POS Will Result In Higher ROI For Small Shops

Intrex India has come up with an ambitious plan to deploy 20,000 point-of-sale (POS) terminals across India to sell products and services through the ItzCash prepaid card. Prakash Pawar, CTO and head, HRD and Operations, talks to Biztech2.0 about the challenges faced and upcoming plans.

After the success of ItzCash, what are your future plans?

We’re in the process of deploying 20,000 POS terminals at shops and retail outlets across India. Hitherto, ItzCash cardholders had to log into the website for online services. With the introduction of POS terminals, they can access the online services at shops and retail outlets that accept these cards.

As a result, the terminals are an extension of the customer service channel for merchants and local shop owners. The terminals, which are also programmed to accept utility bills, will be connected to the central application through GPRS.

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Unlike with credit cards, the terminals are equipped to offer various over-the-shelf services other than the regular goods and services of the shop owners. Eventually, it offers higher ROI to shop owners than the typical credit card does. Additional services offered include Internet booking of railway tickets, payment of utility bills etc.

In case the cardholder forgets to carry the ItzCash card to pay for the bill, the POS terminal owner can use his own card and conclude the process via cash settlement with the customer.
How have you mapped the cashless Trade Exchange into an IT application?

There are around 1000 companies listed on the Cashless Trade Exchange. It is an online service somewhat similar to the traditional barter system. Any entity listed on the online exchange displays the goods and services it deals in. Other companies on the exchange can buy the inventory displayed; however the medium of exchange is termed as ‘Trade Credit’ and not rupees. One Trade Credit is equivalent to one rupee.

Before qualifying a company to be a part of the exchange, Intrex India will audit it for creditworthiness. The exchange offers an alternative sales channel to corporates; it doesn’t conflict with the traditional sales channel. Our operations ensure that sellers’ buying requirements are also taken care of.

The application is written in ASP and runs on a SQL-based server. The modules that form the entire application are Registration, Risk Assessment, O/D Facility, Loan from Exchange and Inventory Listing. Pages are kept light to increase throughput.

Applications for ItzCash and Cashless Trade Exchange are developed in-house; how is the Software Quality Analysis done?

We start with functional testing i.e. UAT (User Acceptance Testing), where test cases are created offline on test servers to check the impact of the request change on the system performance. Periodically, transaction analysis testing is also carried out in coordination with the third-party vendor. Thereafter, they provide us with the final report on the system speed with concurrent users.

Importantly, for data security management, we do ethical hacking with the help of third-party agencies. Although there have been attempts to hack into the system, they have been unsuccessful.
What are some of the challenges while conducting the UAT?

Occasionally, understanding customer requirements becomes a challenge. The customer communicates his idea of the application to the analyst, who subsequently passes it on to the coder. Ultimately, after the UAT, when the application returns to the customer, it could fall short of expectations.

Software development is done in-house and the nature of service demands 24x7 availability. Do you have any specific criteria for employee recruitment?

Job aspirants fresh out of colleges can be divided into those who are technically sound and want to work for IT companies like Infosys, Wipro, Satyam etc, and those who are skilled in IT management and want to work with companies that use IT for functional expertise. We are somewhere in between. Intrex India is a user as well as a developer of IT systems. Hence, we want the best of both aspirants who have the technical soundness and the ability to manage IT infrastructure.