the selection process once you’ve narrowed it down to a few possible providers.
Provider selection
Once you’ve analyzed your requirements in terms of hardware and system capabilities, it’s time to select your point of sale provider and organize the whole process. Before you start in the selection process, you’ll need to determine what kind of wiring (if any) and connectivity you will need, as well as ensure you have the right security protocols in place to avoid cyber breaches. Discover the seven biggest security threats to hotel payments.
Then it’s time to take a look at the different providers and get an idea of which one has the best price/services ratio that will help your hotel achieve its goals.
Set up and organization
Now that you’ve got a better idea of what’s needed in terms of hardware and software, and chosen the provider that best aligns with your hotel’s needs, you should then set up the hardware and software and organize your team to do so.
Most likely, your finance team and marketing teams will work together to monitor the reporting, and optimize processes based on the findings. Then your HR team can take care of the employee management functionalities. But who will take care of the inventory management? All of this should be organized ahead of time.
It’s also important to assign someone to be directly responsible for the implementation, who will help you set milestones for the project and make sure that it's a smooth transition process. This person can align everything that needs to be done to get the devices up and running, and assign the roles accordingly.
Training
With the right system implemented, it’s time to train your team. Whether your POS offers training or not, make sure that you have a series of your own training sessions in place, and that your staff knows where they can get help if they need it. Making sure your teams feel competent in using the hardware is crucial to its effective implementation. They also need to know what is expected of them in terms of monitoring reports and other functionalities.
Your staff will need proper guidelines about best practices, and you will need to upskill your less tech-savvy staff members so no one is left behind, especially when transitioning from a legacy POS. Upskilling is an important part of improving employee satisfaction.
Deployment across all channels
Deployment could potentially come before training, depending on the process your team members decide upon, but in any case deployment is an important part of implementing the point of sale. You’ll need to upload important data like inventory count, restaurant menus, and sync data with your PMS, among other tasks. You also need to ensure that user permissions are set up and ensure that each hardware terminal is performing correctly.
Optimization
Now that your payment system is working, an important part of the project is ensuring that you learn from the metrics and use those data-driven insights to improve processes. The milestones that your project manager sets up will help you understand how well the project is performing and identify any staff members who need more training. Optimization should be an ongoing part of the process no matter what.
Conclusion
We’ve looked at the key steps to create a POS system implementation plan. Without a doubt, one of the most effective strategies is ensuring that your staff is involved in every phase of the process so that they feel implicated in its execution. With a smooth payment journey, you can boost your hotel’s bottom line by having a clear and easy way for guests to purchase added services throughout their whole stay, thus boosting the average daily spend.
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