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 are planning on releasing an update to our Point of Sale software later today.  This update will be available for immediate download from our website to supported users once we announce that it is out of beta release.

The update contains eight enhancements and a completely new facility which leverages the strength of the Tower user communinty - more on that in a less public forum.

We are fortunate to be working with the developer of a new retail concept in the very early days of their business.  While allied to a marketplace with which we have considerable experience, this new operator has some unique aspects to their business provide good learnings for us.  We are happy to experiment with them.  We are already playing in some new areas which will broaden the capabilities in our software and benefit other users.

It is not often that we get to play with a new business model.  The next few months will be especially exciting as we bring new software facilities to life.

We are working with a new supplier on EDI compliance.  Once released, this will make more products easily available for our customers through a standard IT interface from our point of sale software to the supplier’s warehousing system.

Achieving certification with the new platform will be another point of difference for Tower Systems and a further demonstration of the skill of our development team.

We are on track to release a software update next week.  This update which will be available online will offer several enhancements suggested by our users plus a significant enhancement developed out of our own experiences.  This enhancement will deliver a key operational benefit exclusive to us.

The details of the content of the update will be released to our customers by mid week.

While we like to think that every innovation we release will be a hit, we are realistic in our expectations. We have found over the years that we are better off letting the market show us what it likes. Sometimes we are quite surprised.

Our recently released range of gift cards is one such surprise. Many of our customers have contacted up about getting gift cards made for their businesses. These are proving more popular than we expected.

While users of our software can source gift cards from anywhere, we are pleased that many are partnering with us and the suppliers we have sourced for our own retail businesses.

We offer off the shelf designs as well as from scratch designs – all using the logos of our customers.

The success of the cards is a testament to the efforts of our marketing and creative teams.

One of the toughest tasks running a software company is deciding what goes into a software update. There are many factors to weigh. We try and navigate these fairly, considering all stakeholders.

The change most difficult to navigate is that requested by a single user to serve a particular way they use the software in their business. Personally, I find making a decision on such change requests difficult. On the one hand I do not want to let down a customer with a reasonable request for their business while on the other hand I do not want to make the software more complex for other users.

Most software decisions are made by Jonathan Tay, our Software Development Manager, and his team. He does an excellent job navigating change requests and weighing up the implication of each. He and I talk through requests and this is where, sometimes, we have to make a decision on changes sought by just one or two of our customers.

Our online software ideas facility is proving to be useful in learning from our customers what they think.

Tower Systems is pleased to announce the completion of new facilities to manage exchange rates within our software. Ideal for retailers importing products, the new exchange rate facilities enable the software to better and more accurately manage the real local currency cost of imported goods.

Developed in association with a new user of our software, the new Exchange rate facilities will commence in-store trials later this month.

For some time I have wanted to change the slug line we use under our company name on marketing collateral.  Better Software. Better Service. This has been our pitch for more than ten years. Every idea we considered didn’t feel right to me.  They didn’t feel as genuine as I was looking for.

Then, two weeks ago, we developed:

LIFE IS GOOD WITH TOWER SYSTEMS.

This is aspirational and reflective of the experience for many inside and outside the business all at once.  I spoke with a range of people and the phrase tested well.  The feedback was that it is truthful.

Everything we do has to support this pitch.  Our software, support, sales presentations and training sessions.  They all must support our belief that life is good with us and for those who partner with us.

People want a good life.  We understand this and through our software and our service contact we will do everything possible to help them achieve this. We want life to be good too.  Our desires and the desires of our customers and our prospects are unified in this regard.

To open another communication channel with our users, we introduced a communications box on the entry screen to our point of sale software last year.  This takes a feed direct from the development team in our software company.  It provides us with another channel through which we can communicate about updates and other important news items which we know will be of value to our customers.

We know that retailers are often time-poor and that we need to use a multi-channel approach to reach our customers with useful support and service information.

Yesterday, we released a software update containing several exciting new facilities as well enhanced existing facilities.  Some of the changes released were suggested through our Software Ideas  initiative.

This update is available free for all of our Tower Advantage ^TM customers.

This update is available from our website.  We have done this as part of our trial for making software updates available electronically for users who prefer this to receiving a CD.

We have 66 ideas live at our Software Ideas facility.  Each one of these ideas has been suggested by a user of our POS software. Many in our user community have voted on these ideas.  We engage with the ideas by researching each submission, tracking the voting and scheduling the popular changes for updates.

For something we launched just a couple of months ago, the engagement is most encouraging.

We have kept this innovation announcement under wraps but now we are into our user meeting series we can share what we have been telling our customers confidentially for the last ten days. In a week or so we will release an update to our software which provides a range of innovations around Google Maps.

Using our software, our users will be able to view where customers are drawn from - on a Google Map.  Retailers can see how far their marketing reaches and how far word of mouth reaches - in a few moments in their computer without having to hire market research experts.  how great is that!  Independent retailers will be able to make some excellent business decisions based on this excellent view of their business.

From the customer screen, our users will be able to hit a button and see where a customer is located, on a Google Map. When we preview this we hear excitement from our customers - this is real innovation available at the retail counter!

There is plenty more innovation around this, all designed to give our customers smart ways to better understand their customers without having to spend any more money.  We are releasing our Google maps interface facilities in our next update without additional cost to our Tower Advantage ^TM customers.

Newsagents have asked for more information about our pay point newspaper home delivery payment solution following my blog post yesterday. Click on the image to see the customer screen. In front of the customer screen is the actual payment box which pops up when you indicate you want to do a payment for the customer.

The options make this flexible – pay until a date, pay last statement, pay any amount.

From this helpful screen, the employee at the pay point location can also answer customer questions about past payments, delivery details and newspaper stop / start information. This enables the pay point location to offer full customer service. Our own experience, in one of our own retail newsagencies, shows that anything less is no solution at all for the newspaper home delivery customer, the retail newsagent and the distribution newsagent.

Newspaper publishers have told us they like the flexibility in our pay point solution and that it satisfies their needs in the areas of newspaper subscriber customer service, payment tracking and change request reporting.

While we like our pay point facilities, we will not rest on our laurels.  We will continue to innovate and help retail and distribution newsagents work closely together to deliver excellent customer service to their shared customers.

More software ideas (enhancement suggestions) put forward by our retail software user community through the interactive Software Ideas facility at our website have transitioned to development.  That is, they are now real changes being made by our software development team.

Every idea suggested by users is published at Software Ideas along with votes and feedback.  It is essential for this process to be completely user controlled and transparent.  Otherwise it becomes another company mouthpiece and this would not help our users, our software or us.  This is what software companies tend to do - create a one way communication channel which makes it look like they listen to everyone when they do not.

The latest ideas to transition to development have done so because of user support through the voting process.  We are grateful to our users for their interaction.

We have completed the considerable work necessary to comply with police requirements around electronic data handling of second-hand goods for the latest enhancements to our point of sale software. The regulations in NSW are regarded as the most comprehensive, this is why we decided to build our second-hands goods software to their high standard.

The project has taken close to a man-year to complete.

We know from recent previews with prospective users well versed in second-hand goods requirements that we have something quite unique available in our software. We are excited for the beta release in a few weeks for this will be the real test.

Our research has revealed that our second-hands goods facilities will appeal across several marketplaces: jewellers, bike retailers, gift shops and newsagents as we have customers in each channel offering second-hand goods services.

We released an update to our POS software yesterday - it is available for download now from our website.  Retailer 2.2.8B delivers several enhancements and fixes a could of problems reported by users.  This update can be loaded over any version of retailer 2.2B.

Gavin Williams, our General Manager, and Jonathan Tay, our Software Development Manager, met in our board room last week to plan in detail software enhancements for the second half of 2009. While many enhancements in our retail management software come from suggestions from our customer community, we like to introduce our own innovations, to pursue our points of difference within our software.

Tower Systems is fortunate to have Gavin and Jonathan guiding software development. Their leadership on the direction of our software reflects the teamwork approach we take. Providing them with time to discuss and debate software direction is a key factor in their professional development and in our success.

We are grateful to be of a size which enables us to rely on a leadership team rather than a single person.

In last week’s discussion, Jonathan represented his development team and Gavin representedthe rest of the Tower team.

The Australian reported yesterday that IBM has advised staff worldwide that the company will no longer fund coffee and tea for staff. We are happy to continue to offer a good range of coffees and teas to help keep our team sustained during their busy days.

Our customers are embracing the Software Ideas facility we launched online last month and which has received international kudos.  One item has 59 votes.  Each vote is free market research for us. Our commitment to our customers is to act on their will.  We are also committed to  transparency - this is why we have attached it to our website and given our customers control over what is published.  For this to work to our advantage and the advantage of our customers we have to deliver the maximum amount of freedom possible.  Anything less than this and it would fail.

We already have enhancements ready for delivery which were suggested through Software Ideas.  More will follow soon.

Our approach to engaging with our customers on software enhancement ideas is another way we can be compared to other companies.  We welcome this.  It is one thing to say you welcome suggestions and another to provide a transparent user-driven process.

We will release a software update immediately after Easter.  This update will contain enhanced security system integration, tweaks for operating under Vista and some other enhancements requested by users.  the update will be available freee to users under our Tower Advantage ^TM facilities.

Four popular suggestions made through the Software Ideas facility at our website are to be included in the next update to our software.  Votes by our users for the four ideas showed how valuable the changes would be regarded.  These four changes are a start, more will be made in coming months as a result of the publishing of suggestions and voting by our users.

Our transparent approach to soliciting and considering software change requests is resulting in a deeper and more valuable connect between our development team and our user community.

DOS software has no place in forward thinking retail businesses.

DOS was originally released by Microsoft 1981.  The latest version, MS-DOS 6.22, was released in 1994. It is more fifteen years old. DOS can be susceptible to file corruptions and errors because it often utilizes less reliable databases.  It’s age makes it more vulnerable to other challenges.DOS is difficult to train younger employees on. DOS does not meet supplier standards in so many retail channels.

Yes, DOS is dead.  Spending money on it is wasted and has been for the last tean years.

Our new second-hand goods software facility will be placed into beta release with our next software update - due in April.  Helping retailers meet the regulatory requirements for handling second-hand goods, this module is set to save many of our customers significant time and money.

Based on feedback, we know it will serve a broad cross-section of marketplaces - handling second-hand goods is not limited to one or two retail channels.

The initial release is a true beta.  That is, it will be bumpy.  This is a completely new area for us and while we have consulted widely - including regulators in various states - there will be areas of handling second-hand goods which we have not addressed as well as we might.

We need to get the beta release out so that we get good in-the-field feedback.  Our commitment is to quickly respond to feedback and release updates to ensure that the final commercial release is truly valuable.

In addition to serving customers already in the second-hand space, we anticipate that this new software will invite others to consider second-hand goods as a new category for their business.

UPDATE (23/4/2009):  We are on track for release of our new repairs software in May.

The new repairs facility we have developed for our jeweller users is delayed. It has not passed our quality assurance hurdles to enable it to go into beta release. The current goal is that we will reach beta release by early April.

This is a completely new software module – replacing the repairs facility which we previously supplied. The scope of functionality is considerable – thanks to excellent guidance from some in our user community for whom repairs is key to their business.

Even though we call this a repairs module, it is used for a range of other business functions.