Specialty chains` spending on web-based POS going up

Specialty retail chains could spend nearly $1.8 billion on installing web-enabled POS systems by the end of next year, reports consultants Lake West Group Ltd. The figures comes from Cleveland-based Lake West’s POS Benchmarking Survey.

The POS Benchmarking survey reports that 18% of specialty chains will have web-enabled POS systems in place within 18 months. Another 20% will have such devices in more than 2 years. 27% have web-enabled POS already. The spending measures the cost of buying new systems and not of upgrading existing systems.

Lake West estimates that each web-capable register will cost $3,625, with costs broken down among hardware, $2,250, software, $1,250 and development, $125. The average specialty chain with three registers per store will spend $10,875 per store. At 300 stores per chain, the systemwide cost will be $3.262 million.

Lake West estimates the specialty retailer universe at 3,000 chains. Thus 18% of them buying web-enabled POS systems by the end of next year nets out to $1.761 billion.

Specialty chains are using web-enabled POS devices to report sales in near real time so centralized inventories can be updated throughout the day, to find out-of-stock items in nearby stores or distribution centers or even the company’s b2c web site and to report security/loss prevention information.