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 interviews with candidates for a new position on our Help Desk yesterday were terrific, some excellent people presented with good skills and a strong desire to help small business retailers.  While the choice has been difficult we have reached a decision and two offers will go out today.

We have five interviews locked in for our new Help Desk role this coming Monday.  All have been pre screened and look like excellent quality candidates.  The selection is set to be difficult - in a good way.

Our goal is to have a final decision and offer made by Wednesday.

Our interview process is quite structured with three people from the company involved - usually across two interview discussions per candidate.  This has worked well for us in the past.

We have received applications from some high quality candidates for a new Help Desk role we are looking to fill in Melbourne.  We have completed our first and second cull of the list and let those know who missed the cut.

Even after the two cuts we have twenty five quality candidates to review.  This will be reduced to an interview list by Wednesdaywith interviews early next week.

While it is tough culling a pool of good quality applicants, it is a good position to be in.

We are thrilled to welcome a new receptionist, Natasha, to our Melbourne office this morning.  Natasha joins Amy who will leave in a few months on maternity leave.

It has been a busy week settling into the new office in Hawthorn, unpacking and getting comfortable with the bigger space.  The move has been made easier thanks to Optus arranging for us to take our phone and fax numbers.

While we have updated our address on our website, we figured we should note it here too: 3 Lynch Street Hawthorn VIC 3122.   It is proving to be a convenient location for many on our team as well as suppliers.

Planning is well under way for moving our Head Office later this month to a larger facility in inner Hawthorn.  This process actually started last year when we made the decision to look for more space.  The new location will provide better accomodation for software development and support teams, expansion opportunities and better facilities for our busy online and face to face training services.  It also has excellent on-site parking and also has terrific rail and freeway access.

The new office is 33% bigger than what we have today and the space has a configuration which better suits our needs.

We have communication prepared to send to all of our customers and suppliers with details of the move - the only delay to this going out is finalisation of the phone number.

We are saddened to reports that Tim Batt has decided to return to South Australia to work for another software company.  After ten years with Tower Systems, Tim will be missed professionally and personally by many in the company and our customer community - we wish him all the best when me moves on in a couple of weeks.

Jonathan Tay has accepted promotion to the role of State Sales Manager (VIC/SA) and is well advanced in a handover with Tim. Jonathan’s excellent technical, communication and personal skills will help him in this role.  His last two years as Software Development Manager have seen him preside over significant changes in our software and manage several key new supplier relationships.  Jonathan’s appointment continues our tradition of not hiring sales people - our software is best sold by an expert who can answer any question without sales spin.

Jefree Lim has accepted promotion to the role of Software Development Manager and is well advanced in a handover with Jonathan. Jefree’s exceptional knowledge of the software will help him transition to this senior role.  For the last two years, Jefree has managed product Quality Assurance for us.  He has overseen plenty of quality software updates.

We are looking forward to leveraging the opportunity of these changes for the people directly involved as well as our customers.

We are avertising on Seek (as of this morning) for a new person to join our systems installation team.  Based out of Melbourne but working nationally, this new role will expand the resources we have to help us install new systems in a timely manner.

We have a structured process for considering applicants to ensure that we do find the best candidate possible to join our team.

We have loaded a new introductory video at our website.  This was produced earlier this week and reflects some of the recent innovations launched by us including the new website itself.

The video seeks to present us in a natural and simple way.  It also demonstrates how we are using the website to deliver video as well as live training online to our large retailer user community.

We are committed to keeping our story as fresh as the software we sell and the services we provide.

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.

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.

We have advertised for a new admin assistant role in our Melbourne Head Office position to work with us on a part time basis to help deal with the load of work from new installs, marketing and other tasks.  If you know anyone who would be interested please have them contact us through our website.  The hours are flexible but will be between four and six hours a day.

We quietly launched our new corporate website yesterday.  This is a complete replacement for our previous website which was two years old.

The new website offers all of the old facilities along with some new features.  Visually, it connects with our new look 2010 marketing collateral and our new look software.

The development of the new website started mid way through last year and involved various parts of the company from marketing to support to development.  We took time to consult widely internally before settling on a design and functional specification.

We also took time with this project because of the role the website plays in our business as an entry point for customer contact as well as a place where prospective customers can meet us and find out about what we do.  It was important that we delivered a website which truly represents Tower Systems on all levels.

Given the e-commerce connection from within the website, we had to get accounting and banking approval before we could go live.  The banking  approval was obtained overnight Wednesday.

We have further innovation planned for the website but as we did with the launch this morning, we will talk about that once it is delivered.

Our website is an important tool in delivering customer service as well as attracting and winning new customers.  The new website enhances our abilities in each of these areas.  We’d be glad to get your feedback.

Sent with our weekly email to all of our customers today:

As is tradition, we decorated the office to bring some Christmas cheer in a few weeks ago.  We’ve also enjoyed gourmet mince tarts and some other delights.  Tomorrow, we’ll throw on some lunch and drinks before everyone heads to family and friends for a few days R&R.  We close mid afternoon until Tuesday morning.

In among all this Christmas cheer, we continue to focus on responding to support calls, push forward on our next software update and close good business - December has been an excellent month.

While all of our offices will be closed from tomorrow afternoon, our after hours service will continue.

We booked out Vivace restaurant in Brighton (Victoria) Sunday night for our 2009 Christmas party.   This is our fourth year at Vivace and it did not disappoint.  Excellent food and wine, wonderful company and plenty of laughs.

The Kris Kringle was again a feature of the evening, spanning a couple of hours while people steal or choose gifts and then show them off.  We brought in team members from our offices in Queensland, New South Wales and Western Australia.

We followed the party with team meetings throughout yesterday.  Our installation team got together as did our sales team plus our development and sales teams.   This interaction is important to our review of 2009 and our planning for 2010.

I’d highly recommend Vivace to anyone looking for a wonderful night out.   The made our party a wonderful evening, again.  We will be back!

I have a half share in a new newsagency opening in a major shopping centre in Victoria. This Greenfield location is a new style of newsagency, a smaller footprint aimed at an above average achievement per square metre. The new location is being stocked at the next week and is expected the following week.

Opening a new newsagency enhances our experience using our Point of Sale software to help in the setup of a new newsagency. This experience will be reflected in the approach we take with our customers in the same situation.

The most significant change in our business occurred in February 1996 when we purchased our first newsagency.

Click on the image below to see the video I created which introduces Tower Systems and our point of sale solutions. While not the slickest video production in the world, the video does present the Tower Systems story with honesty and passion.

This video is available from our corporate website as well as via Yahoo videos. We are enjoying good success with our videos for marketing as well as support. They demonstrate the Tower Advantage^TM

This is a photo from inside what we are now calling our studio, a room full time dedicated to producing our training videos, hosting online training workshops, hosting supplier workshops, hosting live online sales demonstrations of our software and filimg other presentations.

Equipped with two cameras (one broadcast quality), two broadcast quality microphones, a studio quality mixer, a PC with some cool software and some other bits of technology.

We are adding soundproofing and some other elements to further improve the quality of our output.

The setup of our own professional quality studio is key to enabling us to get quality content out for our customers on a rapid turnaround as we have demonstrated in recent weeks.

Too often, computer training is delivered to the business owner or manager when it is other employees  who need vital knowledge.  Our training videos mean that any team members can learn information critical to their business. This means that their business benefits and we benefit.

We have developed a range of topics for which we are preparing content at the moment.  The resulting videos and others we will create for more immediate needs will demonstrate the Tower Advantage^TM in action for our customers.

It is not uncommon for us to serve two retailers in a shopping mall.  Indeed, we have three quite different businesses using our Point of Sale software in some shopping malls.

A couple of days ago, one of our team members visited one such mall where we serve three very different businesses.  It is a good feeling experiencing this diversity first hand and connecting our customers with others nearby.

I have recorded a new version of my introductory video for retailers looking for a Point of Sale system.  This video is now available live at our website by clicking the button (see left) on the home page.

Our goal with this and other non training videos we will produce is to bring Tower Systems more to life on our website as this is how retailers are buying software.

While not broadcast quality production, the content foucses on the Tower Advantage^TM and how this benefits our customers.

I spent part of Melbourne Cup day recording a couple of videos about Tower Systems.  I wanted to experience for myself the process others in our team are following as they develop training videos in our in-house recording facility.  It is important to me that I am accessible and accountable as the owner of this company.  Hence, my decision to front up for a couple of videos.

The first video is an introduction to Tower, who we are, what we stand for and how we operate.  It shows you some of our facilities and talks about what we see as some key benefits of partnership with us.  You can this here.

By publishing what is effectively a sales pitch at our website for all including existing customers to see, we are making it easier to be accountable.  Too often, sales businesses sell only to non-customers.  I want our existing customers to see our pitch and let us know if we are delivering for them or not.

As has been tradition here at Tower Systems for more than twenty years, we ran a couple of Melbourne Cup sweeps yesterday.  Both filled quickly. The regular Melbourne Cup sweeps along with our annual AFL and NRL tipping competitions are part of the fun of what we try and make a relaxed yet professional workplace where our customers come first.

We spent over $350,000 on domestic travel last year: airfares, rental cars, hotels and travel related expenditure.  It does not include the costs of our sixteen car vehicle fleet.  Travel is a significant cost to doing business and one we are looking at this year.  We are starting by considering shifting bookings to an agency.

Currently, we do all bookings in-house.  This takes time and sometimes we make mistakes which cost extra.  By contracting a professional corporate travel service we are hoping to get better service and reduce costs - that’s the pitch from prospective service providers at least.

Over the next few days we will meet with several service providers and assess their offerings.  Service will be the key.  With so many of our team on the road for most of the year, it is important that they have the flexibility and quality necessary for enjoyable time away from home.