“…Characters start off opening a simple
hot dog stand, and as they begin to make
more money, they move through the retail
ranks, graduating to a pawn shop, then a
grocery store, and eventually a
franchise. Players win the game when
they attract a buyer and successfully
sell their franchise. But there are a
lot of challenges to contend with before
the papers are signed and the sale is
closed. As in the real world of modern
retailing, players have to figure out
how to overcome challenging obstacles
such as financial losses to theft, the
discovery of counterfeit items in an
inventory and a surprise tax audit. The
more technology characters purchase as
they play the game, the easier it is to
grapple with these issues and get to the
end goal…”
This is how “Kidscreen”, a Toronto-based
magazine for the children entertainment
industry described Retail Hero’s game
titled “Retail Champion” in its latest
issue in December 2007. Since its launch
in September, Retail Champion has
enjoyed a quick jump to stardom in
October-November 2007 when over 150 online
publications and blogs published reviews
of the game with many acclaiming our
innovative approach to advertising the
advantages of using Retail Technology
through means of a game.
For example,
Retail Design Diva writes: “… never
before has a game been created to help
enhance the ability of building a retail
business. And a superhero game at that!”
The game is truly educational though may
be a distraction as it is easy to get
attached to.
Shopfloorblog.com says with tongue
in cheek: “… And, you know, it's also
pretty darn safe to play at work. Your
Boss: What are you doing? You: Oh,
nothing. Just learning how to use retail
technology to lower my shrinkage and
increase revenue.” Orlando Sentinel
compares Retail Champion to the popular
game Guitar Hero (“Guitar
Hero? Bah! I’m Retail Hero!” ).
Game Daily goes even further by
suggesting to “Eat your heart out,
Guitar Hero!” Even a blog called
Counterfeit Chic dedicated to
discussing the matters of counterfeit
luxury items in the retail industry,
found that Retail Champion is useful in
educating the retailers about the
dangers of selling counterfeit stuff (in
the game, if the main character
“catches” a counterfeit item he gets
penalized or even sued).
If you haven’t played the game yet, you
may
try it once the Christmas is over.
The game may give you some ideas on how
to use technology to make even more
money in the coming year.
What is a Bus-terminated
Application?
All too
often we hear about retailers that are
using, what we fondly refer to as a “Bus-terminated
Application” for their POS solution.
Now, this is not a brand of
software that has global recognition,
nor is it something you can generally
buy from Best Buy or your local friendly
software reseller. No, this is software
that was written specifically for the
business by someone that the company
hired to do so.
The problem with that is, this specialty
software is unique to the person who
programmed it. So all of your future
support and upgrades to the software
rely solely on the person who created
it. Generally this type of “garage-generated” software is not compatible
with other brand-name software products
out there so the retailer once again
relies solely on the person that
programmed it to create added
functionality or an integration piece if
they want to use other software along
side of it.
So what
happens then to that retailer if the person who created this
wonderful software for the company gets
hit by a bus tomorrow? I’ll tell you
what happens: all of your support and
future maintenance of the program that
you’ve invested thousands of dollars in
gets run over by that bus too! (Hence
the term “bus- terminated application”).
It’s a hard lesson to learn, but it all
goes back to that old saying “Don’t put
all your eggs in one basket”. There’s a
good reason why more and more retailers
are waking up to the fact that large
software corporations like Microsoft are
not going to go out of business anytime
soon and so can afford to boast a “10
year software guarantee” because they
are not relying solely on one person
(who could be hit by a bus tomorrow).
This kind of guarantee instills
confidence in the retailer who can feel
secure that their initial software
investment will not become obsolete any
time soon and later on when they want to
add more functionality to their ever
growing business, they can rest assured
that their POS software will integrate
easily with other software products
without having to start all over again
from scratch and spend even more money
than was necessary in the first place.
Bottom line – Don’t invest all your
money in a “Bus-terminated Application”.
Be smart about technology choices and
chose a product that’s well known, is
reputable and will only require you to
invest your money into ONCE.
RMS
Add-on Price Change
Effective January
15, 2008, Retail Hero changes prices on many of
its Dynamics RMS add-ons. The change is
implemented to make pricing more consistent and
address certain issues related to annual
maintenance renewals and license management.
Retail Hero sells
its add-ons either directly or through
resellers. Disregarding the method of selling,
each RMS Add-on end-user must be registered
with Retail Hero. RMS Resellers (VARs) may
request special discounts which will be
determined individually based on the volume of
the licenses sold and other factors. First year
annual maintenance is always included in the
price. To continue receiving program updates
in the consecutive years, the end-user must pay
annual maintenance fee which is calculated as
18% of the total purchase price of a specific
RMS add-on. Please contact Retail Hero for more
information.
Hero Points(loyalty points reward system):
1st POS lane - $799, ea. addl. lane at the same
location - $499
Hero Points
Headquarters (when available):
$1,500 with unlimited number of store
connections
Q-Rewards(Quantity-based loyalty reward system)
: 1st POS lane - $999, ea. addl. lane at the same
location - $799
Q-Rewards
Headquarters:
$2,500 with unlimited number of store
connections
Catalog View(visual transaction processing with large
touch-screen buttons):
1st POS lane - $799, ea. addl. lane at the same
location - $499
Back Order Presto
(back-order management enhancement):
1st POS lane - $799, ea. addl. lane at the same
location - $499
Work Order Fusion
(work order management enhancement, when
available):
1st POS lane: $799, ea addl. lane at the same
location: $499
HQ Liberty
(editing Global customer info from a store):
11st POS lane - $299, ea. addl. lane at the same
location - $199
HQ Module – free
TOP Import(a
transfer order/purchase order import and
enhancement utility):
1 store - $499, 2-5 stores - $299, 5+ stores –
$1,699 (unlimited license)
Is Technology Success Killing
Customer Service?
Web automation is
allowing retailers to hide from their customers
and it's also allowing unhappy customers to be
hidden from the retailer. Is this becoming the
classic lose-lose situation?
When Walmart.com recently touted its Web technology as the reason it was
no longer going to tell customers its phone
number, it raised eyebrows. That move followed
Amazon.com severely limiting access to its
customer service phone number. But the problem
of retailers relying too much on technology and
cutting off customer feedback is only half the
problem. Customer service outsource companies
are finding it quite easy now to interpret
policies however they want and to then hide
unhappy customers from their retail clients.
Another good technology advancement that is
often undermining customer service: Instant
Chat. In theory, chat is an efficient and
wonderful way to avoid long waits on hold and to
get matters quickly resolved.
But when reps are handling several IM
conversations at once and are reflexively
cutting-and-pasting canned responses to
heartfelt questions, the customer service
element seems to have gotten lost.
The heart of the problem seems to be the 90-10
customer service split. The instant messages and
the automated Web programs are fine for dealing
with about 90 percent of the customer service
problems. That is a huge load reduction for
customer service. The problem is with the
remaining 10 percent, whose problems are not so
cookie-cutter and often involve systems that are
not functioning as they are supposed to.
What happened to the days when you could phone a
toll-free number for customer support and
actually get a LIVE person? Have retailers
become so obsessed with making money that they
are neglecting the very people that are helping
them make that money in the first place?
Automation is great in some ways but when you
substitute automation for customer service,
you’re going to end up with more unhappy
customers and less profits in the long run.
Retail Technology providers like Retail Hero
know that in order to keep your customers happy
and grow your business, you need to listen to
what your customers are saying and be ready to
answer the phone in person when they call. It’s
ok to implement an automated phone system, so
long as it serves to route the customers call to
the correct person and not some automaton that’s
going to try and respond with canned answers.
Retail Hero is having its
biggest sale yet! Right now you can
save up to 21% on a New
Dynamics RMS Point of Sale bundle (Hardware &
Software) which works out to about ...
Over $1,000
dollars in
savings!!! Call us
today
New
Dynamics RMS price for Canadian customers!
From now until December 21st you pay the same price
as the American customers, or a 21% savings compared
to the previous list price.
Now, until December 21
2007 both Canadian and American customers pay the
same price of $3,799 for a bundle
that includes a
state-of-art POS computer and
software:
- Pioneer Magnus BOXi
P4/3G/1G/80G
- 2x17" LCD (second
monitor - for
Customer Display)
- Star TSP100 receipt
printer
- Metrologic MS9540
barcode scanner
- Cherry keyboard w/ MSR &
touchpad
- UPS
- Cash Drawer
-
1 license Dynamics
RMS + 1 year Service Plan)
In addition,
they can receive 10%
discount on any Retail Hero Dynamics RMS Add-in (Hero
Points,
Q-rewards,
PIC-ME,
Visual Catalog,
Back
Order Presto and others). Hardware upgrades such
as touch-screen LCD, RAID-mirrored hard drives,
backup system are also available - please call
and ask!
PLUS!!!
We still have some used systems in our inventory
that we're selling off at unbelievable prices!! +
The Ultimate
Computer stood on the shelf at a computer store.
When a customer arrived, the
salesman stepped forward to give his prepared
demo.
"This", he said, "is
the Ultimate Computer. It will give an
intelligent answer to any question you may care
to ask it."
At which a Clever
Dick (that was the customer's name) stepped forward and spoke into the Ultimate Computer's
microphone. "Where is my father"?, he asked.
There was a whirring
of wheels and flashing of lights that the
manufacturers always use to impress lay people,
and then a little card popped out. On it were
printed the words, "Fishing off Florida." Clever
Dick laughed.
"Actually," he said,
"my father is dead"! It had been a trick
question!
The salesman,
carefully chosen for his ability to think fast
on his feet, immediately replied that he was
sorry the answer was unsatisfactory, but as
computers were precise, perhaps he might care to
rephrase his question and try again?
Clever Dick thought,
went to the Ultimate Computer and this time
said, "Where is my mother's husband"?
Again there was a
whirring of wheels and a flashing of lights. And
again a little card popped out. Printed on it
were the words, "Dead. But your father is still
fishing off Florida."
Catalog View Helps
to
Retain an RMS Customer
Retail Hero’s
sales staff is experienced to recognize a
special situation which happens often: a
call comes in from a disgruntled RMS user
who is not satisfied with functionality he
or she finds in the software. After a little bit of
digging around almost always it becomes
obvious that the customer either purchased
Dynamics RMS from an online discount
reseller or another “software peddler” who
sells the software at minimal price offering
no additional services or training. And so
the customer buys “blind” without an expert
actually looking at their business processes
and how RMS can fulfill the requirement.
Often it is the customer’s fault because
they are looking for “deals” rather than
seeking a trusted technology partner who can
help them to run the business.
Anyway, recently we got a call from such a
customer who purchased RMS online from who
knows who and now was puzzled about the
software functionality. Our technical
support staff educated the customer about
certain functionality available in RMS, but
again, as we never met the customer, we were
unable to fully assess their needs and
business processes over a single telephone
conversation.
A few days later, the customer calls back to
inform us that they decided to get rid of
RMS and talked to Microsoft about it. As
Microsoft normally does not allow returning
of the software, they suggested the customer
would talk to Retail Hero again to see how
they could help.
In our second conversation it became obvious
that the customer expected RMS to have
certain visual tools similar to those which
are available in a fast food or restaurant
software to allow easy and visual selection
of the items that may not be bar-coded.
Luckily, Retail Hero – a developer of many
useful add-ons for Dynamics RMS, happened to
have such an add-on called Catalog View. The
new version of
Catalog View
(released in
December 2007) has many great features, 10 of
which are described below:
1. Fifteen large item buttons on each
page and 6 additional buttons for the most
frequently used items which are selected
automatically based on how often a
particular item is sold.
2. Buttons can be sorted by
description, item lookup codes or custom
order which allows free rearranging of the
buttons on the screen by dragging and
dropping.
3. Pictures added to the buttons by
either dragging photos from your hard disk
onto the buttons, using the context “Add
Picture” dialogue or taking snapshots with
your Webcam connected directly to the POS or
back office PC.
4. The pictures get automatically
formatted to fit the button dimensions and
are kept in the database so the picture
immediately becomes available to all POS
stations at the store. A disk copy of an
item picture is also created on each POS
station in the default RMS Pictures folder
so the picture also becomes available in the
item’s properties in RMS Manager and POS.
5. A custom HTML status bar in RMS POS
displays the item pictures during the
transaction.
6. In Catalog View the RMS Department
and Category buttons may now have pictures
and be rearranged in custom order similar to
the Item or Custom buttons.
7. The user may select certain items to
become available on the Custom Buttons
screen which has a structure similar to the
Items screen. This way even the items from
different departments and categories may be
arranged on single screen for faster access.
8. Both Items and Custom Buttons
screens have a quick search text entry which
allows narrowing the list of the buttons in
the current selection (department, category,
all items or custom buttons) as the user is
typing.
9. Catalog View always remembers the
last used screen and page number and pops up
next time on the same screen and page so the
most often used information is always in
front of the cashier in order to minimize
the necessity for additional navigation.
10. Each POS station in a store keeps
independent settings so the last known
screen and other parameters are individual
on each POS station.
After receiving all these exciting new
features with Catalog View for Dynamics RMS,
the customer has decided to continue to use
RMS as their Point of Sale solution which
otherwise is great software with vast
reporting and inventory management
capabilities.
Until
January 15 2008,
Catalog View is sold at a
special price
of $499 for the first POS lane and $299 for
each additional lane at the same store
location. You can download a demo version of
the software at
http://www.RMSExperts.com
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