Simphony POS Review | Top Features, Pricing & User Ratings
Simphony POS Review
Based on statistical findings, revenue generation by the food and beverage industry is expected to grow by about 3.5% annually (Source).
Simphony POS is essentially a comprehensive, versatile, and highly flexible Point of Sale solution for Hospitality businesses.
It offers a range of convenient back-office capabilities for single or multi-location restaurants, theatres, entertainment venues, coffee shops, cafeterias, and theme parks.
To reap the best out of this business opportunity, you need to implement the right strategies and technologies. In this regard, the Simphony POS system will come in handy.
Throughout this Simphony POS review, you will learn why thousands of bar and restaurant owners prefer this Oracle POS solution.
Simphony POS System Review – Company Overview
The Simphony hospitality POS software and hardware components are produced by Oracle Hospitality.
Though recently acquired by the Oracle Corporation, Micros Systems, Inc. was founded in 1977, and incorporated in 1978.
Based in Columbia, Maryland, United States, the company offers a range of POS software and hardware solutions.
Oracle Hospitality is particularly renowned for its superior POS and property management systems as well as workflow application solutions.
Simphony POS System Benefits
- Features reliable offline capabilities
- The system is entirely integrated for enhanced accuracy and customer service
- Improves kitchen communication and efficiency
- Offers Cloud-based convenience with remote access to analytics and real-time reports
- Supports Mobile POS, complete with mobile payment, digital menu boards, and online ordering
- Multiple hardware options with Mobile-enabled capabilities
- Rich user interface keeps customers engaged with live content
- Easier and accurate cash management capabilities
- Features a conversational ordering platform and a fluid workflow
- Efficient and consistent kitchen management
Possible Drawbacks
With this provider, you may have to wait a while to get a response from the customer support team. You may also find the system to be a bit slow and bulky from time to time.
However, rebooting the POS system should restore everything back to normal. These are issues you won’t find with leading restaurant POS systems like CAKE POS and Lightspeed Restaurant.
Oracle Simphony POS Pricing
Depending on the size of your business and the number of outlets you have, this vendor will tailor its POS offering around your needs.
The provider offers an assortment of point-of-sale software capabilities and hardware components.
The pricing of this solution is quote-based as you may have noticed. The actual cost will mainly spend on the number of business outlets, hence then a combination of hardware and accessories you need.
It will also depend on the POS software features and capabilities you would like to get. To get an accurate quote, you should contact the provider directly through the official Oracle Hospitality website.
Simphony POS Hardware Requirements
Although it follows in the success of its processor, the MICROS 9700 POS suite, Simphony offers a unique enterprise approach.
As a matter of fact, it is the very first enterprise POS solution by the provider that applies service orientated architecture (SOA).
The resilient and integrated POS system allows for easy scaling of its point-of-sale and back-office capabilities to support thousands of outlets.
Owing to its flexible configuration, the type of hardware you need to implement Simphony will vary from one business to another.
To begin with, you can have the system hosted centrally at Oracle’s data centers or self-host the Simphony POS at your premises.
In either case, you will still need to buy the appropriate Oracle components, including the MICROS Workstation 6, Tablet 720, kitchen display systems, and peripheral devices.
Oracle Hospitality Simphony POS Key Features
The Simphony Restaurant POS system leverages state-of-the-art technology by Oracle and intuitive service-oriented architecture.
It is the kind of system you need to achieve consistency in pricing, menu arrangement, and promotions across all your business locations.
The system is capable of managing multiple operation concepts, styles, and brands in the same organization.
Simphony also supports loyalty and loyalty programs and allows for easy inventory management and loss prevention.
All this is made possible by the numerous features and capabilities the POS system has to offer, including:
Real-Time Reporting and Analytics
The Reporting and Analytics Advanced Cloud Service solutions by Oracle Hospitality will furnish you with up-to-date information on the business. In its functioning, the feature compiles and organizes operational, and financial business data.
This data is then presented in the form of dashboards and reports that are relatively easy to understand. Such a solution will consistently offer you analytic as well as operational insights into the business in real-time through the cloud.
Again, the system will make it easy for you to track how and when promotions are run in the business as well as their overall impact. You will also be able to compare financial results across all your locations against history or even budget. Such tools will come in handy when making business decisions.
Inventory Management
The Oracle Simphony Food and Beverages is equipped with an assortment if stock-taking tools.
These are meant to improve stock management and simplify workflow in your business.
The Oracle Inventory Management Cloud Service will automatically keep track of the flow of inbound, outbound and warehouse items. One of the fascinating capabilities of the inventory manager is the Oracle Cost management capability.
This capability will help you capture, track, and analyze all costs associated with the inventory items. Users have also come to like the Oracle Supply Chain Orchestration Functionality.
This is essentially a powerful rules-based engine that was designed to manage the more complex supply and fulfillment activities. It may also be used to automate the execution of financial flow in internal trade between parties.
inMotion
This is a Mobile App that cons as part of the Oracle Hospitality Reporting and Analytics Advanced Cloud Service.
With this application installed on your phone, you will be able to review the key performance indicators (KPIs) in your business remotely.
This, coupled with real-time reports and analytics, will help you know how the business is faring right from your phone wherever you are.
It will make it easier and faster for you to make informed business decisions regarding the business.
Fully Integrated Platform
In addition to the superior Simphony POS software, the provider offers a range of proprietary POS Hardware components and accessories.
Such an integrated platform has been proven to save on IT costs.
The provider offers hardware suits that are tailored specifically for the hospitality environment.
Such hardware is then integrated with a myriad of Simphony applications for enhanced performance. You will also find the platform to be scalable, allowing you to extend its capabilities as the business grows.
In this regard, you will be able to add modules for inventory management, loss control as well as gifts and loyalty programs.
Labor Management
The Oracle Hospitality Labor Management Cloud Service is designed to offer you improved visibility into labor costs. Not only does this simplify staff management, but it also allows food and beverage businesses to maximize their profitability.
As a manager, the feature will equip you with the right tools to help you forecast data. As such, you will be able to create schedules that are optimized for guest experience and cost-efficiency. This is the solution you need to reduce manual administration in your business.
It will also allow your staff to request time off and monitor schedules from their mobile phones or tablets.
Our Final Verdict
The Micros Simphony POS system is a comprehensive, intuitive and industry-specific solution for players in the hospitality industry. In addition to its POS capabilities, the platform features a range of back-office tools to simplify your daily operations.
This cloud-based hospitality POS system allows you to create guest checks, as well as additional menu items, service charges, discount and tender details into an existing check.
With this system, you will also be able to void a check or retrieve a summary of the open checks in one or multiple locations.
Recommended Readings
We have compared Fattmerchant vs Square, thinking that they were very similar POS and payment processors, but we found many differences and we were surprised by these findings.
Complex industries that handle their own inventory and 3PL organizations have granular requirements about batch recalls, warehouse management and inventory reconciliation. They need handheld inventory scanners that connect in real time with their point of sales systems and ERPs. We review them here and test them connecting to a Zebra printer. Beautiful!
We have reviewed several POS providers. The most interesting according to their industry vertical are: OVVI POS, NCR Counterpoint, Alexandria POS Maid, Verifone Ruby 2 POS, Mynt POS, Indica Online, Reverse, Micros, 1st Pay, Simphony, and Appetize.
There is a type of POS that the majority of readers here do not seem to like. I refer to the POS Pin Pad type. I understand the readers that reject them, but we can recommend it for some type of businesses, as you will read.
Each industry vertical requires a different type of POS, so we cannot analyze them all together in one single group. Therefore, we have researched in different verticals to define which are the POS systems that we can recommend for each industry and why: Wholesale POS, POS for kiosks, fast foods, POS for restaurants and which of them work well in iPads because some work very bad in mobile systems in my opinion, gas stations, supermarkets, dispensaries, convenience stores, dry cleaning industries, furniture, liquor stores, and bike shops.
What about cash registers? We have reviewed some and we have found good and bad products: cash registers for gas stations, small businesses in general, and restaurants.
We reviewed some specific type of point of sale systems that determine the price according to the weight, called POS scales.
We have studied barcode and label printers, as label printing is a legal requirement in some industries
Restaurants, fast foods, delis and food trucks, require a separate kitchen printer integrated with the POS with a separate hardware unit. We have reviewed them here.
We do not usually review printers for POS, we simply dedicate to review a complete POS system with its hardware. However we had so many criticism and discussions around printers for Square, that I have decided to investigate further here.
