Outsourced IT Support: Two Common, Costly Mistakes

By Matt Pillar, chief editor

August 2013 Integrated Solutions For Retailers

When entrepreneurs launch a business, the most plentiful resource they typically have on hand is unsolicited advice. I know from experience that the majority of this advice goes unheeded. Perhaps it’s remembered, but it’s usually forced by the spirit of the entrepreneurial ego into the “does not apply to me, I have this figured out” file.

For start-up retailers and established retail businesses alike, much of the unsolicited advice you receive is no doubt IT/operations-related, and you should trust your gut that most of it’s bad. You should fire all your cashiers, rip out all your POS lanes, and install selfcheckout. You should hire all your cashiers back, rip out all your self-checkout lanes, and buy iPads for the POS. You should abandon brick-and-mortar retailing altogether. Let it all ride on the Internet.