To keep the market share or to gain new shares of the Swiss Point of Sale (PoS) market, it is necessary to offer only systems which are on the latest state of the art. DigiPoS Systems as a player in this market is developing a software called DigiPoS Diagnostic. This product is capable of monitoring a PoS proactive. Data collected with this monitoring tool can be analysed on a web based platform. Additionally, DigiPoS Diagnostic makes it possible to establish an automatic inventory of all components attached to a PoS at any time.

The goal of this thesis was to provide DigiPoS Systems with a base to decide whether or not to launch DigiPoS Diagnostic.

The market analysis with 35 companies covering all branches of the Swiss Retail market has shown a big potential for products that offer proactive monitoring for PoS. Many interviewed companies evinced an interest in such a software, although they admitted to not having thought seriously about making use of a product like that. One result of the interviews was that break downs of PoS systems are mainly caused by their peripherals. According to the market analysis up to 80% of these break downs could be prevented by using DigiPoS Diagnostic. Therefore the Total Cost of Ownership of PoS Systems could be reduced.

Analysing the competitors (IBM, NCR, Wincor-Nixdorf) of DigiPoS Systems one could find products, which aim for similar purposes as DigiPoS Diagnostic does. The potentials of these different products vary depending on their manufacturer. It is therefore not possible to compare them equally. One characteristic, which all systems have in common, is that there is no evidence that one of them has been implemented at a customer?s site so far.

Based on the results of this thesis it was recommended to launch the product DigiPoS Diagnostic in the Swiss retail market. To allow a successful entry into the market the team developed a strategy to launch DigiPoS Diagnostic.