When it comes to POS software, small business retailers want an easy life. This means hassle free, straightforward.
Key to achieving an easy life with POS software, besides the software itself being easy to use, is the ease with which parts of the software not often used can be learned and understood in the context of business operation.
Whereas in the past, a user manual was the key learning tool, today, the key learning tool is a good online, searchable and constantly evolving knowledge base, a knowledge base that keeps up to date with the software, evolving as the software evolves. A good knowledgeable includes how to text, step by step guides and instruction videos. It facilitates access to all these resources from anywhere including mobile, tablet and computer – at work, home and elsewhere.
This is what best practice user documentation looks like for smart POS software for small and independent retail businesses.
Whereas a printed manual is hard to update and not easily searched, evolving online searchable documentation is different, more useful and more valuable for engaged users who want to achieve more from their software.
Yes, the printed manual is so last century.
At Tower Systems we provide access to our documentation through a searchable knowledge base. This is setup in such as way so as to make searching easy for non technical people, so they can search based on plain English terms and find what they are looking for. The knowledge base is interactive too, allowing users to add comments and provide feedback. This makes it a customer driven resource and open to two-way communication.
Our experience is that small business retailers love the accessibility of the knowledge base and the documentation it contains. Better still, they love the ability to request enhanced coverage on this or that topic and then seeing us deliver this enhanced content.
Helping users enjoy easy use of our software is vital to their success and the commercial value of the software. So, to us, good documentation starts with easy to use software. Screen designs, data field descriptors, on-screen information and more combine to make using the software easy. The online documentation through the knowledge base makes it easy to, to learn more about the software.
Our approach to POS software user documentation is that the job is never done. Just as our software evolves so does the documentation supporting our software.
