Dee (not her real name) owned a restaurant and was heavily reliant upon her Windows based POS system. It enabled her to automate the order taking process in the restaurant, allowed orders from her website to be sent to the kitchen for food prep, and connected her to Door Dash so that she could service a wider customer base. She was able to accept gift cards. She could generate accounting and payroll reports. In all, it was a very functional system for being ‘older’.

As I understand it from Dee, a representative of the company that made her POS happened to visit her business for a meal. He noticed that she had an older system and talked to her about it. He told her that the system was outdated and that their company had a newer Android based system. It was a complete rewrite from the ground up and the Android system allowed them to be nimbler in implementing new features. He encouraged her to contact her representative and talk to them about upgrading.

Dee followed his advice. She contacted her representative and asked for a demonstration. Dee asked about all the new features and was very impressed. She quickly made the decision to move forward with the upgrade and placed her order.

As I am sure you have guessed, the upgrade did not go well. The older Windows-based system did have some areas that she wanted improvements in, but it had gone through a decades-long development process. The Android system, while borrowing features from the Windows system, was only a few years past the initial rollout and was still going through some growing pains.
Some features that she assumed were in the newer version were not. Some features implemented in the newer version fell short of the functionality they had in the older system. She told me that the new features, for the most part, that she was excited about did not perform as well as she believed they would and some of the older mission critical features that she relied upon and assumed would be brought forward in the upgrade were not there.

She experienced interruptions to her business. Her customers were having problems with the external ordering systems and internally many of her processes were impacted. These interruptions, in her words, cost her time and revenue. She ended up leaving her old POS company and moving on to another one that had a good reputation with the other restaurants in her area.

At the time that Dee was in the middle of her upgrade problems, my advice was that before jumping into a new system, she should catalog the features that she NEEDS, WANTS, and WOULD BE NICE TO HAVE. I also suggested that she catalog those items that impacted her business negatively so that she can avoid them. As she has a great resource in the other restaurant owners in her area, I asked her to speak with them about the systems they have and what they do and don’t like about them.

My big take away from Dee’s experience was that she focused on the new features and did not make sure that the important features that she already had were included in the upgrade. Because the decision was made so quickly, many details were missed or glossed over in the process. Such an important piece of business software should have been fully vetted over a more extended period of discovery.

So, if you are looking to replace a mission critical piece of equipment or software, make sure that you fully understand what makes it critical and that the upgrade is truly an expansion of features and not a retraction.