Tower Blog

We are interviewing today for a new Point of Sale software installation and training role based in Melbourne.  We quietly advertised last month and have sifted through the responses to develop a shortlist.  This new role will boost our installation and training capacity.

We have expanded the panel which will conduct the interviews to include a representative from our sales team.  We see this as important since happy customers are key to sales growth.

With so many accounts issued by retailers using our Point of Sale software now being paid electronically - via Direct Debit Payment, Cardlink Payment or EziDebit ™ - we make it easier by sending receipts automaticalls by email.

The time and money saving for our retailers is significant - not only from the easy payment options but also from the admin processing following the payment.

Enhancements in this area are part of the POS software update now shipping to our customers across Australia.

We were thrilled to be selected by the Donna Hay organisation last year to provide our Point of Sale software to their new concept store. The installation proceeded well and included some enhancements developed specifically for their needs. These enhancements are also proving useful to other customers using our Point of Sale software.

An important factor in providing good customer service for Point of Sale software is accessibility.  Our Help Desk is genuinely available 24 hours a day 7 days a week.  Our management backup team is as easily accessible.  We also provide local number support access in Melbourne, Sydney and Brisbane.  Plus we provide free call access via Skype.

Our customer service team is accessed in several ways:

Monday to Friday: 7 am - 6 pm 03 9524 8000.
- Sydney users call: 02 9525 6444 between 7am and 6pm.
- Brisbane users call: 07 3136 6888 between 7am and 6pm.
Saturday: 7.30am to 3pm 03 9524 8000.  We are unique offering live, office based, Saturday help desk support.  There are many instances where our customers have used this to get work done which would otherwise have to wait until Monday.
After Hours: 0418 554 963; 0418 528 577; 0419 842 334
Fax: 03 9524 8099
Email: support@towersystems.com.au Emails responded between 8am and 5 pm Monday to Friday. For questions suited to email answers only.
Software suggestions: Go to Software Ideas at our website
Sales: sales@towersystems.com.au
Feedback: feedback@towersystems.com.au
Free Advice Sheets: www.towersystems.com.au/advicesheets
Online Training: www.towersystems.com.au/training/online/
Tower Blog: www.towersystems.com.au/tower_blog

We are pleased to be offering four free online training workshops covering various aspects of our Point of Sale software this week.

• Point of Sale training - Tuesday, Feb 9 @ 11am.  This is ideal for anyone using the point of sale screen. We will take you through key functions, show how to save time and help reduce mistakes.
• Putaway management - Tuesday, Feb 9 @ 2pm.  Ideal for newsagents who want to better manage putaways.  Putaway customers are more loyal so there is value in this beyond the service.
• Magazine Management - Thursday, Feb 11 @ 11am.  The most popular training offered newsagents, already completed by more than 1,000 participants.,
• Business reporting - Thursday, Feb 11 @ 2pm.  We will take you thorugh the most important reports in the software and outline what you can expect to get from these.

Access to these free online training workshops is open to anyone.  All you need is a computer with broadband and a phone for a toll free call.  Register at our corporate website.

We shipped our latest Point of Sale software update to 300 of our users earlier this week.  This is the next step in a carefully planned and managed roll out to this major release of our software.  Given the significant scope of the update it is important that we don’t flood our 2,000+ users with this new software.

The next batch of update CDs, which double as security backup of the software, will be sent in a week.

For the update to get this far in the release process, it has progressed through:

• Thorough in-house testing and QA assessment - done separately from the development team.
• Comprehensive beta testing in our own eight retail businesses.
• Comprehensive beta (phase two) testing in a group of customer retail locations.
• Limited release commercial release.

This is all before we send the update to the 300 customers I mention above.

Each of the testing and release phases must complete with flying colours before we move to the next.  This is crucial with such large update.

The next release of our software delivers a simple yet effective tool which will help tobacco retailers fulfill their obligations in retailing tobacco products. The software enhancements provide structure around the checking processes which are essential with new rules governing the retail of tobacco. We are not applying the enhancements as mandatory, that is up to our customers to decide. They can set the rules to apply to every tobacco sale and thereby give ,as business owners, a barrier at the sales counter to selling tobacco to underage customers.

Our January customer newsletter shared the results of our customer survey which was conducted late in 2009. We have received an excellent response to the newsletter including this note:

Thank you for letting us know the survey results in the newsletter. Your report gave an honest view of the results and this supports our confidence in your company.

In addition to ratings on various aspects of our business, we received a good range of longer form notes with the survey. I have now personally responded to all of these, following up on questions and thanking people for specific feedback.

I think it is important to show that feedback has been read and how it is being used. This will encourage greater engagement is other surveys we conduct.

With our first trade show for the year now over we are well into planning for the GHA Home and Giving Fair in Sydney later this month.  This looks set to be an excellent event with close to 30,000 business people expected to attend.

We will announce a special offer at the GHA Home and Giving Fair along with other innovation.

We are using trade shows this year to show new software as well as our online training and training videos.  It’s great to show our point of difference live and in a context which makes sense - more so than just talking about things.

Here is our revised Trade Show schedule for 2010 so far.

• GHA Home & Giving Fair, Sydney, Feb 27 - Mar 2
• Reed Gift Fair, Brisbane, July 3 - 6
• GHA Home & Giving Fair, Melbounre, August 7 - 11
• GNS Market Fair, Melbourne, Jul 31 - Aug 1
• GNS Market Fair, Sydney, August 7 - 8
• Ausbike/Interbike, Melbourne, August 22 - 23
• GNS Market Fair, Perth, August 22
• JAA Jewellery Fair, Sydney, Aug 30 - Sept 1
• GNS Market Fair, Brisbane, Sept. 11 - 12

We expect to add at least anothermore trade shows to these plans as we develop opportunities with trade show organisations.

In addition to the twenty face to face user meetings we are running around the coutry starting next week, we are hosting two online versions of these user meetings:

• Friday 5/2/2010 – 2:30pm
• Monday 8/2/2010 – 2:30pm

These provide people unable to make the face to face sessions an opportunity to fully participate in these wonderful learning experiences.  To book, please click here.

Participation is free.

The four pages off notes accompanying the major Point of Sale software update released this week by Tower Systems demonstrate the power of our Software Ideas facility.  We have tagged all of the enhancements which have come out of suggestions posted and voted on at the online Software Ideas forum launched last year on our company website.  We indicate a Software Ideas idea with the graphic as shown here.

We are proud to have delivered many enhancements suggested by users of our software.  The achievement is a testament to the support and engagement of our user community and the commitment of many within Tower Systems to delivering software by and for our user community.

We launched Software Ideas last year in an effort to give our customers a greater and more transparent say in the enhancement of the software.  This latest software deliveres the largest batch of user initiated suggestions.

We have been fielding many calls from newsagents transitioning from distribution/retail businesses to retail only businesses.  We are helping them retain customers but stop billing for newspaper distribution using our newsagency management software.  We are also helping extract distribution data to make this available for others taking over the management of the distribution service.  There are many facilities in our software to make this process easier for both sides.

I am undertaking a newsagent retail sales benchmark study comparing sales for January 2010 against January 2009.

Tower Newsagents can participate by sending a Monthly Sales Comparison report: tick the box to exclude home deliveries, and tick the box for a category breakdown. Set your first date range (on the left) to January 1, 2010 to January 31, 2010 and the date range of the right to one year earlier.

Once the report is on the screen, click the PDF button to save this as a PDF, go into your email software and send a copy of the PDF to me at mark@towersystems.com.au. I’ll publish the benchmark results here and elsewhere so all newsagents can benefit.

Non Tower newsagents can participate by emailing me for a copy of a spreadsheet template I have prepared.

As with past benchmarks, I expect to get data from between 100 and 120 newsagencies in the next week.  The results will provide an indication of sales performance year on year and give newsagents something with which to compare their businesses.

Our stand at the Melbourne Gift Fair has delivered excellent new leads for us over the last three days.  We also got to meet with many existing customers as well as with many gift suppliers who can make good use of our technology.

The configuration of our stand made it easy for us to talk with multiple groups at any one time.  This was important given the show traffic as well as the number of businesses we met having more than one outlet - common in the gift space.

We used the Melbourne Gift Fair to roll out the first phase of new look and feel marketing collateral for 2010 as well as our new software release.  The reaction was excellent.

As we anticipated, visitors to the trade show and our stand came from the gift retailer, jeweller and newsagent channels.

This has been our first Trade Show for 2010 and even with one day left to go we’re feeling good about the interest retailers will have in technology this year.

In addition to the twenty face to face user meetings we have scheduled for around Australia starting from next week, we plan to offer several online user meetings.  These will follow the traditional format of the face to face sessions.  They will enable us to reach people unable to make the face to face sessions.  We will also schedule one session for the evening to see how this appeals to our customer base.

We are all about taking training and customer contact to locations and times which suit our customers.  Bringing the next round of user meetings online was a suggestion by one of our customers.  Thank you!

We will announce details later this week.

We are offering four more free live online training workshops this week for users of our Point of Sale software.  The sessions are

• Mastering Sub Agents - Tuesday, Feb 2 @ 11am
• Magazine Management - Tuesday, Feb 2 @ 2pm
• Former POS Solutions users - Thursday, Feb 4 @ 11am
• Systems security - Thursday, Feb 4 @ 2pm

These online training sessions are a great way to learn.  Access is 100% free to Tower Advantage ^TM customers.  We pay for the phonecall for you to get audio content.

We use WebEx from Cisco because it’s the best tool for managing meetings like these.

For years now, we have offered a free business analysis service.  Retailers using our Point of Sale software send us a current backup of their system and we thoroughly analyse the data.  We look at how the system is being used as well as how the business is performing.  The result is a frank report for the business owner(s) to consider.  We often discuss this further with them and use data as a guide to talk through changes which could be considered.

At our end, a review of a business can take up to four hours of working through data and reports.  It often involves two of us comparing what we have found and challenging our views of what steps the business could take.  We take the opportunity very seriously because we understand the value for us of helping our retailers achieve more from their Tower Systems software.

The free business analysis is part of the Tower Advantage ^TM suite of services which help our retail partners get more from our Point of Sale software.

Any customer can request this by sending a current backup with a note seeking a Business Review to our Head Office: Suite 10, 22 Horne Street, Elsternwick VIC 3185.

We are running another free training program for newsagents switching from the POS Solutions software to our Point of Sale software.  We will share experiences of moving from their software to ours.  With more than 200 having made the move, we have a good body of experience on which to draw.

The training will be delivered live an online at 11am this Thursday, February 4, at 11am.  To book, please click here.

We are rolling out a fresh look with the latest release of our Point of Sale software which will start shipping next week.  The new design is clean, simple to navigate and fresh.  Very 2010.

The new entry screen connects with other changes we will announce soon - we have exciting innovations coming.

We brought our Sydney team to our Head Office in Melbourne yesterday and an in-depth look at the new software we are about to roll out.  Getting all parts of the company across this significant new release of our software in advance of mass release is crucial.

As the most comprehensive update in several years, it is key that our entire team is across the new facilities and other changes.  The field experience of the Sydney team is unique and key to understanding how many of the features will be received.

Yesterday’s visit was also useful in fine tuning our documentation and some cosmetic aspects of this new release.

While our software development team is shielded from much of our day to day business, the scoping, design and finessing of new software is done in an open and co-operative way across the whole company.  We all have a stake in this.

We let our customers know yesterday that we are on track to start manufacturing CDs on the weekend.

We have launched new software for jewellers and along with that new marketing collateral based around the theme of A fresh approach.

Developed by our marketing team in-house, this new collateral will start to roll out to jewellers across Australia from next week in several diffdrent forms.  The marketing reflects the considerable changes delivered in the new software and the fresh approach we take to helping jewellers get the most from their software investment.

The new collateral is part of a bigger story which will unfold in the coming weeks across all Tower Systems marketplaces.

We are taking the opportunity to refresh our collateral to reflect the development of the business in 2010.

We are hosting a free online training workshop today at 11am which focuses on our Point of Sale screen. We will cover basic functions as well as more unusual function, hidden gems which deliver more than traditional point of sale facilities.

Our POS screen has many shortcuts available to improve customer throughput.  These also reduce keystrokes and each keystroke cut is a potential mistake eliminated.

We also enable multiple tasks to run at once from the POS screen - in we workshop we will show you how.  This can help enable counter employees to do multiple things at once.

Through our smart Point of Sale screen technology we help add value to the sales counter function.  This drives better outcomes for the business as well as making the work day more interesting for employees.

Our training workshop will help sales staff better serve customers and the business - without compromising business security.  Click here to book - it’s free.

The ePay server is currently down making phone recharge and other products from ePay through our software and other software unavailable.  It is expected to be back online by around 2pm.

UPDATE (2:45PM)  ePay has advised that their server is back up and running.

Our POS software helps smart retailers make excellent money from key gift giving seasons like Mother’s Day, Father’s Day, Christmas and Valentine’s Day which is just around the corner. Hampers are a great way to drive premium business for the seasons and smart retailers are well placed to achieve good business from them.

Besides the good business results, hampers can be excellent centrepieces for a seasonal visual merchandising display.

From simple ‘hampers’ like the one shown in the photo, to full-op hampers with fifteen or more items, our software tracks it all from the individual item up.

Using our manufactured goods facilities, our retails are able to make up hampers, gift packs, by bringing together single items they have in the business.

Hampers can be sold under a barcode specific to the each yet sales are accurately recorded for each item which makes up the pack as well as for the whome hamper.

If the store runs out of single items, the packs can easily be broken down, using our POS software, back to individual items.

We own six retail businesses ourselves and are using these facilities regularly.

We are two weeks away from a national tour to meet with newsagents using our software.  These same sessions are an excellent opportunity for newsagents not using our Point of Sale and newspaper home delivery software to see it in action and to see how we connect with our customers.  Observing one of these meetings shows how we treat all of our customers - it is real and that matters more than a sales show.

We will be showing off our new newsagent software.  We will also have fresh documentation, an update on newsagent supplier changes this year and other news for our 1,600 strong newsagent community.

Here is the list of meetings we have scheduled through to the start of April.

Click here to book online and update your Outlook calendar.