'Retailers are paying too much for their fixed-fee POS maintenance,' says Aures

This article is brought to you by Retail Technology Review: 'Retailers are paying too much for their fixed-fee POS maintenance,' says Aures.

Aures Technologies incorporating J2 Retail Systems has called into question the charges commonly levied for fixed-fee maintenance on the hundreds of thousands of PC-based touchscreen terminals that are in use throughout retail.

Explains the company's UK Managing Director, Moray Boyd: "We're committed to passing on to UK retailers the considerable cost-savings brought about by our technical innovation and increased product reliability. Aures has not only dramatically reduced the cost of fixed-fee hardware support but can boast the lowest total cost of ownership (TCO) in the highly-competitive UK POS market."

Aures UK Managing Director, Moray Boyd.

AURES urges retailers to consider total cost of ownership above purchase price when choosing POS hardware from competing proposals. Adds Boyd: "TCO analysis provides a far more accurate cost basis for comparison and should include purchase price and maintenance costs over a 5 - 7 year product life cycle. Typically purchase price will account for one third of expenditure and lifecycle costs two-thirds of expenditure, so it's folly to ignore these more significant costs."

Whilst conceding that POS systems must be covered by a support package in order to reduce the risk of downtime, Moray Boyd asserts that most UK retailers are paying far too much for fixed-fee POS maintenance. "Our mission at AURES is to drive down TCO for retailers through continual assessment of new product reliability, resulting in fair and transparent support costs," he says.

AURES' new fixed-fee maintenance service has the following elements:

• Bespoke- contracts can be tailored to suit specific needs;

• Choice of service level agreement - same business day, next business day or five or seven day cover;

• Swap-out service – a faulty terminal not fixed on site is replaced and returned to bench for repair then held as part of the customer's stock to be returned as required;

• One Help Desk number - Aures Help Desk provides a single point of contact for 24/364 support; Optional hardware Health Monitoring – a service recommended for retailers at particular risk of expensive downtime costs;

• Engineering expertise – our engineers are trained on all J2 and Aures products including peripherals;

• Regular reporting - periodic call reports identity potential problem areas and detail the number of calls made, type of fault, maintenance visits, and much more.