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.

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 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 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.

Catalogues are crucial to driving new traffic into newsagency businesses. Back to School, Christmas, Mother’s Day, Father’s Day, Ink … there are many catalogue opportunities each year for newsagents to use to attract new customers.

Tower Systems offers a structured approach to suppliers and newsagents for handling catalogue business. This helps both sides get the most of the opportunities. from electronic files to marketing opportunities to performance tracking to reordering, our Point of Sale software helps key newsagency channel stakeholders - newsagents, wholesales and suppliers - to leverage each catalogue to its full potential.

We are currently working with several suppliers on new initiatives to strengthen the offer around catalogues for the Tower newsagent community. New smart tools have an opportunity to live the commercial benefits driven by catalogues.

We see our investment in helping develop smarter catalogue initiatives as valuable in helping newsagents get more from their businesses.

We are seeing an encouraging number of new newsagencies open for business in our own sales data. In January and February this year we have sold point of sale software systems to newsagents opening new businesses, often for the first time.

The growth in new locations counters concerns in some quarters that the newsagency channel is shrinking. While that may be the case, there are now outlets opening in new centres and extensions of existing centres.

We are glad to be helping new newsagents get their foot in the door and establish new newsagency presences in the community. Given our history in the channel and that we own newsagencies ourselves, we are glad to pass on advice and supplier contacts.

We have published advice reminding our 1,600 newsagent customers how to hande the price changes for the Sydney Morning Herald this week.  Advice sheet N10.4 at our website coveres everything you need to know.

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.

In keeping with a tradition of Christmases past, our wonderful creative team here at Tower Systems has developed a great poster for promoting magazines as Christmas gifts. This is available free for all newsagents to use. You can click here for an A4 version. Click here for an A3 version.

With more newsagents using Tower Systems newsagency software than the combined customer base of all other software companies, Tower is committed to helping newsagents cultivate healthier and more enjoyable businesses. The Christmas poster and other free collateral is a resource any newsagent is welcome to use.

I’d be happy to send several A3 copies of this poster to any Tower Advantage^TM customers requesting a copy.  Email support@towersystems… for this.  We are glad to be helping our newsagency channel.

Our December newsletter for newsagents, mailed last week, is a mixture of news, advice and support access information.

In addition to news, the newsletter also included an up to date list of free online training we offer through our Training Academy.  The feedback we are getting from those who have participated in online training is excellent.

The red box in the bottom left corner of the newsletter details our help desk support and after hours support numbers.  We want to ensure that contacting us is easy for our customers.

We find that sharing information with our customers through multiple means helps drive better engagement - hence our commitment to this paper based newsletter in addition to our weekly email newsletter.

The sales benchmark study I announced here yesterday has already generated an excellent response.  Data started flowing almost immediately and this has continued overnight.

This particular benchmark study is being done in association with a couple of newsagent suppliers keen for an up to date sales health check in the newsagency channel.  The size of our customer base means we are better positioned to produce a study based oin a good data set size.

We are grateful to newsagents participating and reflect this with personal business feedback based on their data compared to the broader group.

Efficient customer throughput at the sales counter is vitally important in retail.  We reflect this in the design of our point of sale software.  We empower our users to easily change touch buttons on the screen - so there is no thinking about which button to press.  We also provide large buttons - important if you have blokes (with big fingers) using the system.

These are small but important points in making point of sale easier, faster and more enjoyable for retail staff.

The screen in the photo is the POS screen for one of our newsagent customers.  They set this up themselves based on the top selling items they are likely to not scan.  To change a button takes a minute or two, making it easy to finesse the layout based on experience.

In addition to user definable touchscreen buttons, our software supports PLUs - codes set by the business for quick selling items - as well as barcodes.

We are promoting our latest software enhancements for newsagents with a campaign starting tomorrow.

Faster returns.  Faster Credits.  Is the headline on our marketing collateral.  This picks up on the attention we pay in our newsagency software to genuinely helping newsagents make a time consuming and complex process as simple and certain as possible.

As newsagents ourselves we understand the value of good software to manage magazines.  Our specialisation in this area is one reason three times more newsagents partner with Tower Systems than any other software company.

Click here for a copy of the new marketing material.

Our eziPass electronic voucher vending platform is attracting more new suppliers keen to see their products offered across our retail network.

We vet products and the companies behind the products carefully to ensure that risk is minimised for our customers and that their customers are buying products which they can trust.

We have several new products undergoing internal trials at the moment in advance of launch.  We anticipate commencing public trials in the next ten days for the first of these new products.

We are pleased to launch today a prepaid mobile offer for newsagents in association with gotalk.  The details of the offer are being faxed this morning to all Tower Newsagents.  Access to the prepaid mobile products and recharge are available through our eziPass platform - integrated within our Point of Sale software and in stand along for newsagents using other point of sale software.

Today’s launch is another example of the strength of our Tower Systems and the newsagent community we represent.  being first gives our enwsagents a competitive advantage.

Tower Systems is launched a extensive shopping basket analysis study among its community of more than 1,500 newsagents. Using current shopping basket data, we will develop a view of what is in newsagent shopping baskets. The resulting analysis is will provide a timely update to newsagents on the efficiency of the products they carry.

Our shopping basket analysis study is another way we are demonstrating the value of the Tower Advantage^TM program to newsagents and their supplier partners.

We have been approached by some newsagents using other software for clarification on the pricing to access the XchangeIT EDI platform for newsagents.
The pricing for Tower Newsagents following our compliance advice is the lowest available. Our commitment for years has been to provide newsagents with current standard software to ensure low prices on compliance requirements like XchangeIT. This is why Tower Newsagents are not facing the penalty fees some other newsagents face today.

We do have an offer which makes XchangeIT access free for the first year to newsagents joining our user community.

Our stand at the GNS Market Fair in Sydney this weekend has been busy with existing customers asking questions and prospective customers seeing what we do which is different.

While the hardware we had on show drew interest it was our software, a key Tower Systems point of difference, which drew the most attention. With so many innovations released in recent months we had plenty of points of difference to show off.

We have repeated our offer of $1,000 off the GNS account for any newsagent buying our software at the trade show. We are grateful to GNS for allowing us to run this promotion.

The photo features Nathan Morrison, our NSW State Manager.  Nathan is the best newsagency software sales person in the country.  This was evidenced by the warm greeting many of his customers had for him on our stand.  To have customers from years ago walk up with a smile and shake his hand shows the honsety of his process and their happiness being part of the community Nathan brought them to.

I am indebted to Nathan for his commitment to newsagents and to Tower Systems.

Access POS, a NSW based software company serving newsagents did not participate in the one trade show for newsagents in NSW this year.  This is a surprise and leaves us and others at the show wondering if they are scaling back their interest in newsagents.

Our team is ready for the GNS Market Fair in Sydney which starts tomorrow morning.  This is a big trade show for us because we have more than 600 newsagents using our software in NSW - plenty of the newsagents attending the trade show will already be customers.  That said, we are looking forward to welcoming more to the growing Tower Newsagent community.

On our stand we have our latest newsagency software, state of the art retail hardware and a Tyro broadband eftpos terminal.

Best of all, our stand will have people from our NSW office on hand - the people newsagents deal with daily in NSW.  While I will be there tomorrow, we have found it valuable for newsagents to meet at trade shows the people they will deal with in their state.

POS Solutions is also at the trade show. This makes it easy for newsagents to compare systems and companies.

Click here for a copy of our August newsletter for the Tower Newsagent community.

POS Solutions has issued proceedings against Tower Systems in the County Court of Victoria.  In the fifteen page writ POS Solutions claims that they are suffering damage including the loss of customers because of posts published at this blog.

We are proud to be supporting newsagents by sponsoring the Queensland Newsagents’ Federation Far North Queensland conferences in Townsville on Sunday just gone and Cairns today.  Our sponsorship, and that of other suppliers, goes toward the cost of hosting the events for the QNF.  It also enables more local newsagents to participate in the great day of learning and networking.

We have supported the newsagency channel for years by sponsoring events like this.  While I am happy for us to have the opportunity to ourselves, it speaks volumes that other newsagent software companies ignore the opportunity to show their support for their potential customers.

Newsagencies are community based businesses.  They rely on their local community for support.  Newsagent suppliers, too, are community based businesses.  We rely on newsagents for support and we owe it to newsagents to support their community.

There are some suppliers who ignore all requests for support from newsagent associations.  For that alone they do not deserve newsagent support.

Industry standard software for newsagents was the theme of our successful stand at the GNS Market Fair in Melbourne this past weekend.  We chose the theme to reflect the size of our newsagent community - we have close to three times the number of newsagents using our software than our nearest competitor.  This strength is important as it provides us the resources necessary to help newsagents navigate technology change.  The level of change has increased in scope and pace this year.

The change of pace will increase in 2010 as more suppliers extend their IT link with newsagents.

Our size in the newsagency marketplace has helped us fund the reduction in our support fees this year.

GNS put on an excellent event and ensured that newsagents visiting the trade show walked past all companies exhibiting.

A good mix of newsagents attended - city, country, shopping centre and high street.  Most were positive about business and focused on investing in their business.  Our team wass kept busy.

We also appreciated the opportunity to catch up with suppliers - this was important given new EDI work about to launch in the newsagency channel

Last week, we loaded a new stock file for Darrell Lea.  We have also checked and made other stock files available but we will not publish the details because of arrangements with the suppliers.  We ask for written approval from suppliers before we publish their stock data.

We are helping more newsagents switch to the new XchangeIT EDI platform with additional online and face to face training.  Our offer has been revised based on feedback from the sample group testing the new platform. Their feedback and our own experiences in our newsagencies with XchangeIT has been most useful as has our work direct with a couple of the magazine distributors.  This personal experience is invaluable - it has also led to a revision of our XchangeIT compliance documentation.

With many more Tower Newsagents switching to the new XchangeIT platform next week, we have ensured that our support team is ready for to deliver additional training and support.