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A Guide To:
                        Cloud-Based POS

     Instead of buying  For omnichannel businesses or               being negligible. Long-term contracts
 the infrastructure, a  corporate stores, cloud-based solutions     of five years or more add up – and
business owner rents    with data stored offsite allows them        without a contract, your provider is
  it for a monthly fee  a degree of consistency across all the      free to raise rates as they wish. Not to
                        different platforms and locations. This     mention that these subscriptions may
                        means that employees and managers           offer only limited support and training
                        can access their data and conduct           options, leaving employees to muddle
                        business virtually anywhere there is        through learning the ropes on their own.
                        an internet connection, without being
                        tethered to a single location.              Since the business owner doesn’t own
                                                                    the system they are using, this leads to
                        Of course, for small businesses             some distinct limitations. They may find
                        operating out of a few or just one          themselves subject to regular updates
                        location, this may not be much of a help:   pushed directly from the manufacturer,
                        With cloud-based POS, sales are reliant     which can be a benefit for security
                        on internet connectivity. If your business  but also introduce bugs and new
                        experiences an outage, you may have         functionality that the business isn’t
                        to wait to be reconnected before you        prepared for. And if the business owner
                        can resume operations. Only a few cloud     opts to discontinue the subscription,
                        providers offer an offline mode to          they could lose access to all the data
                        allow operation without an Internet         they’ve hosted remotely – including
                        connection, usually for an additional fee.  sales history, customer information
                                                                    and inventory.
                        Many cloud-POS solutions are very
                        basic, with add-on services available       This remote hosting of data is one of
                        for an additional charge, if at all. Add-   cloud-POS’s benefits, but also one
                        on services from 3rd party vendors          of its greatest vulnerabilities: Cyber
                        can create a finger-pointing support        attacks and hacks on cloud data are
                        nightmare. Cloud-based solutions are        increasing, both in frequency and
                        almost universally subscription-based       severity, with the criminals targeting
                        in terms of payment. Instead of buying      SMBs particularly. A recent server
                        the infrastructure, a business owner        hack of toy maker VTech exposed the
                        rents it for a monthly fee. This can lead   personal data of nearly 6.4 million
                        to lower upfront and implementation         people – mostly children.
                        costs, but over time, the savings from
                        a subscription service often ends up

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