Tower Blog

We are working with stores using our Homewares software to implement smart marketing and management tools to help drive better business performance.

Homewares shops in particular can leverage some specialist tools in our Point of Sale software given the nature of shopper behaviour in engaging with homewares businesses.

Supporting customers in the building of homewares sets is a good example of where our software can help. We have facilities which make providing good service to customers building sets easier than traditional POS software used in some homewares stores today.

Our loyalty marketing facilities, too, are better that homewares stores have found in other software they are using to run their businesses.

The Australian retail homewares channel is strong and Tower Systems is committed to helping to become stronger.

Our head office has finally been branded inside and out, making the new office feel more like home. The process took longer than expected because of the range of work to be done. From the signs above the front door to branding in our reception area and corporate image art on the doors to our boardroom, we have had collateral installed which connects with images from our website and published marketing material.

Branding is important to us and this is why we have taken time to get the message right in our new offices.

If you are in Melbourne or visiting the city and have time, drop by and check out our new and now settled digs.

The latest version of our gift shop software will be on show at the Reed Gift Fair in Sydney in just over a week’s time. We are on stand 1730 at the large Darling Harbour location – as shown on the partial floorplan to the left.

We are well established and experienced participants at gift fairs around Australia and enjoy meeting with customers, suppliers and sales prospects at these events.

We will have more to say about our specific plans for this important trade show in the next week.

With more than 150 on our newsagent customers now signed up for offering the Blackhawk gift cards, we are working hard to help them attract customers.

The image shows the second marketing poster we have created.  This will be released once we have final approval from Blackhawk international. Our approach to the Blackhawk opportunity shows off the Tower Systems difference.

From the free marketing collateral, to our advice sheet, FAQ document and other support at our eziPass website and over the phone, we are show the difference between merely offering a product through our software and providing genuine support.

We are showing how a proactive Point of Sale software company goes beyond the software and technical support and helps customers unlock the full value of the business opportunity.

Our approach to Blackhawk provides another opportunity showing sales prospects the Tower Systems difference.

Bike shop owners are among the best retailers for embracing technology based on our own experience.  They dive into the facilities in our software and engage in business building opportunities. 

Bike shop owners tell us that they are more focused on driving commercial outcomes from our Point of Sale software because of the highly specialist and competitive nature of their marketplace.

This deeper focus leads to excellent value software enhancement suggestions which benefit not only our bike retailers but also other retailers using our software.

We support their business focus through quality business management tools covering business performance, bike supplier performance, warranty and repairs management, lay-bys, loyalty marketing, theft management and handling second-hand goods.

Inventory management is also vitally important in a successful bike shop with the value of stock high and changes in movement rates essential to track.

Thanks to key supplier relationships we are in a strong position serving bike retailers here in Australia as well as New Zealand.

We are waiting on final approval before we release the two posters we have developed exclusively for our retailer partners selling the Blackhawk gift card range.

We are proud to show off our innovation and the type of business-building help we provide our retail partners beyond the Point of Sale techology itself.

We developed two quite different posters to provide our retailers with a choice.

Once we have Blackhawk approval the artwork will be made available to our customers.

Retailers are responding to tough times by extracting more value from their Point of Sale software. 

Gone are the days when a Point of Sale system is seen as a cash register replacement, basic in function and service.  In today’s marketplace, smart retailers are extracting every ounce of value they can from their POS software investment.

While many software companies sell similar software, the majority do not provide the level of assistance and advice necessary for retailers to unlock value from the software beyond basic cash register replacement.

It takes real commitment from a software company to unlock the level of value necessary in today’s tough retail environment.

Software companies which act as software companies will rarely help retailers extract full value from their software.

Tower Systems is committed to helping retailers achieve tangible benefits from full use of its software every day.  This is reflected in the broad range of assistance provided through our Help Desk.  More than half all calls relate to business matters and not the software itself.

Thanks to broad retail expertise, we can go beyond the usual technical support call.  We provide business implementation advice along with business management advice.

Our assistance can also include analysing business reports and showing a retailer the business decisions available to them based on the data in the reports.  This is where real value is unlocked from our retail management software and the Tower Advantage ^TM relationship.

Imagine how a retailer feels when we identify $15,000 worth of stock which ought to be quit because it is not paying even for the floor space it occupies?  Or when we show how to easily lure customers back into the business with little or no cost.  Retailers love having access to this information and the decisions they can make.

We delight in engaging in business discussions which enable us to use the software to show the opportunities for our retail partners.

Tower Systems is more than a software company offering a technical solution. We are a business building company which uses software as one means through which we help independent retailers grow.

We have tested and loaded the GNS 2011 Diary Catalogue to our website and made this available for our customers with the permission of GNS.

Our stand at the International Jewellery Fair in Sydney was all set for a busy day when the photo was taken yesterday at 8:30am … and a busy day it was too, the first day of a three day event.

On the stand we have our jewellery software being demonstrated live.  Our technology is backed by a team of jeweller experts who talk to our solid market penetration and the latest enhancements in our software.

Our first visitor for the day was a happy client from FIJI.  This got us off to a good start and the first day moved along at an excellent pace.

We have served the jeweller marketplace for eleven years.  Sales are increasing thanks to excellent software developed by our skilled in-house software development team.

Employee theft can kill a retail business if left undetected for too long.  In addition to excellent theft reduction and theft management facilities in our Point of Sale software, Tower Systems also offers a theft analysis service to its retailer customers.

Theft Check, as the free service is called, involved thorough analysis of critical business data, looking for patterns of behaviour, as indicated in the data, which could be evidence of employee theft.  Access to theft check is provide as part of the Tower Advantage ^TM customer support and service program.

All we need is access to a current data backup and we do the rest.   We look at the data from the perspective of successfully uncovering theft in more than one hundred retail businesses.  From a few hundred dollars to well over one hundred thousand dollars.  We are able to identify behaviour which is at best poor retail practice and at worst blatant theft from the business.

Our experience is that retailers are complacent about theft because of a belief in their people, denial that it could happen to them and fear that it is happening to them.  We have been guilty of this ourselves in our own retail businesses.

Our years of experience in working with retailers on employee theft, across a variety of retail channels, has allowed us to develop skills which are now helping others cut the cost of employee theft.

FOOTNOTE: This is not the first time we have written about this service and it will not be the last.  Each time we do write about it more retailers contact us. Our singular goal is to cut the cost of theft in retail businesses using our Point of Sale software.

Tower Systems is offering Point of Sale software training next week in the following areas:

• Retail stock management. Tuesday Aug 31 at 11am
• General Q&A session Aug 31 at 2pm
• Point of Sale training Sep 2 at 11am
• Magazine management workshop Sep 2 at 2pm

Each of these sessions is free and will run for around an hour.  Please book for all online training at our website.

Our software for newsagents can be easily configured to suit the needs of many businesses and situations.  One area where adjustment is easy is with the touchsreen layout.  The photo shows a touchscreen layout for newsagents in Western Australia.  It includes local products which you would not see elsewhere.

The screen was designed for a particular newsagent who wanted more products on the touchscreen that we would usually provide.  Our preference is for bigger buttons.  In this situation they wanted smaller buttons and more products to serve their particular need.  Our software easily handled their requirement without the need for a change or a visit.  They could also include product logos to make identifying products easier.

Flexibility in software configuration is important to newsagents and all retailers.  We are proud of the flexibility we have built into the software and that our customers do use this.

Changing a touch button can be done quickly at the store level without risk.  Likewise, securing buttons so that they cannot be changed is also easy.

Luke La has decided to leave Tower Systems after six years and pursue opportunities elsewhere.  We wish Luke well for this move and his approaching wedding.

Rohan Genn has accepted the role on State Sales Manager for Queensland and he starts in that role from today.  Rohan brings excellent experience with our software as a customer and in recent years as a key member of our National Help Desk team.

Rohan’s appointment continues our tradition of successfully skilled technical people from within Tower moving into a sales role with the company.

For Rohan, the move is a return to Queensland where he has lived previously.

Adorn Jewels have taken the opportunity of our in-house gift card design service, producing beautiful gift cards which can be used with our jeweller software for sale to customers.  Each gift card has a unique barcode which ties back to the customer account to which the value of the gift card is easily loaded using the software.

We realised early on after developing our gift card / gift voucher facilities that we needed to offer our customers an easier way of leveraging this beyond the software.  Our in-house gift card design and packaging service has achieved this with many Tower Systems customers taking up the service.

We back our card design service up with a Chins based printing service.  This results in high quality cards at a low price.

We also provide training an support on implementing gift cards into the business.  We are lucky to have been exposed to gift cards across a number of retail channels, providing useful broad experience from which we can draw when asked for advice.

We have released a newsagency software update to address the latest requirements of XchangeIT, the industry standard EDI platform used by magazine distributors.

We have been working with XchangeIT following recent performance reviews of data being sent from newsagents.  The latest update is designed to help newsagents meet their KPIs and keep their XchangeIT access costs to a minimum.

The latest update was released two weeks ago and is available to Tower Advantage ^TM customers from our website.  We are promoting it today to encourage our newsagent customers to update to this latest version.

Preparations for the court case POS Solutions has brought against us are continuing.  POS has indicated that they plan to seek $2 million in compensation from us based on the number of newsagents who have switched to Tower Systems Point of Sale software from their software.  I am looking forward to see how the case plays out in court when it eventually gets there.

As I told one of the owners of POS when he and I discussed their considerable customer losses three months ago, the best way for them to address this would have been to deliver better quality software backed by better quality support.

Blaming a competitor for sales losses is like a kid blaming another kid some something which they themselves have caused to happen.

We continue to welcome newsagents switching from the POS Solutions software to our software.  We promise to work hard to make the transition as easy as possible.  We also promise friendly and professional service backed by a whole of company commitment to genuine customer care.

We are close to launching exclusive marketing collateral for the close to 150 newsagents using our newsagency software who have or will very soon have the Blackhawk gift card range in their stores.  Our marketing collateral is being developed by our own marketing department and will come with the Blackhawk seal of approval.

As the world’s largest gift card supplier, it is natural the Blackhawk must approve all marketing collateral which promotes their offer.

We are developing several collateral alternatives prior to selecting one as the preferred option for our growing network of Blackhawk outlets.  The collateral will be provided with marketing tips and advice to help our retail partners maximise sales of Blackhawk product.

This is the Tower Advantage ^TM at work - providing access to a solution through our technology, backing it with professional marketing and supporting it with quality business development advice.

The reports of sales of Blackhawk gift cards in our stores already carrying the range indicate excellent business.

Employee theft accounts for around two thirds of all theft in a retail business based on data we have seen. Overall theft accounts for anything between three and five percent of retail sales - based on publicly available industry data.  Tower Systems helps retailers cut employee theft thanks to some excellent theft management tools in our software. 

We also help cut employee theft thanks to our FREE theft check service.  We review your business data and look for patters of behaviour which indicate that theft may be active.  The results of our research can provide you peace of mind, guide further investigation or be used by police in taking prosecution action.

Our pro bono work on tracking and cutting employee theft has saved some of our customers tens of thousands of dollars.  This is the Tower Advantage ^TM in action, putting money in the pocket of our customers without us putting our hands out asking for money to do this.

Retailers without a theft management strategy are at considerable risk in their businesses.  The theft tracking and reduction tools in our Tower Systems Point of Sale software can play a key role in any professional theft management program.

We have packaged our theft reduction and management advice into a one hour business management presentation and offer this to our customers and others who can bring together a group of retailers keen to work on reducing the cost of theft.

Our jeweller software will be on show at the respected JAA International Jewellery Fair trade show this weekend in Sydney.  We are excited about this since it will be the first public airing of our latest jeweller software, showing off new facilities we have developed for jewellers as a result of working closely with jewellers.Over next weekend and into the week, our jeweller software will be on show for close to 10,000 jewellers at the most important industry trade event of the year.While we are certain to meet with many existing customers, we already have arrangements to meet with plenty of prospects.  What will be interesting is the mix of businesses attending given the broadening of the retail shingles under which jewellery is sold today.

We are thrilled to be welcoming John Le to a newly created role on our national Point of Sale software help desk today. John brings years of help desk experience to the role and an affinity for small business. Following comprehensive training, John will start taking calls from customers - these will initially be shared with another team member before moving to solo calls.

We have created two new help desk roles over the last month to help us cope with demand from new customers.

If you get to talk with John, please say hello and join us in welcoming him to the Tower community.

We have switched another customer from a competitor of ours by demonstrating that the cost of ownership of our Point of Sale software is considerably less than that for the competitor’s software.

The newsagent purchased the software a few years ago for thousands of dollars but was told a year or so back that they didn’t purchase the software and that a monthly licence fee is now applicable. $250 a month plus GST. It soon adds up.

Their gripe was compounded with the extra items they are told they have to pay for and the apparent high price for these items.

By switching to our Tower Systems Point of Sale software, the newsagent will be better off financially over the medium term. Of course, our view is that they will be significantly better off operationally immediately they move.

Once you have purchased software for your business you should have the option of not having to pay anything extra to make use of this. Mandatory fees should be able to be challenged - that is what we would suggest at least.

We have been busy at the GNS Market Fair in Perth today. The stand has has had a constant stream of sales prospects and existing newsagent customers.  Western  Australia is a good and growing marketplace for us.

We put on a good display with three people staffing the stand - to ensure that the loved Tower Systems customer service can be experienced by everyone stopping by.

Our installation team will be busy based on the business we have seen today - and the fair still has three hours to go.

Congratulations to GNS for putting on a good day … thanks especially for the regular flow of food and drink!

PS. Don’t be put off by the photo, it was taken at 8:45am before the fair opened.

We are offering four free online workshops in our Point of Sale software this coming week:

Magazine management workshop. Tuesday Aug 24 at 11am
Retailer security Aug 24 at 2pm.  For business owners only.
Magazine management workshop Aug 26 at 11am
Retail stock management Aug 26 at 2pm.  Ideal for retailers new to our software.

Bookings can be made on the booking page at our website.

Our exclusive business reporting package is winning over newsagents to our newsagency software.  In a comparison of reports available and reporting options, newsagents are voting with their feet and cheque books.  Sales to newsagents are excellent.

When we asked newsagents who had recently switched to our Tower Systems software, better reporting was one of the reasons given.   We were thrilled.

We are proud of our business reports.  We have an excellent mix of industry standard repoprts, supplier focused reports and reports which guide and drive better business decisions.

Like the rest of our newsagency software, our reports continue to evolve to meet the needs of our customers and their suppliers.  Our next update will deliver some excellent reporting initiatives.

This is our stand at the Ausbike Trade Show, on this weekend in Melbourne.  We are are just about all setup and ready to go -we only have to load the stand with our technology, brochures and people.

Like many retail channel trade shows now, we expect to see more than pure bike retailers at the show.  There was a time when a channel specific trade show would attract retailers only from that channel.  Now you see all sorts visit as retailers are expanding beyond the traditional product range for their shingle.  We like this because it suits the diversity of pur software offer.

Our software for bike shops is the most widely used specialist bike shop software in Australia.