Many businesses, including restaurants, use proprietary, often expensive, hardware to handle customer orders and track activity. On Monday, at the National Retail Federation convention, Microsoft demonstrated a point-of-service solution based on Windows Embedded that lets businesses use off-the-shelf-hardware to simplify customer service and business operations.
Microsoft’s solution, a collaborative effort with MICROS, Intel and Dell, uses a Dell Venue 11 PRO tablet that incorporates the Intel Atom processor, all powered by Windows Embedded 8.1 Industry, writes Olivia Chen on the Windows Embedded blog.
In a restaurant, for example, servers can carry the tablet from table to table to take orders and “respond quickly to customer requests, or dock it for use with cash drawers, scanners or scales,” she writes. “Managers can access business data such as labor costs, sales performance and trends, inventory, or even security camera feeds or other location-specific information. If the restaurant gets busy, a manager can immediately switch to taking orders, then jump back into data analysis when the rush dies down.”
The solution, she says, can be deployed on any Windows 8-based device, giving restaurants and other businesses flexibility to “fit their technology to their brand design and physical environment. And businesses that are already using Windows-based software to manage their back-end processes can easily integrate the solution and devices into their existing systems.”
In the video above, John Coyne, Microsoft senior business evangelist, demonstrates MICROS Simfony Enterprise for Food and Beverage.
To read more, head over to the Windows Embedded blog.
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Suzanne Choney
Microsoft News Center Staff