Fanfare (and a drumroll) accompany the debut of NCR Silver One

NCR could not have ordered up a more perfect day for the big reveal of a new product.

A cloudless sky, light breeze and temperature just south of 80 greeted visitors on Monday, April 22, at the NCR Silver One unveiling staged on an expansive rooftop green space at the world headquarters of NCR Corp. in Atlanta's Tech square.

The event dovetailed with another big fintech happening in Atlanta, the second annual Fintech South Conference, held April 22 and 23 at Mercedes-Benz Stadium and hosted by the Technology Association of Georgia. 

NCR sponsored a key component of Fintech South, Innovation Alley, and started that particular ball rolling with a peek at its own innovation, Silver One. 

Guests at the midafternoon unveiling included merchants who are either using or considering the NCR Silver POS system.

Hosts included Michael Hayford, NCR president and CEO; Paul Langenbahn, executive vice president and president of NCR Commerce; and Chris Poelma, president and general manager of NCR Silver.

Also on hand were members of the NCR development team responsible for creating the soon-to-be-released Silver One solution.

Hayford kicked off the event with a welcome message before handing the presentation over to Langford, who explained the significance of Silver One to small and midsize business owners:

We're announcing today that a small business can leverage our technology with no upfront investment whatsoever. It's a pure subscription model — you don't even have to buy hardware from us. We just made it one simple, very transparent monthly fee. 

The next thing that we've done to take complexity out of managing all this technology for small business is that we've combined the point-of-sale world and the payments world. It used to be that you'd go to one technology provider for your point-of-sale system, maybe go to others for some other technology in your store or restaurant, and then go to one of the big banks for payments or one of the big payment processors. No more. We're going to make that super easy for small businesses with very transparent, easy-to-understand pricing so you understand what you're paying us for.

A true all-in-one point-of-sale solution, Silver One integrates payment acceptance, processing and back office management. A Samsung-designed Quantum tablet [as Langford mentioned, optional] serves as a sleek customer-facing point-of-sale device. 

The tablet isn't the only streamlined aspect of Silver One. The system bundles an entire payments program for small and midsize businesses — simplifying setup and delivering relevant transaction data that can help businesses improve customer engagement.

NCR execs were especially pleased with the addition to Silver One of competitively priced payments processing through JetPay, a company that NCR acquired last year. 

The incorporation of JetPay allows the business owner to dispense with the time-consuming and potentially confusing task of selecting a payments processor, according to Poelma.

Silver One also eliminates the wasted time and confusion that often occurs as employees of a retail or restaurant business learn to use a POS system. Poelma said that NCR developed the Silver One app to be simple and intuitive — easy for new employees to learn.

Additionally, he said, the company can preconfigure the Silver One solution to meet a customer's unique needs, with with every product and its pricing preloaded into the system. In effect, all the business has to do is open the box, plug in the unit and connect to the internet to get off and running with an operational POS system, Poelma said.

A 700-item feature set allows the business to further tailor the system to meet particular objectives for data collection and customer communications, and a full digital commerce suite helps small business owners take advantage of online commerce opportunities normally reserved for larger retailers.

Last but not least, the solution provides 24/7/365 support for the user.

"Today's business owners need simple, reliable and cost-effective technology solutions that help them quickly [realize] revenue in the brick-and-mortar and online ecosystem," Poelma said. "NCR Silver One makes this possible in an easy, customer-centric way. Our customers work hard to ensure their businesses grow and thrive. We want to celebrate this new technology — and more importantly, our customer's future success — with them."

A performance by the Atlanta Drum Academy wowed the crowd.

And celebrate they did, concluding the Silver One introduction with a drumroll (literally, in a thundering performance by members of the Atlanta Drum Academy) and a live cooking (if you call that sort of artistry cooking) demonstration by renowned chef and restauranteur Bobby Flay — who, as it happens, uses NCR POS systems in all of his restaurants.

At the end of the event, NCR treated guests to a round of cocktails amid the mouthwatering aroma of Bobby Flay's spice-rubbed seared scallops. Sadly, there wasn't enough to feed the entire crowd.

That disappointment aside, however, the big reveal of NCR Silver One made a beautiful Monday afternoon even better.