Tower Blog

Sometimes it is the simple reports in our POS software which our customers like the most. Take the Monthly Taking Report . This lists sales by department for the full previous twelve months, all on one page. We have customers who love this report for the year long view it provides. They tell us that it helps them spot sales trends, easily compare periods and balance the business across departments.

The takings report suite was the first we developed for Point of Sale in the last 1980s. It’s good to see it still being useful today.

We are about to release an enhancement in our jewellery business Point of Sale software to handle changes by Pandora to their stock file.  Our enhancements will make the Pandora change easier for jewellers.  This is being delivered free to Tower Advantage ^TM jeweller customers.

This is a significant one-off change for jewellers and if not done right the disruption to the business could be considerable.  We are pleased to be in a position to help.

Sign up now for our 2010 AFL tipping competition.  It’s free and there are cash prizes.  We don’t use the data - this is purely for fun.   The competition is open to anyone.

Click on the icon on our website.  The password is tower.

We are hosting a face to face user meeting in Perth this Thursday at 11am at the offices of WANA/NGBB, 13 Kitchener Ave, Burswood.  Rohan Genn our Customer Service Manager will flying in from Melbourne and run the meeting along with our WA based team members.

This user meeting is an excellent opportunity for Perth region customers to learn more about our software and get questions answered from one of our experts.

Access to the user meeting is free.  This is another benefit from the Tower Advantage ^TM program.

Click here to book.

Our gift shop point of sale software is helping more businesses thrive thanks to gift shop specific tools.

Our latest software makes it easier for gift shop owners to trade electronically with suppliers. This delivers significant benefits beyond the obvious time savings. Five new suppliers have been added in the last few weeks.

By more tightly controlling stock replenishment, gift shop owners can reduce oversupply and other purchase errors. This puts money in the bank.

Delivered with our software is business management training and support which helps gift shop owners leverage the tools in the software to achieve these savings. We understand the importance of not only delivering excellent software but also helping our customers make the most from this.

Through the e-commerce facilities on our website, Tower Systems customers can easily purchase a magnetic swipe reader necessary for selling iTunes cards using our popular eziPass software.  Retailers swipe iTunes cards through the reader to activate them at the point of purchase.  We made the software change for selling iTunes cards available for no cost to our customers.  iTunes cards have the potential to significantly improve the value of a sale given the respect for the brand and the ease with which they can be added to a basket at the counter.

While not all batches of iTunes cards require a magnetic swipe reader, some do, hence the advice to be prepared.

eziPass is the most popular computer based electronic voucher vending platform among Australian newsagents.  With more than 1,000 live sites, newsagents have voted their support for this Tower Systems exclusive initiative.

We have tested and laoded a new stock file for the BrownTrout calendar range to our website.  as with all stock files we load, this has been thoroughly tested to ensure that it loadsusing our software without incident.

We are producing the first of a new series of videos for our retail customers this week. They will go beyond the usual training offered by software companies and cover business building opportunities using our software.

Designed for retail business owners and managers, the new training video series will provide useful content for our customers and other retailers keen to grow their businesses.  The first of the videos should be available from our website early next week.

Too often, software companies and retailers miss opportunities to unlock real value from Point of Sale software and the data it manages.  Our new videos aim to present our commitment to help our business partners way beyond the software.

We have signed on as a sponsor for the VANA golf day as a sign of support for newsagents in Victoria.  We will have some players of our own plus customers teeing off in pursuit of a trophy or two.

A new voice joins us today.  Debra joins our admin team in a new role we have created to help us handle the workload.  She will be handling reception and a range of other tasks.

Our four free online training workshops for users of our Point of Sale software this week are:

• Point of Sale - Tuesday, Mar 16 @ 11am.  This is a good introduction to our Point of Sale screen and everything you can do from it.
• Repairs – Mar 16 @ 2pm.  Seeour new repairs software and let us know what you think.
• Importing stock files – Mar 18 @ 11am.  How to import stock files from suppliers and navigate questions you sometimes have.
• Officesmart – Mar 18 @ 2pm.  Officesmart is the newsagent owneddiscount / volume stationery strategy from GNS.  This training session will outline how to use our software to manage Officesmart and make the most of the opportunity.

To book for any of these sessions, please go to our website.

Tower Systems yesterday launched its AFL tipping competition for 2010, continuing a tradition of many years standing.  The competition is open to anyone.  Click on the icon on our website.

Cash prizes are on offer:  First $250.00; Second $100.00; Third $50.00.  Entry is FREE.  Come and have some fun.

Between now and the end of June is a good time of the year to install Point of Sale software in our experience.  We are away from major retail seasons except for Easter and Mother’s Day.  Also, we can have the system installed and ready for the stock take at the end of the financial year and nicely bedded in for the Christmas / New Year trading period.

While we are usually busy in busy retail periods, it is the next few months when we find ourselves busiest with major installations as people work on their businesses in their quieter periods.

We gear ourselves for this opportunity and make the most of it.

We have scheduled two online training sessions for newsagent suppliers. In these sessions we will introduce our Point of Sale software, outline the facilities, explain how to reportand extract data and take questions. These will be excellent sessions for supplier representatives wanting to help newsagents understand more about their businesses.  Click on the following links to book for either session.

• Session 1, March 16, 11am.
• Session 2, March 17, 11am.

Access is free.  All you need is a computer with broadband access and a phone for a toll free call.

We are seeing more homewares retailers introduce cafes in their businesses. This is an interesting more – for them and for us. We are enjoying our exposure to the needs of managing a cafe through our Point of Sale software.

In the businesses we have seen and are working with, the cafe / homewares business blend works well. It brings a vibe to the business and this is crucial in retail. Separating your offer from others in a similar space us crucial.

While we don’t see ourselves as delving further into the cafe space, we are certainly enjoying the experience and working with our customers to better blend the needs of the two businesses in one.

One thing we have learnt over the years in this software business is to be flexible.

We have now run several online user meetings. These covered the same content as we are presenting in our 20+ face to face meetings around the country.

The online sessions are helping us bring more people into user meeting participation. They are also helping us connect customers who would not usually speak with each other.

Based on positive feedback, we will schedule more of these online user meetings once the current series of face to face sessions come to an end. We shoudl be in a position to anounce dates next week.

Rohan Genn our Customer Service Manager is running our Albury User meeting tomorrow. This is a terrific opportunity for our users to get some great training, an insight into the latest version of our software and to speak with a senior member of our team.

The details are:

• 11th March 2010
• 11:00am
• Quality Hotel on Olive, 579 Olive Street, ALBURY NSW 2640

Anyone is welcome to attend.

We are pleased to be a sponsor for this year’s NSW & ACT Newsagent Awards for Excellence.  Our sponsorship for 2010 continues our support for newsagents and bodies which support them.

The awards dinner will be held on March 24 at the Waterview Convention Centre at Sydney Olympic Park.

Click here for a registration form to attend the dinner.

We have six interviews scheduled for today to fill a new admin support role for our Melbourne office.  This new position will help us better manage call traffic and cope with shipping, mail and other support processes.  We started wih well over 100 applicants and are thrilled with the quality of the final six for an important front line role.

Some of our Point of training videos are to be included as modules in formal (government supported) training offered by a couple of organisations. They approached us after evaluating the content and the mechanisms for assessing what has been learned. We are thrilled with how our training stacked up to professional scrutiny.

Our online training program, videos and live online workshops, are backed by assessment to track what has been learned. We back the assessment with the follow-up training opportunities to ensure that gaps are covered and that the learning is the best possible.

Creating content for a curriculum beyond our own use is exciting. It encourages us to continue to develop the suite of training on offer.

With our head office in Melbourne closed today for Labour Day, we have switched calls through our phone system to our Brisbane office.  This allows us to maintain full service and ensure that our customers receive fast and professional service for our customers.

8PM UPDATE: The feedback from customers to providing live and office based support through a public holiday today has been wonderful.  We are grateful to have the resources and infrastructure to enable us to shift the help desk as we did today without any extra cost to our customers.  This is the Tower Advantage ^TM in action.

We are hosting a meeting of our users in the Geelong region this Wednesday at 2pm at the Mercure Hotel – Cnr Geringhap & Meyers Streets. This is another in our 20+ locations for this round of user meetings.  Click here to book.

We will outline the features of the latest software update, provide useful training and take plenty of questions. We have always has a soft spot for the Geelong area since it is the first region where we gained good traction in the 1980s.  We have maintained this thanks to customer loyalty and, we think, good service.

If you’re in the Geelong region and interested to know more about what we do you would be most welcome to come along on Wednesday.  We’d be glad to see you.

It is hard work running these user meetings around the country but most beneficial to our customers and to ourselves as we get to network and share ideas.

We are offering another four free online workshops in our retail management software this week:

• Security - Tuesday, Mar 9 @ 11am.  Learn how to protect your business.
• New staff training – Mar 9 @ 2pm.  Ideal for new staff using our software for the first time.
• Business reporting – Mar 11 @ 11am.  Find our how to produce reports which help your decision making.
• Home delivery management – Mar 11 @ 2pm.  Discover how to better manage home deliveries.

All can be booked online at our website.  Click here to go to the booking page.

We are helping newsagents using our Point of Sale software to drive better ink deals by including this ad on receipts. Our customers have control over when the ad prints thanks to helpful tools in the software.  Including this ad, or any ad, on receipts is easy with our POS software. We have created a pack of professionally designed ads for use by our customers. This is a free service we offer to help newsagents using Tower Systems to drive better outcomes from their business.

We had announced we were not offering our usual full service Saturday support today because of the long weekend in Victoria (Labour Day).  We had a change of heart yesterday and decided to offer this as well as our usual network of after hours numbers.  This decision was made hby our help desk team - they are committed to delivering the best support possible for our customers.