The POS Software Blog
News from Tower Systems about locally made POS software for specialty local retailers.
We are retailers too. We own and run several shops, as live testing grounds for our software and as training facilities for our staff. here is the front of one of our shops, from Saturday just gone.
Slush is an extraordinary business conference. There is nothing like it on the calendar, anywhere. Here in Helsinki, assembled for Slush, are 17,000+ entrepreneurs, business managers, inventors and financiers talking about the future.
I am thrilled to be part of such an extraordinary event, for the networking opportunities, for the learning and for the inspiration.
How companies like ours do business has changed. Change is the new normal. And I am not talking about basic software update change. No, this is real change at the core. Slush is all about this, leaps occurring across industries thanks to new technologies and new business paradigms.
It is a privilege to be at Slush this year as part of a small Australian contingent.
To show how different Slush is to other business conferences, here is part of the kick off from Wednesday morning:
This is not the place for us to be specific about take-aways from Slush. However, they are many and we are only at the end of day two – we participated in the pre opening events yesterday.
Launching new products this year as we have done, we understand, in a small way, the challenge of the start-up and have an appreciation for many issues involved.
Slush is providing us opportunities to explore these and related topics further.
Here are some photos from day one of the main conference.
We have made the first two rounds of reviews of candidates for another new help desk role, our second additional role this quarter. We are spoilt for choice in the pool of candidates available, making the selection of even the short list challenging.
We have to commence interviews late next week.
Here is a video we have just shot in-house introducing the Tower Systems sales team. Each has worked through the ranks of the company from the help desk to installations to sales. They all have retail experiences in their blood and appreciate the importance of small businesses in Australia.
The final steps of our rebranding project were completed last week with the new brand image released to our national development and support centre facility in Hawthorn, Victoria.
The fresh brand image is in line with the evolution of our software. We sought out a brand image that reflected the strength, currency and value of the software we sell.
We are thrilled with the new image and that it is now represented on the street we call home.
Here are some shots of the new brand image at the office.
Look at one of the retail businesses we own and operate, where we play with our software, developing facilities we, as retailers and as software experts, know other retailers will love:
newsXpress Southland from mark fletcher on Vimeo.
Using our software ourselves provides an experience and value far beyond what POS software companies are used to. We walk in your shoes every day and this is part of what helps us to make better, more useful, more valuable POS software for small and independent retailers in the retail channels in which we serve.
Some from the leadership group of Tower Systems are at the Shoptalk 2016 conference in Las Vegas this week. Shoptalk is a leading-edge conference bringing together 3,000+ retail and technology professionals to explore the future.
Our participation here for the four agenda-filled days is with particular focus on our constituency of small and independent retailers and how tech is evolving in service of their growth.
The event is halfway through and already there are valuable learnings and future-beneficial connections as we focus on continuing to deliver best-practice POS software to our 3,500+ customers.
The photo is from the presentation by Steven Lowy of Westfield – as fascinating insight into their extraordinary innovation.
We were asked recently to explain our mission in a way small business retailers not familiar with technology will understand.
Tower Systems is an Australian POS software company that develops, sells and supports software for selected specialty marketplaces.
We only serve independent retail businesses.
Our mission is to help retailers run more successful businesses. Our definition of success is a business that is making money, where the owners and employees enjoy what they do and where suppliers enjoy transacting.
Good software can play an important role in nurturing business success as it sits at the heart of the business: transacting sales, managing stock, tracking customer activity and shining a light on business opportunities.
What makes us different is how we engage. We go beyond what is traditional software company.
This is what we stand for.
Early in 2016 Tower Systems added two new developers to its software development team. This has enhanced our capacity and our skill base and this is being reflected in what we are delivering for our customers.
This weekend at the Reed Gift Fair in Sydney we will be showing off new software, outside of the traditional POS software space, software that dramatically enhances the value small business retailers can harvest from their businesses.
This new software is a game changer. If you are attending the Reed Gift Fair, ask to see the new software we are launching.
Tower Systems is a personal software company that partners with its retail customers. Our success is thanks to open lines of communication and close relationships with our clients. You too can benefit from personal POS software.
Tower Systems is a proudly Australian POS software company. We develop software in Australia for small and independent Australian retail businesses.
Retailers wanting software to support their local focus ought to look at local POS software companies.
We have built a good strong business by being locally focussed. Yes, today we serve more than 3,500 retail businesses.
We are proud that in many of our specialty retail channels, we are the only locally developed and supported software. This makes us more fit for purpose for those businesses that care about living and supporting local.
As a famous song once goes so beautifully: we’re all in this together.
Here at Tower Systems we serve real people working in real businesses. They are the heroes, small business owners and team members, working to build local communities and make a stronger economy. This is why we use real people on our website and in our marketing collateral. It is easy to buy photos of pretty models placed in retail situations. We don’t do that. This helps build trust with our customers and those contemplating becoming our customers using our smart POS software.
Tower Systems is thrilled to announce the successful hiring for two new POS software development positions in the business.
The expansion of our software development team in our head office is a reflection of the growth of the business in terms of customers and in anticipation of further considerable enhancement of software capabilities through 2016 and beyond.
The latest hires are a result of an extensive search for candidates appropriate to our needs.
Our new colleagues are settling in and familiarising themselves with our professional software development environment.
May 2016 be a year of prosperity, enjoyment and fulfilment personally and professionally for all in our community and all we transact with.
We were privy recently to correspondence between a POS software company and a customer from just before the customer switched to us. The correspondence is an example of how a tech company serving small business retailers ought not communicate with customers. The correspondence was rude, condescending and short on ethics.
In response to concerns raised about the time consuming nature of some functions in the software, the software company representative ignored the question and ranted on using technical terms to claim, more or less, that the customer would now know if the software was good as they were technically inept.
Yes, sometimes the customer is wrong. The key is to deal with this in a respectful and helpful way.
The communication we have seen was disappointing as it reflects badly on all software companies, especially those of us serving small business retailers.
Thankfully, we have switched the customer to our software and are providing respectful customer service that is restoring their faith in tech companies.
Tower Systems is thrilled to have commenced the structured professionally managed beta release of a major POS software update. Representing many man-months of software development, this latest update delivers new facilities along with user-requested enhancements, taking our software into new areas and leveraging new opportunities.
We are grateful to our beta release sites and to all who have contributed ideas and inspiration to this latest release of our popular software.
While we welcome the innovation statement by the federal government this week, we think they could have done more in support of Australian owned software companies supporting efficiency improvements for Australian businesses.
Take what we do here at Tower Systems – we help small and independent retailers run more efficient, and therefore more profitable, businesses. The economic benefit is considerably beyond the cost of the software.
Being 100% Australian owned, long established and self-funded, we would use a benefit, such as a tax break, to invest in more software innovation. This means more jobs and more benefits for our customers.
We think this type of support would have a more immediate economic benefit. Indeed, the benefits would be upstream and downstream.
Fifty of our team members and partners members joined in a company Christmas party yesterday is an American BBQ restaurant in Melbourne. We took over the whole venue, spread across several tables. It was a terrific celebration and kicked on into the evening.
We have more Christmas events to follow.
Dog day in the office was a hit with plenty of k-9 cuties roaming the office and connecting with owners, other dogs and dog lovers. It was a hoot. It certainly made for a different software development experience. We loved it and we think the dogs loved it.
This photo was taken at a nearby park with some of our colleagues and their dogs.
The day gave us a feel for the pleasure pet retailers have when owners bring their dogs in to the shop. It is part of what helps us create more useful pet shop software.
Tower Systems is proud of its work with graduates and the opportunity it provides for real-world experiences to further the development of Australians preparing for the work force.
We loom for opportunities for graduate roles where we allocate time and resources necessary for real-world experience development in advance of more direct customer roles.
Being a full service software company encompassing design, development, UI engagement, testing, training, deployment and follow-up support, we have a broad range of IT skills areas where graduates can learn.
Our support for graduates makes us a richer and more diverse company. Crucially, it makes us more aware of cutting-edge trends that can better inform our decisions and the work we do on behalf of ur customers.
Being located in Hawthorn places us within easy proximity of several top IT focussed universities.
While much of Australia is go-slow mode today being the day before the Melbourne Cup, we are here and at it, providing a full deck of services and working in the background on software enhancements and developments.
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