You have probably seen an anxious retail assistant struggle with a long line of frustrated customers as newly rolled-out terminals continue to refuse to read their standard debit cards. It’s unpleasant to see, even more unpleasant to be there yourself. Retailers are always after that next shiny technology fad. The true magic, however, is in the very mundane and unglamorized process of ensuring your stuff works before facing a live customer on the sales floor.
New software or hardware deployed directly to the sales floor is a formula for disaster. If you want to save your own sanity and also protect your revenue, you will need to develop and use a serious and isolated sandbox testing program. Here is how you can test your technology against what real-world retail looks like.
Replicate the Exact Payment Chaos
Your number one goal should be to prove that funds are able to flow from a customer’s bank account to your business’s bank account safely. Never use test accounts or virtual test data supplied by your merchant service provider. Use your actual card readers at an actual testing site, with the same cables and smart POS system as those used in your live locations for testing.
Use actual corporate credit cards for each transaction when running your tests. Your intent is to run every possible edge case that the cashier will experience every day. Run a partial refund, interrupt a contactless payment during the process of paying midway, disconnect the internet, so you can see how the POS system behaves when it has to go “offline,” and then perform store-and-forward processing. The ultimate goal is to know how your card reader communicates with the banking gateway while under duress.
Scan, Print, and Verify Permissions
It’s usually at hardware integration that some of the best applications crash. Take out all your worst inventory problems and see how quickly the scanners will read these products on the first try. Any delay longer than 2 seconds per product will ruin your production rate in high-demand times.
At the same time, test each type of receipt you use. Test for accuracy of tax breaks, check logo printing, and check whether the receipts cut off cleanly from the roll so as not to jam. Also, while performing this testing process, verify customer account information. Ensure that a standard sales associate does not have permission to lower the price by a large amount, but a manager has permission to override this blockage within 5 seconds, without having to restart the sale.
Audit the Data Trail
A transaction is only successful if the backend systems record it flawlessly. All mock sales created while testing must follow a continuous path from the point of processing to inventory tracking to accounting ledger tracking.
Create a large number of test sales and extract the final report of the day. Match the quantities on each receipt with the quantity displayed on your digital dashboard. If your inventory does not immediately decrease by the exact amount sold or if the total taxes due do not match exactly, within one week after opening for business, your analytics will be useless. Be sure to resolve any issues with data exchange before going into production, and not after the books need to be closed at the month’s end.
Build a Resilient Front Line
Testing is ultimately about people, not just microchips. Once the technical infrastructure feels solid, bring in two of your shop floor supervisors who have never seen the new system. Hand them the manual, give them a busy scenario, and watch where they stumble. Their feedback will show you exactly where your configuration needs tweaking before the final rollout.
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