Gavin Williams our general manager has been growing a mo in support of Movember. he thinks he looks like a porn star.  Hmm….

If you’d like to support Gavin’s fund raising efforts please click here. You can also Write a cheque payable to ‘Movember Foundation’, referencing my Registration Number 252866 and mailing it to: Movember Foundation, PO Box 292, Prahran, VIC, 3181. Remember, all donations over $2 are tax deductible.  Thanks for your support.

Movember is now in its sixth year and, to date, has achieved some pretty amazing results by working alongside The Prostate Cancer Foundation (PCFA) and beyondblue: the national depression initiative.

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.

Our underground carpark at our Head Office was broken into two days ago and a window of one of our company cars smashed and stock stolen.  This is a carpark with what we thought was good security - clearly not good enough.  What is frustrating, beyond the cost of the stolen goods and vehicle damage is the disruption and time lost navigating the theft with the police, various insurance companies (ours and that for the Body Corporate) and others involved.

Thankfully, we have enough cars in out fleet to cope with one car off the road for a few days while the police do their work and we get the damage repaired.

We have been helping get the family of Min Lin get the Epping Central Newsagency back open this week.  This is the business which was closed when the members of the family running the business were brutally murdered last month.  As long term customers of Tower Systems we have been glad to be in a position to help.  It has been terrific to see so many newsagency suppliers come together to help a business in need.

Tower Systems helps retail customers of ours who are facing tough times.  Our help includes consideration on support fees, business turnaround help, free training and other help designed to relieve the financial burden for the business.

To protect against an abuse of our offer, we have a process for considering an application for accessing these benefits.  The process starts with a call to our General Manager or our Managing Direector.  We handle the query confidentially from there.

Many of our client relationships are long standing and our businesses deeply connected.  It is only natural, therefore, that we help our friends out as we are able.

While we have seen an increase in the use of our assistance this year, it is not up as much as had expected based on the doom and gloom in the press.

Newsagents are mourning the tragic killing of Min Lin, his wife Yun Li Lin and their two sons and another female relative at the weekend. The family owned and operated the Rawson Street Newsagency in Epping Shopping Centre. They have been clients of Tower Systems for years. Those of us who had contact with them found them to good people to deal with.

We support the work of NANA, the NSW Newsagent’s Association, in establishing a trust fund for the remaining daughter of the family. The details of the trust facility to which you may voluntarily contribute at any Westpac Branch are: Account name: NANA Epping Central Trust, Branch: BSB 032062,Account number: 329692.

The Make-A-Wish Foundation is one of several charities we support here at Tower Systems.  They have been in the news recently because of a comedy sketch on ABC1’s The Chasers War on Everything.  While judgement of the comedic value of the sketch is up to others, I am proud of the work they do and that we continue to support Make-a-Wish at Christmas and other times through the year.

While a new elevator is installed over five weeks in the building in which we have our head Office - we own level 3 - we are running an Everest challenge by recording each time each of us climbs the stairs.  Our goal is to beat the last time we ran this challenge a couple of years ago.  Today, just over two weeks in, we are at 5,040 metres.  Everest is 8,846 metres.

We are using an excellent template from Sport England to track our results.

We are also running this campaign to highlight the health and environmental benefits for our team of using the stairs instead of the elevator to climb our three floors.  We further support the health message with free fruit, healthy option breakfast bars, a great selection teas and filtered water for refreshment.

Independent retailers are important to Australia for several reasons:

• Community. Small independent retailers are more likely to support local traditions and tell stories which need to be passed on.
• Creativity. They make creative decisions locally.
• Diversity. No two small independent retailers in the same channel are the same.
• Entrepreneurship. These businesses are where entrepreneurs are born.
• The local economy. They are more likely to hire locally, shop locally, live locally and invest locally.
• Leadership. Small independent retailers nurture the development of leadership skills since decisions are made locally.
• Humanity. You are more likely to observe humanity at work because there is no corporate manual rules.

My list is as incomplete as it is unscientific. Faults aside, it lists what I like about independent retail businesses.

Our Software Ideas initiative - where we give our users more control over the direction of their software - has been widely embraced and discussed since its launch just over a week ago.  Some ideas have already been scheduled for the next software update, genuinely new ideas have been suggested and other ideas have received excellent public support.

The process in completely transparent.  Every idea is published.  Every vote is counted.  All feedback is considered and discussed.  Now, more than ever, Tower Systems software users drive the direction of the software.

I have been asked by another software company about the idea and how we went about implementation.  I was happy to share our experiences and details of the back-end processes. I am hopeful that they, and others, will join this movement of greater transparency of and user engagement in determining the future direction of their software.

While I appreciate the importance of jury duty in our justice system, it is frustrating to have a senior manager, idle, in a holding room waiting two days to be considered and then to be empanelled on a five day case. Beyond funding the seven man-day loss, there is the disruption to the business. While I don’t know what the answer is, I do know that the current approach to jury duty is in need of an overhaul.

We are noticing overseas software being offered more and more to Australian small business retailers.  While this overseas developed software may do the job, it does not offer an Australian narrative - yes, software is a literary work and an Australian voice is crucial - nor does it help Australian software developers stay in work.

If Australia is to have a viable small business software develoment sector, buying Australian is important.

We intend to develop a campaign around this to pitch why the choice is important for our customers, their suppliers and us.   In every retail channel in which we serve, there are unique local requirementswhich overseas product could not handle.

Australian software is best for Australian businesses.

Vivace, our favourite restaurant and venue for our last three Christmas parties is hosting a Bushfire appeal dinner on Monday March 2.  It is $150 a head with $75 going direct ot the Red Cross Appeal.  We are booking a table and would welcome anyone to join with us.  There will be an auction of goods including signed St Kilda and Melbourne jumpers.

In addition to helping customers with businesses affected by the fires, our own retail stores (six in Melbourne) are collecting change from customers for the Red Cross Bushsire appeal as well as letting customers how to make direct donations of larger amounts to the appeal.  Within Tower we are announcing today to our group-wide staff of 70+ how they can contribute and the company itself has made a direct financial contribution to the Red Cross appeal.

We have noticed other companies making donations a commercial aactivity - shop this Friday and profits go to the appeal.  We felt that we did not want use the Appeal as a driver in pursuit of more business.

We have customers enduring extraordinary events this weekend.  In Far North Queensland, we have newsagencies flooded and others surrounded by water and cut off - some have been in this situation for close to two weeks.  In Victoria, we have newsagencies shut by fires which have caused towns to be evacuated.  In New South Wales and South Australia, we also have customers with businesses impacted by fires.

We will help in any way we can to get these business operating again quickly.  Our support team is available for on site visits at no cost to help with any hardware issues caused by water or the fires.  We also have replacement hardware which may be useful in some circumstances.

Our after hours numbers are available for assistance - this is free of charge.  If you are affected and cannot get through please call me on 0418 321 338.

I apprecaite it may seem odd that I am blogging about this.  I figured it is best we use as many communication channels as possible.

We have received wonderful feedback since we announced to our user community late last year that we would not increase our pos software support fees in 2009.  Continued growth of our user community has enabled us to make this decision.

Maintaining up to date software is crucial for retailers, especailly in marketplaces where suppliers continue to evolve standards.  Out of date software means a retailer cannot access the latest efficiencies.  Our software support coverage includes the provision of software updates including a full backup copy of the updates software on CD for safe keeping.

The other aspect of our approach to support fees which is important is transparency around the actual fees.  We have a published fee structure based on the software in use.  This provides our users peace of mind that they will pay the same as another retailer nearby.  One of our competitors has a mate’s raates policy which sees less well connected users pay sometimes double that paid by a better connected (mate) user.

Tower Systems’ point of sale software helps our retail partners raise money for charity.  We do this in a number of ways:

• Tracking sales of fund raising items and making reporting to the charity easy for the retailer to manage.
• Promoting charities on receipts - better connecting the retailer with their social responsibility.
• Prompting counter staff of a donation opportunity during a sale - this worked recently during Movember to remind staff to let customers know they were involved.
• Easily adding a surcharge for a certain period – this is popular in the US where businesses get behind selected charities and add, say, a $1.00 charge to transactions over a certain amount to raise funds for a worthy cause.

We have built these facilities into our software to enable our retail partners to be more socially connected if they wish. 

Charities we have worked with recently, planning for 2009, like the options we provide for them to more efficiently connect with retailers.

Our low cost point of sale solution for small newsagents which we released six months ago is helping more small newsagents connect with current industry standards and improve efficiency in their businesses. 

Our commitment to this package is not so much a commercial pursuit but out of our program of social responsibility.  The newsagency channel has been very good to us and we are pleased to be able to put something back by financially supporting this low cost solution for small newsagents.

We generate considerable cardboard, more than our council supplied recycle bin can handle.  To help us better serve the environment we have contracted a firm to recycle our cardboard for us.  Separating cardboard like this ensures it will be recycled rather than going into landfill as often happens with what you put into a general recycle bin.

We ran a bad shirt day in our Head Office yesterday to raise money for Beyond Blue. The photo shows a small selection of the best of the worst of the shirts in the office. Today’s fund raiser took our usual casual Friday to a new level. Thankfully not too many clients or visitors saw this bad fashion sense.

Beyond the fun of making fun of these brave people we raised $150.00 for the work of Beyond Blue.

Materials arrived from the Make A Wish Foundation last week - provided as part of our financial support for their work this year. The stickers acknowledge the donation and encourage others to join with Make A Wish. We make a donation at this time each year in lieu of sending Christmas cards. We like the work of Make A Wish and the transparency of their operation.

The Newsagency Sales Benchmark reports we have been publishing are being used quite widely. I received an email yesterday from one newsagent who has compared his business, found some issues and reconfigured his focus as a result. Even though he is not a user of our software, he was pleased to have access to the resource as well as the ability to access more detailed data and ask follow up questions without pressure to buy software or join any other group.

Our work on this and other benchmark projects is part of our way of putting something back into the newsagency channel.

The Smith Family is one of four charities we actively support through our business.  Our donations are for their Learning for Life program.  We selected Learning for Life because we believe in its goals around education.  We selected The Smith family because of how they go about what they do.  If you are looking for a charity to support in business or personally, we highly recommend The Smith Family.

Gary Hall from our software development team also has a watchful eye on our social responsibility.  This is afunction etter handled away from traditional management. It was in this role that he participated in a discussion recently with a state government department about green energy and environmental issues more broadly.  We have been purchasing green power for several years and a year ago we funded tree planting to offset the carbon fingerprint of our Head Office. 

Gary came away from the meeting with a list of further actions we can take to reduce our carbon footprint.  We have started working on these.  While it is easier to pay to have someone else compensate for your impact on the environment, we accept that we have to take steps internally and that’s what we are doing under Gary’s watch.

I have just finished reading The Working Poor by David K. Shipler.  It’s a rough book to read because of the stories of hardship workers face in jobs which pay too little.  I am glad I read it.  It reminded me of Barbara Ehrenreich’s Nickle and Dimed in many ways.  It portrays the daily struggle of those living in or on the edge of poverty in America while working a job.  I especially enjoyed the epilogue, a catch up of people in the book and their journey since the author’s initial contact.

Reading The Working Poor I was reminded of some small business owners in similar day to day struggles to live.  I know of a husband and wife working sixty to eighty hours a week each to run a business from which they collectively make $50,000 a year or less.  While they have some responsibly for their situation, much of the revenue of the business is determined by others as is the ability of the business to pass on increased operational costs.  While the $50,000 a year does not make them poor under the definition, the $7.50 an hour they earn makes them among the poorest paid in Australia.