Systime, a subsidiary of the Rs 340 crore CMS group, recently unveiled VersaPOS, a retail management product targeted at the Indian retail segment. Dave Lakhani, vice president of Retail Business Systems for VersaPOS spoke to Stanley Glancy about Systime’s plans for India

You recently set up a new SBU for VersaPOS? Could you tell us something more about the product?
VersaPOS is a complete retail management system from Systime. The product has been in the US market for close to 10 years now and has already won two Microsoft retail application developer (RAD) awards. It works as a standalone product but is also highly scalable for use in multi-chain stores. The software is based on a SQL database, ensuring scalability, security and speed. Features include customer spending pattern tracking, inventory control, and frequent shopper programmes. Quicksell is a key area for most stores. VersaPos enables this through its graphical interface. Customer-targeted selling, suggestive selling, point-of-sale and loyalty programmes are enabled through this software.

The product also offers a multi-register credit card interface, a quick search tool with configurable search criteria, a module which handles customer payments in scheduled instalments and also a module that places items on rental basis and other customisable point-of-sale features. The software offers more than 175 built-in custom reports.

What opportunities do you see in the Indian retail market?
The Indian retail segment is one of the largest in the world but has a long way to go as far as organised retailing is concerned. A joint report by McKinsey and the Confederation of Indian Industry (CII) has pegged the Indian retail market at $180 billion. The market, according to the report, is growing at a steady rate of 11-12 percent and accounts for around 10 percent of the country’s GDP. Most retail customers today use Bradma-based Cash-Track register machines or the Casio cash register. Being completely unorganised, no data capture is being done. But with smart cards and credit cards finding huge acceptance with the populace, the need for retail applications is coming in. Most of the larger stores have completed setting up their back-end systems. So they are ready for VersaPOS, which will handle their front-end operations.

We have identified two levels in the retail segment where we see huge growth opportunities—shops like Akbarally’s and Shopper’s Stop which have branches across the country and small chain stores found in most metros are our key target segments. Our product can also be used in standalone stores with large operations. Most of the shoes and apparel stores in the country, especially in the smaller towns and cities, belong to this category. VersaPOS is scalable across tiers. Products may be moved between departments, categories, or any other criteria, with a click of a button.

VersaPOS has been present in the US market for a long time. Tell us more about your reasons for launching the product so late in the Indian market?
Availability of low-cost hardware and telecom were major hindrances in the adoption of retail software earlier. But with robust telecom infrastructure in place and the prices of hardware on a downward spiral, the cost has come down. But infrastructural constraints make replication of international models incompatible in the Indian environment. The level of modernisation in the Indian retail segment is quite low compared to developing countries. Indian retailers, instead of adopting the Western model, need to take Indian conditions into consideration if they want to make a success out of it. We have completely localised our product to meet the requirements of the Indian retail environment. VersaPOS comes with a graphical interface designed to operate with a touch screen, which enables even a novice user to understand the functioning in less than 20 minutes. This also increases speed of transactions.

What will be your marketing strategy for the Indian market?
Our target segments would include clothing, cosmetics, general retail, jewellery, toy stores, etc. VersaPOS is priced at Rs 50,000 per license. The cost also depends on the number of modules incorporated into the system, the number of registers in a store and the number of stores in a chain. We offer around 15 modules based on the plug-n-play model. We are currently working with JD Edwards to get their certification for our product. Once we get the certification, JD Edwards will recommend our product to their retail customers. The product has also been integrated with most of the well-known ERP systems in the country. Apart from this, we are going to utilise the CMS network on an all-India basis. CII predicts that 1,000-1,500 stores will be coming up in each of the metros in the next year. We expect VersaPOS to contribute around 20-30 percent of the company’s revenues in a year.

Systime, a subsidiary of the Rs 340 crore CMS group, recently unveiled VersaPOS, a retail management product targeted at the Indian retail segment. Dave Lakhani, vice president of Retail Business Systems for VersaPOS spoke to Stanley Glancy about Systime’s plans for India

You recently set up a new SBU for VersaPOS? Could you tell us something more about the product?
VersaPOS is a complete retail management system from Systime. The product has been in the US market for close to 10 years now and has already won two Microsoft retail application developer (RAD) awards. It works as a standalone product but is also highly scalable for use in multi-chain stores. The software is based on a SQL database, ensuring scalability, security and speed. Features include customer spending pattern tracking, inventory control, and frequent shopper programmes.

Quicksell is a key area for most stores. VersaPos enables this through its graphical interface. Customer-targeted selling, suggestive selling, point-of-sale and loyalty programmes are enabled through this software.

The product also offers a multi-register credit card interface, a quick search tool with configurable search criteria, a module which handles customer payments in scheduled instalments and also a module that places items on rental basis and other customisable point-of-sale features. The software offers more than 175 built-in custom reports.

What opportunities do you see in the Indian retail market?
The Indian retail segment is one of the largest in the world but has a long way to go as far as organised retailing is concerned. A joint report by McKinsey and the Confederation of Indian Industry (CII) has pegged the Indian retail market at $180 billion. The market, according to the report, is growing at a steady rate of 11-12 percent and accounts for around 10 percent of the country’s GDP. Most retail customers today use Bradma-based Cash-Track register machines or the Casio cash register. Being completely unorganised, no data capture is being done. But with smart cards and credit cards finding huge acceptance with the populace, the need for retail applications is coming in. Most of the larger stores have completed setting up their back-end systems. So they are ready for VersaPOS, which will handle their front-end operations.

We have identified two levels in the retail segment where we see huge growth opportunities—shops like Akbarally’s and Shopper’s Stop which have branches across the country and small chain stores found in most metros are our key target segments. Our product can also be used in standalone stores with large operations. Most of the shoes and apparel stores in the country, especially in the smaller towns and cities, belong to this category. VersaPOS is scalable across tiers. Products may be moved between departments, categories, or any other criteria, with a click of a button.

VersaPOS has been present in the US market for a long time. Tell us more about your reasons for launching the product so late in the Indian market?
Availability of low-cost hardware and telecom were major hindrances in the adoption of retail software earlier. But with robust telecom infrastructure in place and the prices of hardware on a downward spiral, the cost has come down. But infrastructural constraints make replication of international models incompatible in the Indian environment. The level of modernisation in the Indian retail segment is quite low compared to developing countries. Indian retailers, instead of adopting the Western model, need to take Indian conditions into consideration if they want to make a success out of it. We have completely localised our product to meet the requirements of the Indian retail environment. VersaPOS comes with a graphical interface designed to operate with a touch screen, which enables even a novice user to understand the functioning in less than 20 minutes. This also increases speed of transactions.

What will be your marketing strategy for the Indian market?
Our target segments would include clothing, cosmetics, general retail, jewellery, toy stores, etc. VersaPOS is priced at Rs 50,000 per license. The cost also depends on the number of modules incorporated into the system, the number of registers in a store and the number of stores in a chain. We offer around 15 modules based on the plug-n-play model. We are currently working with JD Edwards to get their certification for our product. Once we get the certification, JD Edwards will recommend our product to their retail customers. The product has also been integrated with most of the well-known ERP systems in the country. Apart from this, we are going to utilise the CMS network on an all-India basis. CII predicts that 1,000-1,500 stores will be coming up in each of the metros in the next year. We expect VersaPOS to contribute around 20-30 percent of the company’s revenues in a year.