The POS Software Blog
News from Tower Systems about locally made POS software for specialty local retailers.
We are thrilled to have been invited to play a major role at the Just For Pets conference in Alice Springs, Northern Territory, this coming week.
This is our second year at the JFP annual conference. We are looking forward to catching up with customers and making new friends. The three day program is packed with terrific events.
Just For Pets is a marketing group for independent pet retailers. We serve individual businesses as well as the group nationally.
Habit based shopping is vital to independent pet shops – people purchasing pet food and other consumable items used on a daily and weekly basis by pet lovers.
In our software we have tools and opportunities for better serving pet retailers so they can better serve the habit based retail opportunity.
Here is a new video we shot just last week on this topic:
Here at Tower Systems we think too many POS software companies have distanced themselves from their customers.
We stay close.
Not only do we offer easy communication via email, online, by voice and face to face, we have a snail mail newsletter that offers tips and advice – delivered the old fashioned way so the information can be shared with all users of the software in the business.
The image shows one of the pages of our May newsletter put i the mail this week.
Communicating with customers by mail demonstrates our care of service for those not keen for electronic communications.
Calling a help desk, any help desk can be confronting and challenging for anyone. It can be even more so for small business retailers who may not be experienced computer users. To help our 3,500+ small business retail customers using our POS software to get the most from our help desk, we developed and published this practical advice. We shared this with them as part of our regular weekly customer service communication:
Calling any help desk can be intimidating. To help ensure you get the best possible experience, here is our advice on how to prepare for and make a call to our POS software help desk. This advice should work for jus about any help desk.
We are it here to show what we now understand to be another example of the Tower Systems difference, the Tower AdvantageTM.
Here is our POS software help desk advice:
BEFORE THE CALL
Know for certain what your query is about. Know the error message, what you were doing before it and whether anything different was done this time compared to last time you did this and it worked.
Being clear in describing a problem or stating a question is the most important step in getting the response you want.
Check to ensure you don’t have the answer already or cannot access the answer through the knowledge base.
MAKING THE CALL
Be ready with your business name (and account number if appropriate.
Explain the problem or ask your question.
Stay on point, be calm and focus on your query.
Follow the advice provided. Do not type ahead or act without the full advice. This can see you make mistakes without the full picture.
If you are not sure about what you have been told ask for the advice to be repeated.
If written advice, an advice sheet or a knowledge base article, is offered, take that as it will provide step by step advice that is peer-reviewed rather than one person’s opinion on what to do.
If we cannot answer the call right away, please tell our receptionist who answers the call how urgent it is – we will get back to you according to the urgency you allocate.
CALL ETIQUETTE.
Please don’t serve customers, stay focused on the call.
Don’t swear.
Listen.
Take notes.
ESCALATE.
If, for any reason, you are unhappy with the call, escalate the matter out of the help desk. Tower Systems has an escalation process to serve your needs. This is detailed in our weekly email.
Business birthdays are important – for you and for your customers, especially in a locally owned small retail business.
Embrace the opportunity of your business birthday for a celebration. But be sure to not make it all about making more money. Take time to embrace the achievement and love it.
Here are practical tips for celebrating the birthday of your business:
A key aspect of these ideas is to remind people that your business is stable, can be trusted, is locally connected and knows how to have fun.
Change is the order of the day for retail as it has been since the first shops opened. What is different in 2016 is that the pace of change has picked up. Indeed, the pace of change today is greater than at any time in the past. Technology is playing a key role in that: online and offline technology is facilitating, pushing and even forcing change.
Staying up to date is a challenge, especially in small and independent retailer businesses where having the time and resources to stay open can be difficult.
Tower Systems tries to insulate its customers from some of the challenges of change by leveraging changes in the software without needing to change hardware infrastructure.
In software updates we bring to the businesses of our customers tools and resources they can use to be more competitive. Tools and facilities through which they can enhance the relevance of their businesses in a changing retail landscape.
We think and work strategically on such technical changes, always thinking about what we can do to help our customers drive their relevance for we know if you customers feel more relevant and are more successful as a result of our software then a need of our business plan is satisfied.
What we do is more than about the software though. Enhancing our POS software is only part of what we do. The even more important aspect of helping our small business retailers compete is how we communicate with them about the enhancements. Our live training workshops, regional user meetings, training videos, advice sheets, personal training and other touch points help our customers learn about and embrace opportunities for change in their retail businesses through what we deliver in our POS software.
In our latest work we have helped retailers redefine the over the counter sales experience, leveraging important touch points, driving value from shopper engagement. For retailers, changes like these are money in the bank.
Our work directly linking with Magento, Shopify, Xero and other respected and widely used platforms is an example of us delivering on our commitment to help our small business retail community to embrace change and leverage change for their commercial success.
Tower Systems is proud to offer specialist software for independent pet and produce stores, software tailored to the needs of pet stores and software tailored to the needs of produce stores, software for independent retailers and not mass or chains.
Tower Systems is an Australian software company that develops, sells and supports software for selected specialty marketplaces including pet and produce businesses.
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.
At a store level, here are some of the benefits pet and produce retailers can expect from using our pet shop software and our produce store software:
We have excellent reference sites that can speak to our achievements for their businesses and our living up to the sales pitch of providing easy to use professional software built for purpose in these two specialist retail channels.
Tower Systems offers help, advice and assistance beyond traditional POS software support and has done for many years.
Our small business retail management advice is fresh and developed from our own hands-on retail experiences and from suggestions from our helpful customers. Each article of advice is jargon-free and accompanied by how-to steps and practice advice any retailer in any situation can read and use.
Here are topics we have published advice for our customers on in recent months.
This is a small sample of the advice from us and available to our POS software customers through our searchable and accessible from anywhere Knowledge Base.
Memorable customer service is the most important point of difference a retail business can have, especially a business which does not make what it sells and therefore could have its products being sold by any other business apple to reach the same pool of shoppers.
We call it memorable customer service because it truly has to be that … memorable. So memorable that it is praised by your customers to others.
Good customer service should be the norm, the lowest hurdle any retail business can jump. Memorable customer service, the level of customer service that makes a shopper talk about the experience to their friends, must be the goal and it is the word of mouth from these customers that is a factor in driving traffic growth.
Memorable customer service is just as vital to Point of Sale software companies as it is for retail businesses. Since we own retail businesses as well as our POS software company we see it, live it and reach for it from both sides.
This is why we work hard to encode the ability to focus on customer service in our Point of Sale software. That’s right, retailers using our software have touch points they can leverage using software which help deliver the kind of memorable customer service we are talking about here.
Memorable customer service in retail, just as in a software company, is experiences which exceed expectations, it delivers benefits outside of what you expect even from a good business. In our IT company we compete with big IT companies and small, like us, IT companies. While we want our software to be the point of difference customers notice and talk about positively, it is our customer service which is loved and mentioned to colleagues more. Realising this was an epiphany for us.
We focus on building stronger, better and more valuable software. But we also surround this, completely, with customer service experiences which are the very best of the best. This gives us, and our customers, the best of both worlds. And we love it ourselves.
Given that most retailers do not have products unique to their businesses, delivering memorable customer service is critical to the business plan. Small and independent retailers can do this more easily and effectively than big retailers. From the genuine smile to shoppers to product knowledge to that extra information which helps a shopper get more out of the product purchased than they would have had the purchased the product elsewhere. This added value is the key and it can be delivered in almost any situation and with any product from a stapler through to a high-end road bike.
So, beyond our software and as part of our customer service focus, we seek out opportunities to help our customers deliver memorable customer service. Indeed, this was one topic we covered in the recent face-to-face user meetings we ran in capital cities and major regional centres around Australia.
As a Point of Sale software company, our mission is to deliver constantly improving retail management software backed with memorable customer service and going beyond this with business insights and assistance which helps our retailers themselves deliver exceptional and memorable experiences to their customers.
Not all POS Software Magento links are made equal. Some POS software Magento links are slow, out of date, not direct and / or cumbersome. Some make doing business online and in a bricks and mortar store from the same stock data set cumbersome,
Thanks to relationships developed in the US with the Magento team over years, Tower Systems offers a best-practice solution, one powerful, easy to use and ideal for independent retail businesses.
Linking directly with the Tower POS software it is a breeze to use – as the many e-commerce sites already using it can attest.
A weakness we have seen in some other products is their use of an old version of Magento. By using the latest release, we are able to deliver something far more useful and valuable to small business retailers. Indeed, we can show the difference live through sites we have developed even for our business retail and e-commerce businesses.
This use ourselves of our own software enables us to speak with experience and authority on these things. We are not selling you something thinking how it should work. No, we are selling something we use ourselves for our own retail business, something that meets our own exacting needs, something of which we are most proud.
Using our Magento link it is easy to share data, images and other vital content between your shop and your online store without extra time or technology overhead. The Tower Systems approach is a breeze to implement and manage.
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.
The seamless scale integration facilities in the Tower Systems POS software make selling easy in a range of specialty retailers including pet stores, garden centres, jewellers, whole foods stores and confectionery stores. Helping retailers sell by weight helps them drive fast and accurate selling. It can also offer retailers greater flexibility in pricing structure. All of which helps small and independent retailers to compete more successfully and effectively.
The terrific LollyBomb store in the heart of Adelaide is a good example of a smart retailer leveraging the scale facilities in the software to help run a more successful business.
Selling by weight is easy thanks to the facilities in the software that were developed by Tower Systems in close consultation with retailers.
This is another niche service handled by the Tower software, making it a genuinely beneficial tool for niche and special interest small business retailers.
Integrations are important to small business retailers. They can often set POS software companies apart in that not all integrations are approved. take Xero, for example – they do not approve all POS software requests for integration. They have a structured process to follow. This is why being approved is a badge of honour and an important differentiator.
Retailers using the Tower Systems POS software can easily handle package or bundled offers, like the JB Hi Fi 3 for $10 offer they are running for greeting cards.
Using our smart small business POS software, retailers can run bundled deals like we see in JB Hi Fi with ease. Small and independent retailers can match the retail giant simply and easily. This is important as offers like this make price comparisons difficult.
In addition to bundled offers like this, the Tower software also handled multi buys where shoppers can purchase over time, reaching an award point where they get free product.
These facilities are in addition to myriad other discounting options including catalogues, loyalty facilities, discount vouchers and more.
All of these tools help small business retailers to be competitive in their offers, competitive against other local businesses, competitive against online and competitive against big businesses, like JB Hi Fi.
The beauty of offers like the JB Hi Fi offer is shoppers are drawn to the deal of Three cards for $10 and often times purchase one card at a higher margin for the retailer. Our software handles this, kicking in the Three for $10 pricing offer only when the shopper purchases the three cards. This counter management based on volume is easy and automatic – delivering good outcomes for the retailers and ensuing maximum margin.
Tower Systems is thrilled to announce the addition of the following training sessions due to demand for the original sessions:
We are grateful to our customers for embracing our free training program. We know those attending training make better users of the software and better retailers.
As overseas online businesses compete with local retailers for sales of almost anything, so too do overseas based POS software companies compete with Australian software companies.
Here at Tower Systems, we understand local. We understand our local retail business customers. we understand their shoppers. We understand what being local is all about and why it matters to our customers and the communities in which they serve.
This is what being local is really about, it is about being knowledgable of and engaged with your local community.
Through our POS software and through our customer service we live and breathe the local message. Our actions speak for us through locally focussed software changes and how we serve and connect with our customers.
here is a short video explaining our local pitch. This video serves multiple purposes: it speaks to our in-house video production facilities, it has our owner speaking up for us and what we stand for, it shows our commitment to plain speaking anyone can understand and it speaks to our professionalism that you can trust.
This is the Tower Advantage, our Tower Advantage, offered to you.
When it comes to POS software, small business retailers want an easy life. This means hassle free, straightforward.
Key to achieving an easy life with POS software, besides the software itself being easy to use, is the ease with which parts of the software not often used can be learned and understood in the context of business operation.
Whereas in the past, a user manual was the key learning tool, today, the key learning tool is a good online, searchable and constantly evolving knowledge base, a knowledge base that keeps up to date with the software, evolving as the software evolves. A good knowledgeable includes how to text, step by step guides and instruction videos. It facilitates access to all these resources from anywhere including mobile, tablet and computer – at work, home and elsewhere.
This is what best practice user documentation looks like for smart POS software for small and independent retail businesses.
Whereas a printed manual is hard to update and not easily searched, evolving online searchable documentation is different, more useful and more valuable for engaged users who want to achieve more from their software.
Yes, the printed manual is so last century.
At Tower Systems we provide access to our documentation through a searchable knowledge base. This is setup in such as way so as to make searching easy for non technical people, so they can search based on plain English terms and find what they are looking for. The knowledge base is interactive too, allowing users to add comments and provide feedback. This makes it a customer driven resource and open to two-way communication.
Our experience is that small business retailers love the accessibility of the knowledge base and the documentation it contains. Better still, they love the ability to request enhanced coverage on this or that topic and then seeing us deliver this enhanced content.
Helping users enjoy easy use of our software is vital to their success and the commercial value of the software. So, to us, good documentation starts with easy to use software. Screen designs, data field descriptors, on-screen information and more combine to make using the software easy. The online documentation through the knowledge base makes it easy to, to learn more about the software.
Our approach to POS software user documentation is that the job is never done. Just as our software evolves so does the documentation supporting our software.
Security is important in any business but especially in a small independent retail business. Here is a list of actions we recommend you consider to ensure your business is secure.
We are helping another retailer switch to our software and in the process the retailer has discovered their old software company is blocking their access to their own business data.
This is unethical in our view. Legal advice suggests it could be challenged in the courts.
Here we have a small business retailer who has cultivated business data for twenty years and now, when they want to change software, they are locked out.
We have seen this before and are sure we will see it again. It is appalling action by the software company reflecting badly on them in this instance and into the future.
UPDATE: 5:36PM APRIL 7, 2016.
Bernard Zimmermann, director of competitor POS Solutions Australia Pty Ltd has copied text from this post and posted it on their blog this afternoon. The post appears to be a response to what I have written. This following of Tower is not the first time he has done this:
For the record, Tower Systems does not lock users out, never has and never will. The claims by Zimmermann are false and he knows that.
You know you are doing when when small business accountants recommend your POS software and its link with the highly-regarded Xero cloud based accounting software.
That is what’s been happening to us. We are winning new customers who are discovering us thanks to recommendations from their accountants, in part due to the Xero approved and endorsed POS software Xero accounting software link.
Creating an approved link is not an option for all POS software companies. Indeed, Xero says no to some POS companies that approach them. We are thrilled to have been approved and to be able to help small business retailers save time and money through the linking of their POS software to Xero.
As our software evolved as does our partnerships and interfaces. That iOS what we have delivered with our successful Xero interface – a facility backed by knowledgable accounting related support and assistance.
What is Transferred to Xero?
Sales
End of Shift based department-level sales are transferred to Xero via a sales invoice. Each department can be assigned its own Xero account.
Invoices
Invoices received into Retailer are transferred to Xero at department level. No individual stock items are transferred.
Write Offs & No Sales
These are transferred to individual expense accounts depending on the transaction reason chosen.
Cost Of Sales
An option on sales exporting is to export Cost of Sales. While not a full implementation of COGS it does transfer over the cost price of items sold each day to reduce the value of Stock On Hand in Xero. If you use this option you will export Write offs, not as expenses, but as adjustment to your Stock on Hand. This makes processing stock adjustments for the End Of Month much easier.
A major update to our POS software has moved to beta release following extensive testing in house and an alpha live release.
This latest update delivers enhancements in the areas of fast retail sales, loyalty management and marketing, catalogue management and handling special customer orders.
The update delivers new functionality, genuine enhancements to the software, enhancements that continue the lead of the Tower systems software in selected specialty retail channels.
Retailers on our beta release panel have been contacted with details on how to access the update and provide feedback leading into the commercial release program.
Who do you talk to about your retail business? Are they sympathetic, pandering almost? Or, do they challenge your perception of your business?
Do they agree with everything you say? Do they offer pity as a response for you explaining your situation?
Good friends will challenge what you say. They will ask tough questions to test what you say about business performance. They will not put up with a victim mentality. They will want to know what you are doing to improve your situation and that your actions are rooted in your business data.
If your friends don’t challenge you when you talk about your business consider seeking out others you can talk to who do challenge you.
Owning a business of any size can be tough and lonely. In the business it is rare you will be challenged. In your immediately family, too often, you will not be challenged. This is why you need to seek out those who could and will challenge you. You need to be challenged. Your plans need to be tested through tough questioning. While some good friend will do this for you many will not.
So, do you need to change your friends?
Seek out people who will give you truthful assessment of what you say, people who will have an opinion and be unafraid to share it. You want people who will actively listen to you and give you their insights.
Seek out people who will want the same from you. The ideal friendship is one that is equal, open and honest in conversation. This is what retail business owners need – people who can help them see what they may not be seeing for themselves.
Now, more than ever, retail businesses are not bound by strict borders in terms of what they sell. You only have to look at what pharmacies sell today compared to ten years ago to realise the value of change.
But this type of change, retailers trading outside what is usual for their type of business, is common. There are successful coffee shops today that started out as a customer service experience in vehicle repair shops, fashion outlets and more.
What is it you could sell in your business that does not fit neatly into what is usual for your type of retail business?
In our work in a range of specialty retail channels we see successes where retailers play outside what is usual for their type of business, where they ignore the borders of tradition.
Doing this successfully starts with looking at the type of customers you currently attract and considering this with the capacity of the business to offer other products and services within the space and capital restraints of the business.
A good place to start is to analyse basket data in your software and, through this, to build up a better understanding of what people purchase. Using departments, categories and tags, you can build an understanding beyond what you recall from serving customers.
Use your data to explore possibilities beyond what you sell today.
Data analysis shop could uncover a niche interest among customers that could be served by the business carrying something you may not usually see in a your type shop.
We see this activity as important. If you rely on traffic that is usual for your type of business your results will most likely be usual for your type of business. Whereas if you attract traffic beyond what is usual, your results ought to be beyond what is usual.
Retail today is more borderless than ever. While it is important your business can be easily understood, you can do this and reach beyond what is traditional with careful management and attention.
Hey small business retailers: When as the last time you got to speak directly with those responsible for the POS software you use? When were you able to influence the decisions they make on the design of the software?
Here at Tower Systems that happens daily. Access to the decision makers in our business is easy for any of our small business retailer customers.
Such access is important to us as it helps us make more useful software, the kind of software retailers love.
At our current national user meeting tour where we are vuisiting more than twenty locations our customers can directly and one on one talk with our decision makers. They can share suggestions and find out wh6y we do what we do.
We get as much out of this dialogue as our customers. Indeed, it is a thrill to have ah ha moment when we discover opportunities for our software beyond what we may have been thinking.
Beyond the current user meetings our customers have access to the development team through our open door policy of end user contact. We don’t believe in hiding those creating our software from those who use it.
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