Managing a small business is no easy feat. Among the many things you need is a powerful point of sale (POS) system—and a trustworthy team behind that solution. That’s where POS Nation, a plug-and-play retail point of sale provider, comes in.
POS Nation powers over 10,000 retailers nationwide, and the company is constantly evolving to provide customers with the most up-to-date and industry-specific solution. E-commerce integration, automatic inventory management, competitive payment processing, and 24/7 technical support are some of the many offerings that set POS Nation apart from its competitors.
President at POS Nation
We caught up with Cort Ouzts, president of POS Nation, to learn more about the company, the point of sale industry, and why choosing a complete solution is essential to small business owners.
Can you give us a brief overview of POS Nation and what it does?
POS Nation offers complete point of sale solutions to small businesses. Our POS system bundles hardware, software, support, and payments into one turnkey solution. While we can work with almost any retailer, we primarily serve liquor stores, convenience stores, groceries and markets, and tobacco shops. We focus on independent, owner-operated retailers because, as a small business ourselves, this is the market we know and understand.
Our mission statement is, ‘we help small businesses think big.’ What that means to us is that we put sophisticated software into the hands of small- to medium-sized businesses to help them compete with the big box retailers. We help our customers be more competitive by streamlining their operations and providing them with the insights and data they need to make better business decisions.
What inspired you to get started with POS Nation?
I began my career in investment banking and private equity, but after business school in 2013, I was offered an opportunity to come lead POS Nation. I honestly don’t think I even knew what POS stood for back then, but I had worked with the owners of POS Nation in a separate venture, and they were looking for an outsider to come in and bring a fresh perspective to the business. The opportunity was intriguing to me because the market had just begun to transition from a transactional business model to a SaaS-based model. This type of strategic transition isn’t easy for any business, but the challenge appealed to me. Ultimately, I decided to take a chance and accepted the position in the middle of my second year of business school.
On my first day of the job, half of the employees quit on the spot. It didn’t get much easier after that, and the first couple of years were really challenging. Most weeks I was just hoping we had enough cash in the bank account to make payroll. However, I was incredibly fortunate that one of the employees at the time I joined, Spence Hoffman, decided to take a chance on me and stay with the company. Soon after, we hired an entry-level sales rep named Ryan Bates, and the three of us gradually formed the core leadership team.
After a couple of years, we started to find traction with our strategy, and by 2017, the three of us had purchased the company from the previous ownership group. Spence and Ryan are still indispensable parts of the team and now serve as vice president of sales and product and vice president of merchant services, respectively.
In 2018, we began our inorganic growth initiative, and we’ve since completed four acquisitions to expand our product offering. Each one of these acquisitions has meaningfully impacted the businesses and led us to where we are today.
Most founders of the companies we’ve acquired grew up as retailers. Eventually, they realized that their existing point of sale software wasn’t meeting their needs, so they created new solutions themselves. It’s the classic ‘there’s-got-to-be-a-better-way’ situation that spurs entrepreneurs in all industries. POS Nation’s story is a little different. The three of us didn’t grow up in retail, but the common thread that’s motivated us from the beginning is that we love solving problems and we love helping small businesses grow.
Why do small business retailers need an all-in-one point of sale solution?
There’s a multitude of reasons why retailers need a point of sale solution. At the most basic level, a point of sale system allows businesses to check out customers and take payment. Beyond running transactions, however, a POS system operates as the brains of the business. Modern point of sale systems do everything from track stock levels and run promotions to manage employees and communicate with loyal customers. A POS system is an investment in a retailer’s business that will ultimately save the business owner time and money by streamlining operations.
Can POS Nation help retailers manage their inventory?
Powerful inventory management is something we pride ourselves on. Our software does an excellent job of tracking and managing everything that enters and leaves a retailer’s store.
From the beginning, our team is available to import a business’ entire inventory—making the transition to a new point of sale solution simple. Once their products are set up and they’re ready to sell, the software does all of the work for them. Using artificial intelligence, it learns buying and selling patterns to make educated decisions about the store’s stock. The software will rank products based on how they’re moving to ensure they’re only purchasing the optimal quantity of what the business needs. Purchase orders can even be integrated with vendors automatically—making inventory management a hands-off task for a small business owner and their team.
What’s your recommendation to small business owners trying to navigate the point of sale landscape?
First and foremost, find a point of sale system built for your industry. POS systems that try to be everything to everybody tend to either have limited, simplistic feature sets—or on the opposite end of the spectrum, they have so many features and options that they are entirely too complex and complicated to use. Don’t get me wrong—many retailers can get by with a generic retail point of sale system, but the more tailored solution you can find, the more features you’ll have that are built exactly for your business.
Second, be wary of mandatory fees. As the industry has transitioned to cloud-based POS software, most options now will have some monthly fee associated with it. Nonetheless, there are two areas where POS companies can sneak in extra fees that typically are overlooked by unsuspecting customers. First, some companies advertise a low monthly fee that initially seems appealing. But once you dig deeper, you realize that you’ll need to pay additional fees to unlock the features, like inventory control, that you really need. It’s the equivalent of finding a phone plan for $10 a month only to realize later that you need to pay another $20 to text, another $15 to use GPS, and then another $10 to play music. The second area where POS companies can hide fees are in their merchant service agreements. POS companies may offer their software at a low cost, but in order to accept payments, customers have to pay outrageous payment processing fees. These fees are typically hidden in monthly processing statements, and because they aren’t incurred until after merchants start using the system, they’re often ignored at the time of purchase.
Finally, understand that your POS provider is in many ways a business partner, so you should ultimately work with a company that you connect with and trust. Many retailers overlook the importance of ongoing tech support until an emergency arises. No system is perfect, and I can promise you that you’ll inevitably need technical support at some point in time. We encourage retailers to call tech support before they ever purchase a system. Does tech support answer the phone promptly, or are you forced to sit on hold forever? Are the technical support representatives knowledgeable, or are they a glorified answering service? Do the technical support representatives care about you, or are they just trying to get you off the phone? Most importantly, if you were in an absolute worst-case scenario and unable to accept credit cards during peak hours at your store, do you have confidence that this technical support representative could help you? Ultimately, based on my experience, the technical support team of a POS provider speaks volumes about that company’s culture, so take the time to really understand who you’ll be working with for years to come.
How can small business owners learn more about POS Nation?
You can contact our sales team directly or schedule a live demo to take the software for a spin. We have plenty of customer testimonials and point of sale resources available on our website, too.
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