Supply Chain Unlocked

Ep. 7 - Inside Modern POS Systems With Michael Leister

• Dr. Matthew Waller • Season 1 • Episode 7

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0:00 | 29:38

Checkout isn’t a place anymore. It’s a strategy. We dive into how modern POS now spans mobile devices in the aisle, self-checkout, curbside pickup, and scan-and-go, and what that means for customer experience, associate workflows, and the bottom line. With guest Michael Leister, who helped deploy hundreds of thousands of devices across Walmart and Sam’s Club and later supported Amazon’s last mile, we unpack the operational playbook behind retail hardware and software that actually scales.

We start on the floor, not in a slide deck: observing shoppers, mapping associate tasks, and finding the gaps before drafting requirements. From there, we compare the strengths of enterprise vendors, NCR Voyix, Toshiba, Fujitsu, Diebold Nixdorf, HP, and the fresh pressure from Elo that’s pushed the market toward sleeker, modular, and configurable systems. Michael shares why mobile-first models like JCPenney’s ELO M60 transform a handheld into a dockable fixed lane, a line-busting tool, and an endless-aisle clienteling device that saves the sale when inventory is elsewhere.

ROI hides in serviceability. We break down how remote management, over-the-air updates, and AI-guided diagnostics (think on-screen self-checkout fixes and one-tap ticketing) cut downtime and truck rolls. We also look at NRF trends such as smart carts, computer vision, scan-to-add, and retrofits, along with the real hurdles of charging, shopper adoption, and defining where a transaction “closes.” Call 2025 a turning point: retailers need hardware and software that flex across kiosks, fixed lanes, mobile, and self-checkout without ripping and replacing every few years.

If you care about faster queues, higher conversion, and fewer abandoned baskets, this conversation gives you a clear path to modernize with less risk. Listen, share with your ops and tech teams, and subscribe for more pragmatic deep dives. Got a checkout pain point we should tackle next? Send it our way and leave a review to help others find the show.

SPEAKER_00:

I want to clarify that this podcast is distinct from my responsibilities as a professor in the Sam M. Walton College of Business. Nonetheless, it aligns with my aspiration to provide practical insights to professionals and business by showcasing companies and people that can enhance your ability to manage, lead, and strategize and market effectively and the retail value chain. And now without further ado, let's get into the exciting episode. Michael, thank you so much for joining me today. Appreciate it. Yeah, great to be here. Appreciate you inviting me. So this is Michael Leister. He works with KiteString as an expert on POS and all kinds of technology. So uh Michael, how did you get into POS and just technology in general? Yeah.

SPEAKER_01:

So as I was looking to uh change careers when I was leaving active duty army, I was, you know, you just get out there and and look around what what really fits my skill sets. And how it landed was was to go to work running uh working for NCR on the Walmart Self-Checkout Project, and uh which didn't fit any of my skill sets at the time. But what I what I like to tell people is that, you know, it's just problem solving the same way. It's just a different subject matter. And that's what I fell into, uh, just got my foot in the door with the right people and uh quickly uh understood how passionate I really was about it because it's not just store technology, it's it's really about how you can impact the experience for your customers, which is the same thing I did in the military. You know, who are your customers in the military? It's your soldiers and how your decisions impact the day-to-day operations. And that's still what I was doing in the point of sale world. So it's really kind of come together.

SPEAKER_00:

Well, that's great. So now you worked for NCR for quite a while too. Uh I worked for NCR for four years. Okay. And you did tons of installations.

SPEAKER_01:

Yeah. Um, so by the time I left, my project teams were running uh deployments of over 423,000 devices a year in Walmart and Sam's Club. Wow. Yeah. Didn't sleep as much as I would like to during that time frame, but I loved every minute of it.

SPEAKER_00:

So you've you've been involved in actual implementation as well as consulting. That's correct.

SPEAKER_01:

That's correct. And that's one of the things I like to talk about uh how KiteString does business is we're not just uh fresh out of school with an MBA coming into the consulting space, but we've actually been in the trenches. We've actually done the work and seen those implementations, the the good and the bad that may come with those or the challenges that may come with those.

SPEAKER_00:

So um first of all, I think most people listening know what POS says. And uh first when we back up a second, um you know, we're talking about supply chain, and but supply chain really starts at this at the shelf, if you will, or acquisition. But would you tell us a little bit about POS and what you know of the evolution of POS?

SPEAKER_01:

Yeah, that's that's uh a really good question because uh point of sale is what POS stands for. And the point of sale, you know, on legacy systems really start uh was a place in the store. But today it's no longer a specific place in the store or one location. It's all over the store. So as uh as things have evolved, the point of sale can be in the aisle where where you see you meet uh employees that can check you out right there on a mobile device, or it can be at the curb when you're buying online and you're picking up in store or picking up at the curb. Uh, it can be at a self-checkout, or it can be an assisted checkout where you've got somebody helping you through that checkout experience. So it's kind of evolved. So it's no longer a single point of sale, but but multiple points. Where do you want to be and how do you want to do it? And then I kind of go back to uh another example would be Sam's Club, where you've got the scan and go technology where you do it all yourself, and the only hardware or point of sale hardware being used there uh with that experience is at the door when you're leaving and they're just checking your receipt to make sure that you know everything's on the up and up.

SPEAKER_00:

I think the technology that Sam's Club has implemented gives them a real competitive.

SPEAKER_01:

I absolutely love it. And uh the only thing I got to do is remember to start scanning my items when I walk in the door. But as long as I've done that, I the experience is like nothing other. You skip every bit of the line, you just walk out, and the exit technology that they've worked on where they just scan your receipt and they can do a quick check and you're gone within seconds. Yeah, where I I don't know many other places that can match that experience. It's it's really nice.

SPEAKER_00:

So you you worked at NCR, but you worked on Walmart and Sam's Club. That's correct. I was solely focused on Walmart and Sam's Club.

SPEAKER_01:

You also worked at Amazon later. Yeah. So so uh later I went to work at Amazon and Amazon was a little bit different role. I was still in operations uh on last mile, or which is you know the delivery side of the house. And I was actually uh running some help desks for them and and how we supported our drivers. So it was really on making sure that supply chain was was fully executed. And so it was a great opportunity to learn a lot a different area of customer service because obviously when you're deploying uh hardware into stores, there's a lot of customer service there. We would at Walmart, we would end up training associates how to use the new technology, but we also were supporting the the technicians that were in the stores. So I had two different types of help desks, but at Amazon, we're now supporting drivers, and it was a very different environment when you're dealing with contractor drivers in comparison to employee drivers. So it was just a uh quite the learning curve there, but still customer service and support and operations. So uh really enjoyed that uh as well. It was uh something that I can look back on now and and see how much I really learned in that, you know, that that time with Amazon, but uh gl was super glad to get back to the point of sales space because uh I like the faster pace and everything else that it brings with it.

SPEAKER_00:

Sam Walton early on saw the need for this. And it's interesting if you read uh Made in America, you see, I mean they they started, you know, sharing POS data with the home office you know, back before anyone could do it. They had to buy these the satellite system for IBM that was very expensive back then, and they had to put you know satellite dishes on all of the stores and the the home office. In fact, I remember when I moved here seeing that huge thing um at the home office. But um that was a huge investment. Today it's very different, of course. Um and back then you had to be a big player to even really have real POS. Um whereas today, just about anyone, any retailer could use. Is that right?

SPEAKER_01:

Yeah, one of the things I like about uh modern point-of-sale technology out there is the fact that you can accommodate the the mom and pop shops that it may only have one or two stores, uh, and then it scales up from there where you can, you know, support the enterprise organizations as well. And there are multiple providers with solutions that can accommodate, you know, that that full gambit. Um, so it enables a lot rather than you know the smaller environments having to do, you know, uh more manual uh point of sale tracking and everything else. They they've got modern point of sale systems that that can give you, you like what you were talking about with with Sam, you can still get the data you need, even if you've only got one location, and then you can actually affect and affect positive change in your environment to suit your customers' needs.

SPEAKER_00:

But you you help now at KString, you help larger retailers select POS systems, right?

SPEAKER_01:

Correct. We right now we're mainly in uh enterprise organizations. That's our main bread and butter, but we also do help some of the mid-tier levels. Uh and what's really cool is with that is the ability to bring in the best technology out there and conduct these selection studies where you're looking at the best of the best for their specific needs. And one of the things I like the best is to start with the boots on ground. That, you know, that's a military term. But we start in the stores. We we start uh by observing, watching how customers interact with technology, but also how the associates interact with the technology, uh, because they're both your customers in this case. And so we get to start with that deep store study, really understand the uh enablers, some of the constraints around that technology, maybe some gaps that they don't even know that exist today. And then we get to go out and look for who can fill those, you know, those needs, uh, which is really helping tailor make the solution to the actual problem that affects positive change for that boots on ground.

SPEAKER_00:

You know, I I know there's so many different types of retailers. I think you think about um what maybe a Walmart might need in a neighborhood market versus Dillard's um in a department store chain. Dillard's is another Arkansas-based retailer, which is enormous. They've they've done really well. Um but but those kinds of needs are different, aren't they?

SPEAKER_01:

They they certainly are. And and it actually makes me think about one of our engagements at Kitstring that we've done. Uh we worked with extensively with JCPenney's over the last three plus years. Uh, and JCPenney's has adopted a mobile-first uh model where they've got the it's called an M60, it's an ELO M60 mobile device. But what's really cool about that device is how flexible it really is. So you can start at a start, it has a docking system in it. You dock that little handheld device, and it becomes a full fixed point of sale register.

SPEAKER_00:

So this would be an associate in the store using this device.

SPEAKER_01:

Yeah, and it's handheld. It's it's a little bit bigger than your cell phone, but it's got all integrated payments, tap, dip, and swipe. So you can get all forms of digital wallets and everything uh on it. So in those times where you need to be at the register, you can dock this device and it's a full fixed point of sale. But then say things start to slow down a little bit and and you've got some time, you can undock that same device, move out from behind the register, get out on the floor where the customers may be, or maybe you need to be doing some pricing updates or inventory all on the same device. And then, hey, the customer's there and you're right beside them. You can even do clientelling and help them look up things, say that you didn't have the right size or color of the, so now it's endless aisle through the same device. So that flexibility is really cool to help uh customers understand and adopt. And to see JCPenney's really moving forward with that and being successful has been really cool after being one of the ones that got to help them find that solution. It was really kind of a rewarding, you know, thing.

SPEAKER_00:

Endless aisle. Yeah, that's a good descriptor for what that are other retailers looking at this idea of endless aisle.

SPEAKER_01:

Absolutely. And what it's it's not a new term over it's it's been around for the last four or five years or so. But yeah, they're all all looking at uh how can I prevent the customer from going somewhere else for this sale? So if I have if I know I have that item, maybe I don't have it in my store, maybe it's down the street, or maybe I need to just have it sent to them, you know, within the next couple of days and it just shows up their house, the same color and size that they needed, uh, just prevents them from going home and shopping online. They still get to retain that customer.

SPEAKER_00:

So I would think with on the one hand, you've got omnichannel, which you were talking about earlier. People are purchasing, you know, in the store, they're um buying online, picking up at the store, they're buying online, having it delivered to home, having it delivered in home, having having it delivered uh through uh drone delivery. There's so many options. Right. Um and then within the store, you've got things like the endless aisle concept. But on the other hand, you've got a lot of technological change. You know, um you've got Moore's Law operating, but you also have AI. There's just so many new things coming out there. I would think for the hardware providers, it would be hard to keep up and come are there very many hardware providers?

SPEAKER_01:

I would say there are there are a lot of hardware providers, but there are not a lot that that can really service the enterprise organizations at the level needed. There are some, you know, it it takes time for those mid-tier level uh vendors to really get to the point where they can scale enough. And that's that's one of the most important things uh is can those hardware providers uh provide the hardware at scale? But you you mentioned AI earlier. And I want to mention something that I it's another uh up-and-coming thing that I've seen in in some of the hardware providers out there. Fujitsu has this uh product called UScan. It's a modular uh microservice that you you can just take and and plug into your your software. But what it does that that I like from a hardware perspective is it gives you uh on-screen troubleshooting tips. So say you're sitting there and uh you're you're at a self-checkout and all of a sudden your coin recycler stops working. Uh and what it will do is you can hit a button and it will show you on screen that, hey, that this is the module that your coin recycler is not working properly. So you click on it and then it pops up a set of instructions on step one, do this, step two, do that, with pictures, with videos, and you can click. I did these things. Well, let's say it didn't fix the problem. You one tap and it can now create a trouble trouble ticket and shoot it, shoot it to through the system. And now no longer does an operator, does your store associates have to wait on hold with customer service to go through all of these steps. They've already done that beforehand. And you're so you're much more likely to solve the problem right away. And then you're more likely to get your register up and running again so much faster by using this system because now you don't have to wait, uh, wait for a technician to arrive on site because you've been able to either fix it yourself or you've been able to create a trouble death uh, a help ticket that would say, Oh, they've already done the following things and it didn't fix the problem. So now they know, oh, we need to take a couple of parts out there to fix this. So it's just one of those things that another uh outstanding software module that's coming to help enable the hardware.

SPEAKER_00:

Interesting. But I would think it would be hard for these firms to keep up with all of it. Uh who who are the big players that can scale?

SPEAKER_01:

Um so in the point of sale space, I would say the the top five are uh NCR Voyages, um, Toshiba, Fujitsu, Diebold Nextdorf, and um HP. Okay. Yeah. Um, but there's there are others out there, but those are the top five that I would say.

SPEAKER_00:

You said NCR and something else.

SPEAKER_01:

And NCR Voix. Voigt. Voyics. So NCR recently, uh over the last couple of years, has has split from NCR into two different companies. One one is more on the banking side of the house, and then they've divided into the Voyages side, which uh focuses on retail.

SPEAKER_00:

Okay. Yeah. So but you have having worked the Walmart and Sam's Club account, you have big-time experience and scaling. And that's what scaling means. What years were you doing that? Uh 16 through 20. So 2016 through 2020.

SPEAKER_01:

So you saw a lot of scaling, and you also saw Omni channels start to be rolled out. Oh, absolutely. Absolutely. And I saw Walmart iterate on some really cool hardware at the time that some worked and some didn't. Uh, I remember the pickup, you remember the huge pickup towers and stuff that oh, yeah, yeah, they had the coach too.

SPEAKER_00:

So the roofs of some of these super centers to have these towers in there. Absolutely.

SPEAKER_01:

Yeah, which I used it a couple of times just just to try it out. But it was something that even myself as a customer, I was like, ah, I'm okay this way. But uh my son is a is a Walmart picker today or a personal shopper. Uh that's that's what he does for his uh job. And I like that solution. You know, it's it's great. I like to use Walmart delivery when I can, but you know, I love shopping at home and just being able to pull up. They put it in my trunk and I've got the things that I need. Uh I like that solution a little better than the pickup towers, but still it's neat to see Walmart continue to iterate and change and tweak and just really focus on the customers. And and that that's the biggest thing for me is where where are the customers at today and where are they going? And then I like to help the retailers find something that's, you know, you hear future-proof is one of those buzzwords out there. But it is super important that not only we're thinking about today, but thinking about future solutions that I can uh upgrade rather than completely rip out the hardware that I have and replace it. You know, the more hardware evolves, the more, the more capable it is to adapt and not just be replaced.

SPEAKER_00:

So when um when you think about these big players, NCR, Fujitsu, HP, the others you listed, I don't remember them all, but are they is there is there a firm leader that and all these other ones are competing, or do they kind of leapfrog each other over time? Yeah, absolutely.

SPEAKER_01:

And so what I what I've seen in the market is Elo uh has not been uh around anywhere near as long as some of the others have. But what that did, them coming in, that was healthy competition, and it kind of made the others go, uh oh, we better start to, you know, we better get on innovations. And so what you've seen now is that healthy competition from a few years ago, now you look at the hardware set and everything is uh much more competitive, much sleeker, much uh more modular. So in the past, it was what you have, what you have is what you get, or what we have is what you get. You couldn't really customize very much without it being very expensive. So now that that that competition has been present and and some start to go and say, well, no, now you can configure it. If you don't want all this size screen and you want some with larger and you want uh different configurations, they even have self-checkouts that hang on the wall now or different things. You can pick and choose for what best fits in your environment, and you don't have to just order off the shelf, but you can fix kind of more like a buffet or a la carte, uh, which so that all is spun out of that competition from the big five that have, you know, where they do kind of go uh teeter-totter over each other, I guess.

SPEAKER_00:

And um you know, I would imagine too that some of them are probably easier to implement than others, is that right? Uh absolutely.

SPEAKER_01:

And and it depends on the situations, but yeah, absolutely. And with that, in the past, uh they were not quite, they weren't agnostic. If you bought NCR's software, you had to have NCR's hardware, or vice versa. If you wanted NCR's hardware, you've got to run NCR software. Well, today that competition and and modern architecture has really helped with things being agnostic. So you've got more options. I don't have to go with the same hardware and software set, but I can, if I really like this hardware, hardware A, I can pick that and still run software B, and which really has helped the environment as well.

SPEAKER_00:

So for enterprise retailers trying to pick hardware for POS, what are some of the key variables that really affect the return on investment of their decision?

SPEAKER_01:

Yeah. So um there are several things that I can really think of. One would be the serviceability of that uh equipment. For instance, you know, how hard is it to change uh a part that may be broken on it? Uh how often do I have to roll a truck versus be able to fix things remotely? If you're looking at a piece of hardware that's in the store and I've got to upgrade the software on it, say I've got to upgrade the operating system on it, do I have to actually roll a technician out or can I do it remotely? That affects the cost of the uh the upgrade, and which would obviously impact your your return on investment there. So the serviceability of things, the uh Upgrade ability, but also you also want to be able to manage all of your devices on a singular platform if possible. Because uh, especially the more you add mobile devices out there, some some retailers, it's one for one. One associate equals one mobile device. So think of the number of devices out there. Uh and so that that ability, I I think of a project I helped Walmart with years ago. It was an AirWatch update project. So they had a lot of mobile devices and they needed to update the AirWatch platform on it, which is a mobile device management solution on there. At the time, we ended up having to send technicians to every single Walmart, find every single mobile device in the store, and then walk through a set of steps to upgrade that device. That's if you can find them all. And if once you find them, they all are powered up or they're charged. So if you can, instead of doing all of that, you can actually remotely touch the devices. And now you're only having to manage by exception because there might be some devices that weren't powered on or you know couldn't charge, so you couldn't remotely configure them. Well, you so now you're only sending technicians to the exceptions and not to every single device like we did a couple of years ago with Walmart, you know? So that mobile device management platform becomes super important and helps with that return on investment as well.

SPEAKER_00:

I see. Now, isn't it true? I mean, you have said that to 2025 was a real pivotal year for POS hardware.

SPEAKER_01:

Why is that? So kind of like we we started this conversation, uh it's no longer a single place in the store, right? And so 2025, things are becoming more uh flexible, and you've got to adapt because if you're not adapting, you're not meeting your customers where they are. So these devices have to be able to flex across um self-checkout, fixed. What about ordering kiosks? You've got to be able to handle that. Uh, and then uh mobile, you're just being able to line bust or whatever with these devices. And 2025 has really uh I well, I would say the last couple of years, it's just becoming more and more such that you better keep up with it or you're gonna fall behind, especially at the enterprise level.

SPEAKER_00:

Michael, I know you went to NRF recently. Uh, did you see anything that was interesting there?

SPEAKER_01:

I saw lots of things that are interesting. I I don't know uh how much of your audience has been to NRF before, but wow, it is a bit overwhelming to see. But me being a hardware geek, I I'd love to go there and seek out those innovations that uh that are up and coming. Maybe it's not something that would fit in stores today, but in the future, maybe it is. Uh so one of those examples is uh smart carts. I don't know if you've if you've seen there are a few retailers out there that are piloting them now, shopping carts that have built-in point of sale into the shopping carts. Uh it's probably you've probably not seen it because it's really hard to operationalize, you know, to get customers to adopt that. It's a little intimidating for shoppers and stuff. But I think I counted 11 different options for smart carts out there. But yet when you walk around the US, you don't see a lot of smart carts out there. But one of the things that you uh the US, I think, is a little behind in is in this space because overseas they're adopting them a lot more. But you've got options that are computer vision based. So as soon as you place the item in your cart, you don't scan it. It recognizes what it is through uh AI and computer vision. It just says, oh, this is a candy bar and it rings it up. You take it out, it says, oh, they've taken it out and they remove it from your transaction and such, all the way to ones that you actually scan and put it in the in the shopping cart. Some of them weigh the the device, some of them weigh the products, some of them don't. So that's just one of those things that I I sit back and wonder, is this one of the future areas of point of sale that we're going to see successful in the U.S.? Or is it one of those things that uh maybe maybe customers just don't adopt it at the right level?

SPEAKER_00:

For these kind of shopping carts, do the retailers have to buy the whole shopping cart, or do they take their current shopping carts and re-retrofit them?

SPEAKER_01:

They've got models for both, absolutely. They've got things they can plug in that just kind of like snap on to your existing shopping carts. And they've got ones that are very high-tech that have the scales and stuff like I was referring to built into them. They even have uh the, you know, those little plastic shopping carts that you pull that are much smaller. Yeah, they've got those that are smart carts and stuff. Oh, interesting. Yeah. So it's cool to see that they're they're thinking about all the different types of potential use cases for them in the retail environment. But again, when I sit back and think about how much there really goes into operationalizing it, you got to think about how do I keep these charged? How do I keep them uh, how do I help customers not be afraid to use it? Um where do they check out? Where is quote the checkout? Where do I ring the transaction? So do I ring it when they cross the door to go to leave? Well, what if they go outside to grab a bag of ice and then they come back in? And so there's some of these things that still are uh hurdles to get over to make it easy for customers to use and adopt. And I just wonder, is this going to catch on or is it not? But it's cool to see.

SPEAKER_00:

Michael, um, you know, when you were implementing all of these uh solutions at Allmar and Sam's Club, you were having to manage teams. Did your master's degree and your work in the military help you learn how to manage teams?

SPEAKER_01:

I would say it uh definitely helped prepare me for that. Uh obviously managing teams in in retail implementations at the scale of Walmart and Sam's Club is uh a challenge in and of itself. But yes, absolutely. Uh I think our people is what drives, you know, uh our success. And you learn very quickly when you're working in this sort of uh stressful environment and high operations, uh, how to keep your team motivated and focused on success. And what is success? Well, that's defined by the retailers. What is success to them? What is success to their customers? What is success to their associates? And you really learned how to help manage through the ups and downs that come along with it. And the military and the uh master's degree in management leadership really helped me understand how to best help uh navigate those situations. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00:

Well, Michael, thank you so much for taking time to educate us about this. Very interesting. Really appreciate it. Oh, thank you. It's been been a pleasure.