Arturo Giovanni Arias Granados — Retail POS Functional Consultant

Arturo GiovanniArias Granados

I have already run a GK implementation end to end — from the client's side of the table. Nine years in Mexican footwear retail, 70 stores live, one platform upgrade with zero downtime.

Retail POS Functional Lead · GK OmniPOS · SAP CAR · SAP S/4HANA
León, Guanajuato, Mexico · Remote · Available for 20–40% international travel

0Stores live on GK

0Deployment pace

0Tickets per day

0Software availability

0Downtime on 5.11 → 5.21

What the role asks for, and where I have done it

Mapped against the Functional Consultant profile published by GK Software for Mexico.

REQ-01

Degree in Computer Science / IT / MIS

B.Eng. in Computer Systems Engineering, Tecnológico Nacional de México — degree and professional licence issued.

REQ-02

Strong background in the Central / Latin American retail market with POS process knowledge

Nine years inside a Mexican footwear retailer with 500+ stores. Rolled out GK across two different operating models — 40 franchise stores, then 30 company-owned stores under a separate legal entity.

REQ-03

POS / Backoffice and ERP / store processes

Configured OmniPOS, CPD, CIS, SVS, CDPL, Launchpad and the GK server applications; defined the to-be store processes myself before they were built.

REQ-04

Hands-on with databases

SAP HANA underneath GK, SAP CAR and SAP S/4HANA; SQL for reconciliation and data enablement.

REQ-05

Markup languages

POSLog transmitted as XML into SAP CAR POSDTA — an interface I still own today.

REQ-06

REST APIs

OData Inventory Visibility from SAP CAR consumed live at the till for in-store stock lookup; two payment and voucher schemes integrated through REST APIs.

REQ-07

Payment processing

GK payment methods, coupons, promotions and SVS gift cards; API integration of the Tarjeta Amiga payment method and corporate voucher programmes; CFDI 4.0 self-invoicing at the point of sale — the Mexican fiscal requirement no store can go live without.

REQ-08

Cloud environments

Two separate things, and I keep them separate: the GK estate itself runs on-premise — I migrated it from Windows Server to Linux and owned those servers. My cloud experience is my own: Microsoft Azure (including Azure AI Search) and AWS, through training, self-study, and deployments I have built and still maintain.

REQ-09

Consultative sessions, workshops, solution concepts

Client-side functional lead: gathered requirements, wrote the solution concepts, and ran workshops for 30 store managers on both the system and the business process behind it.

REQ-10

Deployment oversight and issue resolution

Coordinated 6 internal implementers and 4 external consultants across 2 partner firms; on-site go-live and hypercare at a pace of ten stores a week.

REQ-11

Analysing trends, designing next-generation retail processes

Co-founded my company's Center of Excellence: AI agents in production, machine-learning price elasticity for retail, AI-driven merchandise planning. SAP Sapphire 2026, Orlando.

REQ-12

Professional fluency in English and Spanish

Spanish native. English used daily for nine years across GK and SAP documentation, specifications, and communication with international partners; conversational, and actively pushing to full fluency.

REQ-13

20–40% travel, regional and global

Valid passport and U.S. visa. Available to travel and to relocate.

REQ-14 · GAP

Fuel systems (preferred)

Not yet. The closest I have is high-frequency, high-compliance transaction handling — fiscal invoicing at the till and multi-tender settlement — which is the part that usually transfers.

02 — Three projects, in detail

The work behind the numbers

2018 – 2021 · Programme

Rolling out GK OmniPOS across 70 stores, twice over

SituationA footwear retailer replacing its legacy till estate while simultaneously implementing SAP S/4HANA and SAP CAR at head office. Two store networks with different owners, different fiscal entities and different operating rules.

ActionI was the functional lead on the client side from November 2018. I defined the target store processes, stayed through the whole build cycle, learned the platform hands-on alongside the implementing consultant — servers, configuration, extensions — and then trained and supported the stores myself.

ResultFirst go-live February 2020 across 40 franchise stores; 30 company-owned stores in 2021. Sustained pace of ten stores per week, roughly 1,200 tickets a day, one-minute average checkout, ten-minute store close, and 100% software availability.

OmniPOSCPDCISSVSCDPLLaunchpadSAP S/4HANASAP CARSAP PO / IDocHANA

6-month programme · Platform upgrade

GK 5.11 → 5.21 across 70 live stores, without closing a single till

SituationA full-version jump requiring complete reinstallation and reconfiguration — and a move from Windows Server to Linux — on an estate that was trading every day.

ActionRan both platforms in parallel with DEV, QAS and PRD environments on each version, and built a physical device lab where we walked the full scenario matrix before any store was touched. Eight custom extensions had to be rebuilt and revalidated along the way.

Result70 stores migrated with zero downtime. Around 100 incidents a month across the estate, resolved without interrupting trade.

Linux migrationEnvironment strategyDevice labRegression matrixCutover planning

8 extensions · Custom development

Making GK fit Mexican footwear retail

SituationFootwear sells in a size grid, wholesale tickets behave differently from consumer tickets, and Mexican tax law requires an electronic invoice at the moment of sale.

ActionStood up a dedicated environment for GK extension development and delivered eight of them — including a size-matrix selling screen that made wholesale ticketing possible at the till, REST API integration of the Tarjeta Amiga payment method, API integration of corporate voucher schemes, and CFDI 4.0 self-invoicing.

ResultThe platform absorbed the local business model instead of the business bending around the platform — the difference between a rollout that sticks and one that gets rolled back.

GK extensionsREST APIsCFDI 4.0Voucher schemesWholesale ticketing

Center of Excellence — where retail goes next

My title is Retail Business Process Analyst in the Center of Excellence I helped found — a hybrid role: I still own SAP CAR and the POS estate functionally, and I design the retail processes that sit on top of them.

SAP CAR, end to end

Functional owner of SAP CAR. Every integration into POSDTA runs through me, including the bridge between the legacy POS estate and S/4HANA for financial postings, bank statements and open-item clearing.

Price elasticity, modelled

A platform for the Retail division that trains machine-learning models on sales and inventory history to forecast markdown pricing and sell-through timing for discontinued product.

AI agents in production

Agents built on Microsoft Copilot Studio and Power Platform; hands-on evaluation of OpenAI, Anthropic, Microsoft Copilot and SAP Joule for enterprise use.

Azure legal platform

A knowledge platform for the Legal division on Microsoft Azure — document store, Azure AI Search and AI-assisted retrieval.

Merchandise planning

Digital-transformation workstream for Analyticalways: solution audit, tool enablement, testing and data readiness against the SAP backoffice.

Staying current

SAP Sapphire 2026 in Orlando and the SAP Now AI Tour 2026 — I go where the roadmap is announced, not where it is summarised a year later.

Nine years, one retailer, one platform

2016 — 2017Network and telecommunications administrator, Tecnológico Nacional de México, León campus.

2017 — 2022Software engineer — C# .NET, Java, SAP ABAP and HANA — and, from Nov 2018, client-side functional lead for the GK programme.

Nov 2018GK programme starts, in parallel with the corporate SAP S/4HANA and SAP CAR implementation.

Feb 2020First go-live: 40 franchise stores.

202130 company-owned stores live; GK 5.11 → 5.21 upgrade across the estate.

2022 — 2025Retail Systems Coordinator — owner of the GK estate across all 70 stores, and of the 5.11 → 5.21 upgrade.

Apr 2025 — nowRetail Business Process Analyst, Center of Excellence — SAP CAR functional owner, AI and machine learning for retail.

Seven years as the client. Now the other side of the table.

For seven years I have been on the buying side of a GK implementation: writing the requirements, arguing the scope, running the test lab, standing in the store at six in the morning on go-live day, and living with every decision afterwards. I know precisely where a rollout goes wrong, because I have been the one it went wrong for.

That is the perspective I would bring to GK's clients in Latin America — plus the local knowledge that decides whether a deployment lands here: fiscal invoicing at the till, franchise versus own-operated models, voucher and instalment schemes, and the way Mexican store teams actually work.

I would be joining as a consultant, not as a beginner. The product ramp-up that usually takes six to twelve months, I have already done — on your software, in production, twice.