Tower Blog

We have released new marketing collateral for our gift shop and homewares software to coincide with the two gift related trade shows in Brisbane and Sydney starting this weekend.

The new collateral includes the new design poster to the left - pitching our gift shop software, hardware, installation, training and support package for $7,995 including GST.  This is a very popular package with gift shops as it provides a low-cost entry point.

The gift shop software package includes: point of sale, lay-by, loyalty marketing, hamper management, gift cards, integrated eftpos, stock reordering and business reporting. Fror customers we provide professional receipts,  account management and the ability to answer queries quickly.

Our gift shop software has been developed specifically to serve the needs of Australian gift shops and homewares retailers.  We understand that we have more gift shops using our software than any other specialist software.

We are proud of our new collateral.  It speaks to key traits of our business of which we are proud: strength, consistency, trustworthiness and value.

Our research indicates that around .05% of transactions manually entered through an eftpos terminal at retail are wrong.  By switching to a POS software integrated eftpos solution such as we offer, these mistakes can be eliminated.

This is another case for our Tyro integrated solution.  The POS software / tyro broadband eftpos link deliveres to independent retailers facilities equal to those used by national retailers.

We provide access to Tyro interface software to our user community free of charge.

Check out our stand at the GHA Home and Giving Fair which starts on Saturday at the Sydney Convention and Exhibition centre at Homebush Bay.  We setup our stand yesterday and took a moment to get this photo before leaving.  It is a proud moment to see so many parts of our company come together for events like this: marketing, support, sales and management have worked on creating a new look for Tower Systems for the gift shop marketplace.  This will be on show this weekend from ouur stand.

As the biggest supplier of software to gift shops in Australia, we use events like this GHA show to meet with existing customers and to pitch to prospects.  If the trade show is like others so far this year it will be tremendously successful for us.

We especially like gift trade fairs because of  the diversity of the businesses of attendees: gift shops, jewellers and newsagents.  Three markets we know well and like.

We have minimum face to face training requirements.  We will not agree to installing our software in a business with anything less than our minimum training.  This ensures that everyone using our software is thoroughly trained and able to use our software to get from it what we know is possible.

Our stance on training has cost us a couple of sales in recent months where prospects wanted to reduce training time in return for a reduced price.  We know from experience that this is false economy.

We are better off sticking to ourposition on training as we know that this produces better software users for the long term.

These newspaper masthead buttons on our POS screen make selling newspapers easy.

They work well in situations where the newspapers are not scanned.  Our users have easy control over these masthead buttons.  They can be used for newspapers, magazines and, indeed, other product.  The key is to have a simple to use visual representation.  This improves speed and helps drive more accurate sales.

We are about to release barcode printing management enhancements which make it even more flexible for our retail users. The opportunity for these latest enhancements came from our recent national user meeeting tour - supporting our commitment to face to face user meetings.

Rather than drowing through the end of the financial year, hundreds of Australian jewellers have prepared end of financial year reports, completed a stock take and set themselves up for greater success in 2010 thanks to Tower Systems’ jeweller software.  Used by large jewellers and small, those handing heirloom product to fashion jewellery, the Tower Systems jeweller management software has made the end of the 2008/09 financial year go as easy as a leisurely swim.

What follows is the text of an article I was asked to write for an industry magazine last month.  I have adjusted it to be more general and offer it here as it speaks to how to use our retail management software to help retailers weather tough times:

Smart technology can help independent retailers turn tough retail conditions into success without spending thousands of dollars on advertising. Leveraging your existing customers you may find more gold in your own backyard that you imagined. Using good software, you can expect to:

• Cut costs. Thanks to electronic invoicing, the cost of processing new stock is lower than with manual processes. This can help cut your labour bill.
• Increase sales #1: reward customers. A good loyalty program works. Not like FlyBys which is of dubious financial value to customers. No, a serious loyalty program which guides your customers to spend more money with you. I have see stores grow sales by 10% on the back of a well constructed loyalty program, a POS software package will run this for you, points and all.
• Increase sales #2: easy lay-by. Lay-by run properly and using technology can be highly profitable. The software can manage the rules and ensure that your shop operates as professionally as a national retailer. You set your own rules and the software manages the paperwork.
• Increase sales: market to your customers. A coupon on your receipts, an email newsletter, a printed newsletter or up-sell script at the sales counter for staff – these are all ways you can use your point of sale system to help guide your existing customers to spend more money with you.
• Increase sales #5. Connect with a local charity. Use your POS software to make it easy for a local charity to promote your shop and raise money for themselves at the same time. Each sale earned for you by the charity can be tracked so that you are able to reward them with an accurate donation at the end of the campaign.
• Make better business decisions. By buying only stock which works for you or seeing exactly what customers buy with what you are able to make business decisions which are more likely to drive better business results.
• Sell your own gift cards. If a customer cannot find what they want in your shop you could sell them a professional looking gift card with a unique barcode allocated to that card. This way they money they put on the card is used in your business.
• Cut mistakes. Mistakes in retail can be expensive. By using smart POS software you can expect to cut mistakes. This is because it takes fewer keystrokes per sale. This reduces the opportunity for mistakes.
• Cut theft. The last time I checked, theft in retail in Australia was running at between 3% and 5% of turnover. Thanks to tight controls around employees and better tracking of stock theft, you can expect to cut the cost of theft. Every $1 cut in theft is a $1 on your bottom line.
• Handle special orders. Using software you can place orders for specific customers. The software can even sent a text message to the customer’s mobile phone when their special order comes if. Talk about customer service!

The most important way you can grow your business in a tough marketplace is doing what you probably do best – providing cheerful and knowledgeable customer service. You can do this and your employees can do this if you hand over some of your administrative tasks to your retail management software. As a successful gift shop owner told me about her interaction with her business: floor time = profit.

While computers are not for everyone, well made POS software is doing well in Australia, more so this year than in 2008. This is because retailers want good outcomes.  We deliver that.

Despite our best efforts, today is bound to be a crazy day at the office.  Over the last three weeks we have mailed and emailed advice to our user community on handling the end of the financial year.  While many of our retailers will have followed this advice and properly prepared, enough will have not and seek urgent advice in the final hours of the financial year.  We are as prepared as we can be for this one day of the year.

The Help Desk call traffic will be busier than usual for June 30 because of the Oz Lotto jackpot - this, in itself, is driving extra traffic as our users put through more transactions than ever in processing the largest lottery jackpot in the history of our country.

Our point of sale software was seen in a TV report with a lottery retailer last night on the Oz Lotto $90 million jackpot.  It’s pretty cool seeing your software at work in a TV news report.

We had an opportunity to bring on another electronic product for newsagents recently.  We decided against this as it did not meet key criteria (return and newsagent relevance) we have set for new products. We established this criteria once we started receiving approaches from suppliers keen to be part of our 1,000 strong retailer network.

We take our role in representing our customers seriously.  We have to make tough calls but feel well equipped because of our years serving newsagents.

While some products we say no to will find other avenues to newsagent counters, we will stand by our criteria to protect our brand and the businesses of our customers.

For years we have offered receipts in A4 and A5 sizes as well as on regular reeceipt rolls.  We are about to release greater flexibility in the style of these receipts, allowing for better font selection and logo inclusion.  We’re making these changes based on recent user feedback - especially in higher-end marketplaces.  The latest changes will be delivered in our next update.

An article in the Australian Financial Review on Friday about businesses buying art for the office because of the tax break investment allowance demonstrated the absurdity of aspects of the tax break.  Thanks to the treatment of software as an intangible, it is not eligible for the tax break.  However, art is a tangible asset and therefore qualifies.

Politicians from both sides need to resolve this. Software is a good investment for business.  Especially Australian software developed for Australian businesses.

Art, while nice in an office, will not lift business productivity the same as good software.

If our politicians wants a robust IT industry and greater efficiency from business then they need to address the treatment of software and make it eligible for the tax break.

I have written again to the Treasurer’s office about this, in response to their last letter to me.

We are excited to be offering these three different and valuable FREE online training workshops for retailers and retail staff this week:

• Software Security: 30 Jun 2009, Time: 11:00.  Learn about the many security features in Tower Systems POS software.
• Retail Stock Management - Configuration & Maintenance: 30 Jun 2009, 14:00.  Learn how to care for your business data and get better stock management results.
• Stock Reordering: 2 Jul 2009, 11:00.  Learn how to use our reordering facilities to reorder stock which serves your business well  This session will help you take control and cut poor stock decisions!

Each will offer practical help in getting more from our retail management software.  The sessions will be totally interactive - you get to ask questions just as if you were in a room with all workshop participants.

All you need is access to a computer with broadband connected and a phone line close by for a toll free call for the audio content.

Book online here.

Come an join us and learn how to save more time and money!

Our Saturday Help Desk service handles, on average, forty to fifty incidents.  Each incident could take several calls.  More than half the calls are not software related.  We are called because we are available on Saturday.  The calls which do not relate to our software are either hardware or stock supplier related.  In these instances we try and help.

Our office based Saturday Help Desk is provided in addition to our after hours coverage - two separate teams are used.

We have found that making support easily accessible to retailers, when they need access, is as important as providing high quality POS software.

Saturday support is driving excellent word of mouth for us.

This is on my mind today because I received a phone call this morning from someone grateful for our help with a hardware issue brough on by changes made to their system yesterday by a local technician.  He was not able to raise the local technician today and we were able to ge his hardware up and running and business trading.

The most common feedback we receive from users who switch from traditional bank terminal eftpos machines to the Tyro POS integrated broadband eftpos solution is about the reduction in mistakes. There is no manual entry of the amount being billed. Each keystroke eliminated is a potential mistake eliminated.

Research we have seen indicates that eftpos mistakes can cost a retail business thousands of dollars a year as up to 1% of transactions have errors as a result of keystroke mistakes.

The user feedback we are receiving tells us that we have certainly addressed the goal of reducing mistakes.

We have updated the advice sheet which outlines hardware standards and setup requirements.  This is available now from our website.  This sheet is used by local hardware suppliers and technicians to ensure that hardware is supplied and setup to meet our standards.

We are participating with Network Services in a pilot of the new XchangeIT new platform. This pilot is running well based on feedback we have received including this:

We have just sent a whole month of returns - Current & Supplemental (Early & Late) And It WORKED. Within 2 minutes 4 emails came flying back from Network giving all the credits, $$$ Values and an exception report for 4 magazines that were rejected. Not bad when considering it is our COMPLETE June Recalls 145current and 792supplemental magazines.

Logging in to Net Online and it took me straight to the Exception and Confirmation page where it showed all the Supplemental returns and the $$ Value. For a Supplemental claim of $4,250.45 from Retailer’s Returns Form we received $4,238.17. NOT BAD… I wouldn’t go looking for the $12 but it may be a cost price issue discrepancy with Retailer?

Well Done Tower, XchangeIt and Network. The Pilot looks like a Success!

Our development, testing and support teams have worked hard to bring this long-sought innovation to newsagents.  The time saving and cash-flow benefits will be considerable.

Tower Systems refuses to block users from accessing their software or business data should they choose to not continue with support coverage.  Not all software companies are the same.  Click on the image for a larger version of a photo of a screen which appeared on a computer in one newsagency earlier this year.  Contact with the company left them with no doubt that they would be blocked from accessing their software and their business data if they did not pay the support fee.

As I said at the start of this post, Tower Systems does not block access.  Our view is that once a business buys our computer software, they have a licence to use the software for as long as they like and without any requirement to pay annual support fees.

While the majority of our users do pay a support fee, it is their choice and not done as a result of blackmail to give them access to their own business data.

We have loaded the new OfficeSmart catalogue to our website - for OfficeSmart members who use our software.  The new catalogue covers the catalogue for the third quarter 2009.

We are making our final preparations for our stands at gift fairs in Brisbane and Sydney.  Next weekend, we will be at the GHA Home and Giving Fair in Sydney and the Reed Gift Fair in Brisbane.  It has been a challenge to double our trade show equipment and collateral to ensure that we look 100% at each event.

Trade shows are proving to be very successful for us this year, leading to excellent supplier relationships and new customers.

If you find yourself at either of these trade shows please be sure to stop by and say g’day.

We have been appreciating the opportunity to meet with newsXpress newsagents at their Market Fairs around the country this past week. We have taken the opportunity to show off some innovative work we have done to help newsXpress members improve business efficiency and work more cohesively.

Newsagents using our software are able to easily promote the OzLotto jackpot, the largest ever in Australia, automatically on their receipts thanks to a free facility in our software.  Advice sheet G32 at our website advises how to use this facility.

We have been careful to ensure that our new secondhand goods facilities meet police reporting and EDI requirements.  NSW Police are the most advanced in this area and their standards have offered us good guidance.

Our secondhand goods facilities will be useful across several marketplaces with jewellers, newsagents and bike retailers all faced with secondhand goods opportunities.  From within our software, our retailers will be able to track necessary details when trading in secondhand goods and, in doing so, fulfil their legal obligations.

The beta release of our secondhand goods software will be released next month.

Changing barcodes can be a pain for retailers.  This can happen when a supplier pulls stock from one country to another.  Ink cartridges, for example, have been known to have three or four different barcodes for the one stock item. Binders are another example where a binders of different colours may have separate barcodes yet are reordered in a pack of mixed colours.

There are plenty of examples in other areas of retail where multiple barcodes relate to the same item - for stock reordering purposes at least.

Our Link Stock Items facility is receiving kudos from a number of quarters including newsagents who have recently switched from other software which does not offer this facility.

Helping retailers manage items with different barcodes is another way we are delivering genuine value through our software.