{"id":771,"date":"2017-05-18T11:41:44","date_gmt":"2017-05-18T11:41:44","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/reformingretail.com\/?p=771"},"modified":"2019-01-23T07:56:21","modified_gmt":"2019-01-23T13:56:21","slug":"eating-crow-how-heartlands-new-pos-xenial-could-prove-us-wrong","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/reformingretail.com\/index.php\/2017\/05\/18\/eating-crow-how-heartlands-new-pos-xenial-could-prove-us-wrong\/","title":{"rendered":"Eating Crow: How Heartland’s New POS, Xenial, Could Prove Us Wrong"},"content":{"rendered":"

Last year we <\/span>published a story<\/span><\/a> on Heartland’s (now Global Payment’s) consolidated cloud POS effort under their Commerce umbrella. Our concerns fell into a few categories:<\/span><\/p>\n

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  1. Building the new POS seemed really expensive (though not nearly as expensive as Revel, Toast and some other cloud companies have been)<\/span><\/li>\n
  2. The POS appeared to want control over all bolt-on products (loyalty, reporting, etc.)<\/span><\/li>\n
  3. While dealer economics for the new POS were unpublished, unfavorable terms for existing dealers really had us questioning Heartland’s <\/span>modus operandi<\/span><\/i><\/li>\n
  4. Payments companies are not product companies and mingling the two could be dangerous<\/span><\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

    After sitting down with <\/span>Christopher Sebes<\/span><\/a>, President of Heartland Commerce, for an update on <\/span>Xenial<\/span><\/a> POS, it looks like we might be helping ourselves to a serving of crow! Christopher and his team seem to be doing everything right, starting with the application itself.<\/span><\/p>\n

    \"\"<\/p>\n

    Many POS softwares are only compatible with one computer operating system: think Aloha and Micros on Windows, or Revel on Apple’s iOS. Xenial will run on Windows 7+, iOS and Android operating systems. Christopher’s team was able to accomplish that using <\/span>Electron<\/span><\/a> for Windows and <\/span>Cordova<\/span><\/a> for iOS and Android. This gives maximal coverage on potential operating systems.<\/span><\/p>\n

    Additionally, Xenial was built with multi-locations in mind. Many single store operators are eager to use cloud, but regret the lack of redundancy in a local server. By that we mean that if internet goes down, the cloud POS just became an expensive paperweight. You can’t close out at the end of the day, send tickets to a kitchen, or even talk to peripherals. Multi-store owners know to avoid these rookie mistakes and instead look for cloud systems that are hybrid, allowing some level of local redundancy in the event of internet outages.<\/p>\n

    To that effect Xenial has local redundancy and offline capabilities for up to <\/span>30 days<\/b> without internet connectivity. The offline mode still connects with peripherals, has cash drawer functionality, and allows for interaction with timekeeping and other mission critical features. Xenial also shares orders between terminals, pushing tickets around in a P2P distributed architecture, just like <\/span>other top hybrid cloud POS companies do<\/span><\/a>.<\/span><\/p>\n

    Surprisingly, Xenial is payment processing agnostic<\/strong>. “While we would certainly prefer customers to choose Heartland’s processing services, we need to earn that business. We don’t want to force customers to use our processing solutions if they’re not the best fit. POS and processing should be free markets,” explains Christopher.<\/span><\/p>\n

    We remain convinced that POS and processing industries will naturally merge over time, but it’s splendid to see a payments company that’s not forcing its own payments, even though it certainly could. Xenial has this flexibility because they’re separate from Heartland, assuaging another of our initial concerns on product creep. “Xenial operates as separate business unit and it’s not part of any of Heartland’s payment businesses,” Christopher notes. This is critical for delivery of a quality POS with no underlying motives.<\/p>\n

    Xenial also has a revolutionary business model that we hope other POS companies aspire to. Christopher explains, “We want to bring the benefits of enterprise functionality to your main street SMB merchant. You can’t do that by charging enterprise prices for a mom-and-pop.” So Xenial engineered a fixed price for their platform with an unlimited number of devices. What is that fixed price?<\/span><\/p>\n

    Using sales volume over a 90-day window, Xenial will categorize your business into a revenue group. That group is then associated with a flat monthly rate. Xenial will publish these pricing bands at a later date, but they want it to be transparent and Christopher ensures us it will be very competitive. Here’s why.<\/p>\n

    Xenial offers a number of additional features (i.e bolt-ons) in their platform that would normally come at extra costs, <\/span>for free<\/b>! One could argue that nothing is free, but given Xenial\u2019s cost structure thus far they might be swallowing the expense as a cost of doing business. These features are:<\/span><\/p>\n