SambaPOS Project Support Campaign

[JohnS]

SambaPOS Project Support Campaign Has Launched!

Its time for all of us users to give something back for this wonderful Point Of Sale Solution and for the hard work of the SambaPOS Team.


"We are proud to announce we've just launched our campaign on indiegogo.com. Buy contributing to this campaign you can support us to bring our projects into life. Visit Campaign page now to learn more about how this campaign works, our plans and privilages for the contributors."

SambaPOS Project Support Campaign

[Stelzi79]

As emreeren bloged the Support Campaign hadn't hited the target of $ 50.000. I had the feeling that this campain would fail because such crowd funding things target in the case of SambaPOS the wrong audience. I hadn't said anything because I didn't want to fail it with my negative opinion. For all I know I could have been wrong.

SambaPOS shouldn't target the single restaurant-owners because they are hardly ever the tech-savy guys, which could setup SambaPOS in the first place. For this restaurant-owner the OpenSource (=ComunityEdition how some vendors name there OpenSource-Version) would be optimal.

So the main target should be in my opinion the IT-Buddy or IT-Professional which setup and support a running SambaPOS-System and want to do this on a recuring base. I think the best way would be to built a multi tier partner-network. From a small IT-Buddy to a big IT-Company which resells and supports SambaPOS all year round or even with some form of area-protection and promotion-links on the homepage with recomondation for getting a SambaPOS local support. Such higher tiered partners then have to pay yearly fees for such promotion. In this Partner-Network should also such promotionals like sales-folders of SambaPOS and extended documentations.

Another way to make money would be to offer certifications. On top of my head I could think of following certifications:

Certified POS-User => for waiters on how to use SambaPOS
Certified POS-Administrator => for changing prices and so on
Certified POS-Reseller => for beeing able to plan and successfully setup a SambaPOS-System for a customer, this would be also a requirenment for access to the Partner-Network.
Certified User-Certification-Trainer => to be able to held user and administrator certification-courses, for higher tiered partners this would be very valuable if we provide them wich such structured oportinities.
Certified POS-Hardware => higher tiered partners posibily would be required to ceritfy there hardware they want to sell to there customers.

Tested on an online-testing-platform which is controlled by SambaPOS and a nice looking certificate sent to them by mail when they have proven to have the nesesary knowlage. Ranging from $ 100 for normal users-certificate to several hundreds to the higher ones could be a nice way to make money and educate users, administrators and resellers. For the partners there would be discounts if certifications are purchased through them. Another nice way to reward partners.

A third way of making money would be to provide a framework for paid 3rd-party-addons or extensions. Provide them with a unified payment-solution where there would be some cut for SambaPOS. Also alow here OpenSource-addons for free to get a big developer comunity. The downside is that with the coding-structure SambaPOS v3 has, it wouldn't be very practible to do this now. We basicaly had to do a almost rewrite to have a mor feature-exentric framework to easily be able to extent SambaPOS nicely in a sane maner. Now it's nearly impossible to contain one new feature in one place (assembly) because of the inner structure of v3. We would have to come up with a v4 to get this of the ground in a sane manner.

With a v4 feature-exentric system it would also be easier to expand SambPOS to other braches than only restaurants. A highly exendable POS-Framework for several branches althought would be a long term target for the sake of thinking ahead.

I also think there should be a dedicated thread for ideas for peoples on how to go forward with SambaPOS.

[emre]

Hello Wolfgang. First of all thank you very much for the great suggestions. 50.000 was a tough goal but what I was really wondering was the contribution count especially on our home land. That gave really great idea about the community power behind us.

For whom SambaPOS creates benefits? It creates benefits for restaurant owners and I thought we should receive support from restaurant owners. So I've always focused on restaurant owners needs and requests. If we want to target resellers (like everybody does) we should create benefits for them. Lots of people contacts us for business partnership and they generally asks a commercial option they can sell. I don't think we can attract enough reseller attention with a free project since they should convince customers to pay for services. Working with commercial solutions is easier for them.

What I'm thinking is while contributing to the open source project, I should build a commercial version of SambaPOS. If we can generate some income we can build a small team and offer more services. Like you always say we need better documentation and easier management features. If I can solve that problem I believe more restaurant owners will support us by subscribing to the commercial version.

[Stelzi79]

Generaly speaking the general perception of OpenSource-Projects is that they are a very scary thing. This is also true to regular IT-Supporters. If I look on many other OpenSource-Project as someone who hasn't the real time or knowlage to realy vet such an OpenSource-Project I must concur with this perception of the scary thing. (I've seen very scary things in OpenSource-Projects ...)

Every and all OpenSource/FreeSoftware license have a clause to reject any warranty or that it even functions correctly. If you buy a suposingly properly functioning car and you see a sticker on the dashboard that says that you are not soposed to think that the car even starts or is able to operate savely you wouldn't buy this car. This is also true for such have to function and mission-critical sofware like a POS-Software. If it means that a software does something in somewhat mainly critical bug-free way when they buy a commercial license than they are sleeping very well at night. Such people want to pay for valueable software more if they help them makeing more money!

The normal restaurant-owner (you want to target with your campaign) isn't realy skilled in beeing able to vet such a OpenSource-Software like SambaPOS. For them the term OpenSource is a very scary term. The few which are able to vet SambaPOS and to setup and administer found out, that SambaPOS has the nessecary proffessionalissm for using in his restaurant. This few owners or It-Guys are already using SambaPOS and perhaps already contributed to the campaign! For this people SambaPOS should always be OpenSource. These pople are also likly to contribute more to SambaPOS.

If you haven't much marketing-budget at all you are not selling directly to a normal restaurant-owner. The normal way of getting a POS-System for a normal restaurant-owner is to ask his IT-Guy or IT-Firm he got all the other PCs he has. These IT-Guys or IT-Firms are selling your (commercial) products. If you tread them good and support there buissines-model than they are selling your products for you because they also get a good portion from the cake.

You are right that SambaPOS creates benefits mainly to restaurant owners but they arn't realy buying in the majority of times the software. The IT-Guys and IT-Firms sell it for you to the restaurant owners. You are right to focus on the restaurant owners when it comes to programming the real features of SambaPOS but when it comes to commercialising you have to look to resellers.

I think you tend to forget that a simple purchase of a possible commercial version of SambaPOS is the end of all interactions. First a restaurant owner needs to have hardware. Somebody has to setup and learn the whole usage of it. Somebody has to train staff on SambaPOS and in the end sometimes he needs changes on products or printing-template. A normal restaurant owner hasn't the time or don't want to confront himselfe with such topics so he hires an IT-Guy which does all this service for him and he is happy to pay him the ammount of money he (hopefully reasionebly) want's for his service and it works as supposed to and have no fuss to deal with. If we can produce a compelling and easy to follow package for resellers than we could be very successfull of selling trought them. The smal rest of restaurant-owners who have the time or want to do this themeselve is the OpenSource-Version.

Now I say some of my wisedom I accumulated so far:

Customers are people who want to buy my things so focus on people who don't want my stuff only for free.

Know the difference between the people who uses the products and the people who buys the products. Sell to the buyers and not to the users.

Software without the knowlage on how to use it or to set it up even if it's free is more expensive than buying something less propper functioning.

Normal people arn't able to grasp the seemingly high complexity of IT-related things. So they go to there IT-Guy and IT-Firms when they want smething IT-related happend. In this situation the IT-Guy or IT-Firm is the "buyer" and not the average joe.