ArchiveApril 2015

POS Solutions has again written about the Tower Systems Discount Voucher facilities on their company blog.

While we will not go through all points in their blog post, we will address some in the interests of accurate representation of discount vouchers. The first point published by POS Solutions to address is:

Let first start off with the obvious, I would be delighted if Discount Vouchers worked. It would be a good for my clients, and I am in business to make my clients better. Furthermore, I do not appreciate name calling or rudeness. I am not trying to divert anything, and I have done a significant amount of research on this question.

This infers that Discount Vouchers do not work. That is not true. The Tower Discount Vouchers do work. In our own businesses we have the voucher and supporting financial data to prove this. Many retailers using Discount Vouchers say they have similar successful results. Despite this evidence, POS continues to spin that they do not work. The distinction is, the Tower Systems Discount Vouchers work.

The writer on the POS blog says they have done Wikipedia research and research on their own blog. That research is about a voucher from their own software. While that voucher may be called a discount voucher, it is not a Tower Discount Voucher, it has not been created with the same sophisticated and successful Tower software.

POS then states:

At the time I released this report, I noted that their users felt that the results I got were consistent with their results. You can read yourself the comments. Not one person said, “hey my results using Discount Vouchers are different to these figures.”

This statement is not supported by the facts – which users? Where did they say this? They publish no details supporting their claim.

Then there is what we would label as spin:

Additionally, at the time, this critic offered to release more data and then withdrew that offer immediately. See here for the formal withdrawal.

This statement not supported by the facts – there was no formal withdrawal. They engaged in a game which looked like an attempt for us to help them understand how our software worked.

Then they publish a breathtaking assumption:

That I feel that this loyalty program is expensive, well most reward programs in retail run at about 1% of sales see here. The Discount Vouchers scheme as you see from the above image run at $4,475.89/$98,299.79 = 4.6%. It is expensive!

This statement demonstrates an ignorance of how you measure the success of Discount Vouchers as the benefits are not only those directly achieved from voucher redemption purchases. No, the benefits flow deep within the business. This is a newsagency achieving 19% year on year revenue growth – many times more than the newsagency industry average. Take out the natural growth being achieved in the business and focus only on growth from the time Discount Vouchers kicked in and the benefits are more than the flawed POS Solutions assumption.

The author of the POS Solutions blog post makes another assumption about our approach to Discount Vouchers:

this scheme has minimal measurements

This is false and misleading. They do not know what reporting tools are available. The measurements available are not minimal.

Then they make another assumption:

Finally a Discount Voucher scheme, gives a voucher for every sale

This is not true of the Tower Discount Vouchers and even basic research could have helped POS Solutions avoid making such a damaging and false statement. For sales there are tight controls on the release of the vouchers. It is a considered process with excellent business rules. Also, there is the opportunity to produce vouchers for non customers. We will not go into that as it would divulge too much information the the folks at POS Solutions who appear obsessed with us.

POS finishes their post with an example:

I remember one client of mine that ran for a while a Discount Voucher system, told me that a customer came in and took two magazines. He then purchased one and promptly used the discount voucher to buy the other one. What he felt was that Discount Vouchers produced no incremental sales lift but caused a cannibalisation of his existing revenue by selling at a discount, product that would have been bought anyway. This was the first sign, I had that something was not right.

Our Discount Vouchers setup following our rules would not have issued a voucher in this situation.

We are curious as to why POS Solutions is so interested in our discount vouchers facilities. When we launched them they said they had the same facility. While they may (or may not) have something called discount vouchers, only Tower Systems has the Tower Discount Voucher facilities.

We note that our discount vouchers are in wide use in pet shops, garden centres, bike retailers, newsagents, gift shops and other retailers.

This post is about us being on the public record abut the matters POS has raised.