By: Clifton Beyer

My reason for attending Vartech was to look for new equipment models and technology for our loyalty solutions. Bluestar has put together this tradeshow, which is sponsored by many of its vendors, to showcase a lot of this new technology within the POS and mobile equipment markets. This type of equipment is used in many industries from restaurants to hospitals to field research. Attendees were mostly value added resellers, such as Tecmark, and independent software vendors. I attended a lunch sponsored by Honeywell that focused on emerging mobile technologies. Whether it is just a trend or not, mobile technology is being widely anticipated and desired by users and therefore equipment companies need to accommodate for this. The latest devices used are moving from legacy into running Windows Mobile, Android, Chrome, and Apple operating systems. Running these common operating systems makes it easier to find ISV’s to develop for and also easier for users since more and more use these in daily life already.

Mobility adds a lot of flexibility to programs from payment to loyalty with the ability to capture more information about customers quickly and more efficiently. I am still intrigued and impressed whenever I see a vendor that utilizes mobile technology. For example street food vendors in St. Paul are accepting payments on mobile devices. Instead of taking cash only, which we know is becoming a rarity, the vendor can accept payment through their smart phone with a MSR (Magnetic Stripe Reader) attached in the headphone port.

One equipment vendor I was impressed with was Socket Mobile. Socket is catered towards the mobile market providing handheld devices, handheld scanners, and attachments that work with their devices. Not only do they manufacture their own equipment, but they have accessories including barcode scanners and MSR’s that can work with your current mobile devices. I loved the portability and versatility of the devices. The barcode scanners worked faster than most I’ve seen around and were 1/3 of the size of its competitors utilizing Bluetooth technology to connect to the mobile devices. NO CABLES! Anything that helps with that cable clutter is a little slice of alright in my book.

Amongst the equipment vendor aisles; rows of POS systems, handheld devices, printers, there were also some great accessory vendors. A lot of these companies were offering ideas for improving loyalty programs. An idea I loved is having custom receipt paper made for loyalty customers pre-printed on the back with logos, promotions, or simple advertising. This is a great and simple addition to any loyalty program offering receipts.

Attending Vartech was a great way to keep up on emerging trends in mobile payment, loyalty and the equipment we use to run everything. Vartech is a great way to meet new people and maintain relationships with vendors and my wonderful BlueStar reps.