The POS Software Blog

The POS Software Blog

News from Tower Systems about locally made POS software for specialty local retailers.

CategoryAbout us

Australian-made POS software for small business specialty retailers

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Here at Tower Systems, we develop point of sale (POS) software specifically for small business retailers in a range of niche retail channels. We develop what we sell and support, so you can be sure that our software is designed to meet the specific needs of your business.

Our POS software is called Retailer, and while it’s been around for many years, what we offer today is technically and visually fresh, up to date, and ever-evolving.

We’ve built it with the input of many hundreds of retailers and today it’s used by thousands of retailers, so we know it’s genuinely useful in a variety of retail situations.

Retailer is used by specialty retailers like jewellers, garden centres, bike shops, toy shops, pet shops, produce businesses, farm supply businesses, firearms dealers, newsagents, adult shops, gift shops, homewares shops, and more.

We release software updates to Retailer several times every year, based on customer feedback. We love this democratic approach, and it’s helped us to make Retailer the best it can be.

The POS software we sell and support today is very different to that with which we started. It’s fresh visually, technically, and functionally. We’re proud to bring this to local retailers in Australia and New Zealand.

In addition to our POS software, we also offer a range of integrations that can help your business operate more efficiently and successfully. These include integrations with Xero, Shopify, Magento, Big Commerce, scales and more.

We also offer a range of back-office tools that can help you run your business well, including repairs software and manufactured goods software. Our repairs software is a great option for jewellers, bike shops, and any business that offers in-house or external repairs to customers.

We’re a proud team of software professionals who are passionate about helping small business retailers succeed. We’re grateful to our customers for their business and for their recommendations. Their guidance and support has been invaluable to us as we’ve grown the business and helped more retailers run successful businesses.

That’s what our POS software is all about: helping local independent small business retailers run efficient businesses they enjoy. We love seeing that, and we’re here to help you make it happen.

So if you’re a small business retailer looking for a POS software that’s designed to meet your specific needs, then contact us today. We’d be happy to show you how Retailer can help you run a retail business you enjoy more.

How Tower Systems has embraced work from home for a happier workplace

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A daily commute of an hour each way is a grind when you think about it. that’s 2 hours a day spend getting to and from work. While you can use the time to read, listen to music or daydream, if you’re not driving, it’s a grind dealing with people, traffic and, well, the commute itself.

But, so many of us did the commute day in day out, for many years.

Then Covid came along, and things changed. It was a moment for sure to try something different. We had to.

Now, kind of the other side of Covid, even though we are not really on the other side are we, work from home is still a thing, which plenty of people are grateful for.

Here at Tower Systems we decided early in the pandemic that we would not force people back to the office when Covid was over. And, we have not.

We are grateful to be in a industry where working from home can work for pretty much everyone on our team, and that’s what we have in place. Almost all Tower employees work from home.

The small crew in the office each day are the same folks who did that through the pandemic, because it’s what they wanted, what they preferred. And, those who work from home today did so through the pandemic.

We have work colleagues who spent two and more hours a day commuting. They were happy to do that. But now they have experienced life without the commute they are even happier. We are grateful we can provide a workplace with that flexibility.

Technology has played a key role in helping us to maintain good and personal customer experiences throughout. We have tech that facilitates collaboration, and this is critical in our business where we help local small business retailers thrive. And, it’s more than. one tech solution, it’s a whole kit from the well-known to the more advanced, specialist.

At the office we have used the space to create hot desk opportunities for those colleagues who want to come in for a day or more for a face to face reconnect, and plenty do, which we love.

There is no pressure to come in. We’ve not seen some of our colleagues for three and half years, and we’re okay with that.

Looking back, one factor that has enabled us to so fully embrace the work from home opportunity is each of our team members. They are good tech professionals, adults, people who understand our mission, respect each other and appreciate our customers. Having good people certainly makes for a better work from home experience for everyone.

Here at Tower Systems we think work from home is here to stay, and we are grateful for the opportunity to figure out how this works for our colleagues, and for our POS software customers.

Twas the last day before Christmas, and local retail is busy

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It’s 11:12 am here at the Tower Systems office, December 23, and it’s quiet. It’s quiet because our local small business retail customers are busy with the last-minute Christmas sales rush.

This is typical for the last week day before Christmas. The phones are quiet, and our customers are busy. We love it.

We’re here, of course, for any who need assistance. But thanks to robust POS software they’re in good shape, trading happily.

Already we know that Christmas 2022 has been a terrific season for local small business retail. Sure, there have been some challenges, but, many retailers we have spoken with are happily up on last year and in 2019 – the pre-pandemic benchmark year.

We are taking the opportunity for some housekeeping, getting some things ready for early 2023. Already we can see it’s going to be a terrific year, which excites us. There are some wonderful tech advances coming down the line from within our own tech. kit and from outside as well.

We think 2023 will be a year of leaping forward on several tech fronts in local small business retail.

In keeping with tradition, we’ll close our help desk for Christmas very soon, leaving our after hours network up and running, serving any urgent needs.

Participating in a work from home university study

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We are grateful for the opportunity to participate in a study buy a leading university in Australia into work from home and how it is playing out for businesses and employees. The questions are thoughtful, and encouraging insights of our own as we contemplate aspects of what is the new normal that we had not considered before.

When Covid began we immediately moved to a work from home model for all employees who wanted it. As an essential business’s we could keep the office open, and we did with a skeleton team.

Now, almost three years on, the office based team remains small, with only those who want to be here. Everyone else, the majority of our Tower Systems team, works from home in situations they prefer in terms of commute time, time management and local community connections.

We are careful to not encroach on non-work time and have a number of processes in place to ensure this does not happen.

With some colleagues saving three hours a day commute time, the family benefits as well as the individual. It’s terrific.

We have invested more in tech infrastructure to facilitate a good work from home experience. Cloud based applications make it easy for our colleagues to collaborate, which, as a software development business, is important. This investment will continue as new tech support platforms emerge.

At the office things have changed too. We have re-purposed space to create hot desks for those who do want to come in for a few days. Plus, we have created purpose-built broadcast facilities to serve the easier production of the digital content we publish, as well and for the video calls we use for team meetings, POS software demonstrations and more.

The university study is looking at a range of interesting topics related to work from home, from the business and individual perspectives. It’s an interesting study in that it is being undertaken without any commercial connection or agenda. we think this matters because much of the noise about work from home until now has been shrill ‘news’ from landlords and other property connected spokespeople.

We are just one of many businesses participating, and we are sincerely grateful for the opportunity.

Compare POS Quotes continues to trade off interest in the Tower Systems POS software

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It’s 6:45am Thursday November 10 and the www.compareposquotes.com.au website continues to pay Google to attract people to their website when Tower Systems is typed into a Google search.

These are people searching for us and here is a business spending money to re-direct the search done by those people on their ad platform, in which we do not participate.

The businesses listed at Compare POS quotes pay to be there. These are businesses potentially benefiting from people searching for the Tower Systems name and clicking on the Compare POS Quotes ad.

In our opinion, this is poor business practice, questionable ethically because people in the example we share are searching for us, specifically for us, and the Compare POS Quotes website ad names Tower Systems, suggesting that clicking on their ad will help those searching “find the right Tower Systems” for their business.

We would not do this competitor named and targeted advertising for ethical reasons. But that’s us. Clearly, there are some quite happy to do it, quite happy to try and grow their business based on the interest out there in our Tower Systems POS software solution.

You can see from SEMRush data this morning that the traffic to the Compare POS Quotes website is primarily coming from this paid advertising, and, in our opinion, the traffic is not that much, but you can see that it has recently bounced.

What Compare POS Quotes is doing is like a competitor jumping in front of someone who is about to enter your shop to browse. For sure any local retailer would be unhappy about that, and they would be angry at any competitor doing it.

All we can hope is that people go to Google, type in Tower Systems, and click on the Compare POS Quotes ad as this costs them money. The more it costs them and the businesses that advertise with them, without a commercial outcome – the less they are likely to do it. We can hope at least.

We want interest in Tower Systems to grow because we make awesome specialty retail POS software backed by awesome local Aussie support. We want to grow for authentic and justified reasons – not because we jumped in front of someone looking at a competitor business.

Here’s how we use the POS software we make in our own retail shops in pursuit of value, enjoyment and success

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Tower Systems is a rare POS software company that uses what it makes, in its own shops, to learn, and make better software, and, of course, create more valuable, enjoyable and successful local retail businesses.

late in 2021, we bought an old-school newsagency business in malvern, Victoria. It had been in the same family for 28 years. We are slowly enjoying the business, on a frugal budget, and based on where data take us. here’s a look at how September 2022 has done in this business, where we have leveraged the ideas from the newsXpress newsagency marketing group, which we also own.

While this video was made to demonstrate what newsXpress helps its partner retailers achieve, it also speaks to the value from the Tower Systems POS software.

There is a narrative put about by some POS software companies that they started because they could not find software that suited their needs. We went the other way. In 1996 we bought our first sop to learn, and walk in the shoes of our customers. In the 26 years since, every day, we have experienced value and enjoyment from owning and running retail shops.

Tower Systems is not your average POS software company. We live and breathe retail, and can engage with our customers from a position of experience, empathy.

Our owning and running retail businesses informs decisions we make about our software, how we train our customers and how we support them. It is a whole of business benefit for us and for our customers.

The last thing any retailer wants is a tech person telling them something about retail that’s out of context or disconnected from the world of retail. We make software here at Tower Systems that seeks to integrate with retail in a more meaningful and useful way, and we can do this thanks to our everyday retail experience.

Every person working in our business has retail experience. This matters because when they talk with any of our customers, they can know what it’s like in a shop. The empathy from personal experience makes for a better POS software support experience we think.

We are grateful for the people in the shops we own for their experience and advice helps us make better POS software and provide it with more valuable POS software support.

You don’t know this about Tower Systems

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You don’t know this about us …

We were talking with someone the other day and they were surprised to discover that we used to develop software for radiologists back in the day. It got us wondering about what people don’t know. Not that it matters because it’s not always about ur, right? But, we thought about it and wondered about sharing, occasionally, a you don’t know this about us, to share a bit more about ourselves.

You don’t know this about us but we have completely developed our software, from scratch, like from a blank screen, a total of 6 times in our history. So, that’s the initial development, which sold well, through another 5 versions after that. each one was a from scratch start. each one enabling us to learn, switch languages and become better.

In our latest environment we have been able to deliver extraordinary change since that environment itself has undergone extraordinary change, and we have kept up with it.

This rewriting from scratch is important. It is cleansing. It’s also smart tech. It helps us deliver lean software, useful software.

From a programmers perspective, there is value starting with a clean slate.

There is risk in sticking with old tech. back in the day when we developed and delivered a new Windows based solution, turning our back on DOS, there were others who clung on. History has shown that the clung for too long, ultimately hurting their business.

While there was a cost to us for leading into the Windows world in a couple of retail sectors, the benefits far outweighed these. So much was achieved, and for this we are grateful.

But that was a couple of decades ago. So much has changed since then, so many advancements have been delivered, so much has changed in terms of software development and deployment. It is such a different world today. We love change and lean into it with gusto.

So, yeah, we have developed software, sold it, supported us and, when appropriate, replaced;aced it with software more modern, useful and fit for purpose. This is what forward thinking software companies do while bringing their customers along with them.

Re-casting the POS software co. office to the permanent work from home hybrid model

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It’s been a flurry of activity in the Tower Systems head office over the last two weeks as we made some long overdue moves.

When Covid kicked off in March 2020, most of our team members moved to work from home. A small core remained at the office as we were classed as essential and some of what we do needed to be done in the office. That core group all preferred to work from the office.

Since March 2020, we’ve left it up to those working from home to decide where they work. We are grateful to have colleagues who demonstrate every day that giving them choice is good for the business, and good for them.

Now, in July 2022, we have made changes to the office to reflect the now permanent arrangements. We have created new work spaces, four new and fully equipped hot desk spaces, a new shared resource space as well as a new studio and space for collaboration.

We have also introduced more soundproofed settings to make the now normal flow of Zoom, WebEx and teams video meetings more enjoyable for all.

Re-casting the POS software co. office to the permanent work from home hybrid model

We have also been able to create some relaxation spaces, although we may have paid too much for some things.

Re-casting the POS software co. office to the permanent work from home hybrid model

It doesn’t make sense to maintain a ton of offices for people who much prefer to work from home and are happier as a result thanks to the commute time saved.

We are thankful to be able to maintain enough space for whole of team meetings in the office by being creative in how we configure our situation.

The changes we have made are similar to plenty of office based businesses, and in these changes are opportunities for local retailers. More people are working from where they live, meaning the Covid migration that benefited local high street retail is continuing, and we like that as local retailers are our customers. We love the they have opportunities to be strong through these changes.

We smile at the regular flow of stories from city based businesses wanting people to come back to the offices. We don’t think there’s any going back. This really is the new normal.

More live POS software demonstrations in our own shop

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We are grateful to have our own shops where retailers can see our POS software running.

Friday last week we had another couple through one of our shops. They loved getting behind the counter and seeing and using the PS+OS software first hand.

This is a real point of difference not only for us to walk in the shoes of our customers but for people to get up close in a live retail situation with our software.

We are so grateful to have the retail resources available.

Seeking a react Native front end developer

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We are looking for a senior React Native developer who can develop and maintain a new iOS and Android App using React Native for a new product. Ideally, located in Melbourne given the new nature of this role and the new product for which it is planned, but we may consider interstate candidates.

This can be a permanent full time position or contract – it’s up to you.

About you (essential):

  • Bachelor’s degree in computer science, information technology, or a similar field.
  • 3 years minimum experience in developing software for iOS and Android
  • 3 years minimum experience in Mobile App development using React Native and React JS(Typescript).
  • Understanding of GraphQL, REST APIs, and offline storage.
  • Familiarity with native build tools, like XCode, Gradle, etc.
  • Experience in deploying Apps to App Store and Google Play Store.
  • Ability to work in a highly agile, non prescriptive environment.
  • Self motivation and management are key.

Bonus skills we’d love:

  • Experience building node.js applications.
  • Experience with AWS services.

Office based in Hawthorn, VIC, which is preferred. We may consider work from home.

Australian citizenship or PR is essential.

No students, sorry.

No agents, sorry.

No companies pitching their dev team, sorry.

Check us out at www.towersystems.com.au.

Welcoming record numbers of POS software customers

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Here at Tower Systems we are grateful for a warm winter welcoming so many new customers using our POS software.

We are grateful for every new customer, and even more so that we have welcomed new customers across a diverse mix of retail business channels: jewellers, sewing shops, garden centres, farm supply businesses, charity shops, community group businesses, toy shops, pet shops, bike shops and pool maintenance businesses.

All of our customer businesses are local and small (in a good way). This is the space in which we are most comfortable. We prefer to be working with those most invested in the business.

Our business is configured for growth from our pre-installation scheduling team to our new customer training team to our post-installation care team to our everyday help desk team. Each of these teams is configured and resourced to help our growing pool of new customers land happily and profitably with our locally made POS software.

2022 is already a bumper year. We are over the moon.

Thank you to every retailer in our community. Your faith and trust in us means the world to all of us here at Tower Systems.

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