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POS Software

An Important difference that I see between my larger and smaller clients

Thursday, 20 July 2017 4:08:48 PM

One important difference I notice between my larger and smaller clients, is that my larger clients know if they want to stay competitive they need to change. So my larger clients tend to constantly trying out new technologies and look for ways to be innovative.

I feel that while you may feel that you do not have the resources to do much different, that doesn’t mean you can’t be innovate in your company. Sometimes even small changes can do wonders for your business. You can start by urging your staff to think creative. Run a brainstorming session with them, beside being fun you may spark some innovation.

Here is a video on runing a brainstorming session with some good ideas.

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Telco products

Wednesday, 19 July 2017 5:40:00 PM

Getting as many people as possible now to come to your shop and buying something, is the key to modern retail. You can often sell them more, if you can get them to buy something.

Telco costs our clients nothing, they get an account and often can be trading in hours. The costs of selling is zero. As such many of my clients have been pushing Telco's products now almost always Touch mainly because I think better margins, better service and larger product line. Over the past two years, the growth has been steady.

I decided to look into Telco's products. The big month for Telco's sales is December. I presume holidayers are the main reason. They also (see 6) tend to spend more in those months. Overall though if you look at the trend line in blue there is little change over the years before the price people pay. Which is surprising as the products' prices have dropped, you get more Internet now then you did two years ago for the same money?

What I did notice though is that over two year,years,margins have fallen as you can see with the blue line is the trend. The days are long past,when we started pushing Telcoto our clients, they were enjoying margins of 30%.

The number of sales per shop has also dropped partly I think this is due to more retailers selling the product and the move by the public to plans and buying on the net.

This has over two years resulted in a fall in profit per shop.

Overall though it is clear, the main reason for the expansion of Telco into our client base is that it brings about 100 customers a month into their shop, costs them nothing to install and brings about $100/month profit.

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WannaCry ransomware

Tuesday, 18 July 2017 5:54:22 PM

Another day and another of our clients got hit by the WannaCry ransomeware attack.

With all the damage, that WannaCry is causing us now what scary is that it should have been much worse as by accident a quick-thinking engineer found a way to hack it so slowing down its spread. However, we are seeing now is copycat versions of WannaCry that overcome this hack. That is why it's starting up again.

The dangerous point about WannaCry is that it is believed that you cannot get your data back, there are currently no reports of people getting their data back even after paying the WannaCry ransom.

Our advice remains the same we strongly advise that you do not pay the ransom, if you pay it most of the time in our experience with such attacks, you will not get your data back anyway. By paying ransomware authors, you are contributing to the proliferation of ransomware by providing these people with rewards and so encourage them to continue.

Your best defence is to run a modern operating system on modern hardware whenever you can and always keep backups.

Also as in this case you should not be running a Windows XP anymore.

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A review of Loyalty programs in Australia today

Tuesday, 18 July 2017 5:30:54 PM

The latest copy of the most highly regarded review of Australian loyalty programs is now out here. If you do not want to pay for it, I suggest that you grab a copy of the executive summary which is free and well worth a read for a retailer.

Overall what it shows is that loyalty marketing is fast growing in Australia in acceptance. Far as some have suggested that Australians are getting tired of it, the reality is that it is growing at a massive rate.

Today the average Australian is more involved is retail loyalty programs then ever before (5% up), and the number that they are active membership has grown by 10% from 2016 to 2017.

Not only that but most Australians now accept the need for loyalty programs.

At 64%, its almost something that is required by a modern business.

I think once you read this report, you will see that a modern shop should have a proper loyalty program, not just a simple but what ends out as a very expensive discount voucher system that so many use.

Our users are very lucky as our point of sale software has an extensive loyalty program system inbuilt which can handle one shop or hundreds of shops several large chains such as Nextra and Lucky Charm use it exclusively for there loyalty programs.

While you are reading this report, what I also do suggest that you grab a copy here of "9 Steps to a Valuable Loyalty Program" which is also well worth a read too.

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Delivery is going to be more important in retail

Tuesday, 18 July 2017 4:53:10 PM

One point that I agree with many retail experts in Australia is that with Amazon coming, delivery is going to be more important in retail.

Here is an interesting article on the subject

One plus that our users have is that our point of sale system has an extremely powerful delivery module inbuilt.

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Do a backup

Monday, 17 July 2017 6:10:41 PM

A client calls and tells us that his computer is not working. Our support staff attempt to get him going but there are no backups. His technician comes to help but cannot get the computer going. Finally, he brings us the computer, and we managed to get it working. When I spoke to him and told him to buy a few USB sticks for backup, he notified me sheeply that he sells them in the shop. He should have used one of them before this happened. If we could not have got his computer going not having a backup could have cost that shop thousands plus a lot of work.

The fact is that a computer is a mechanical device, and all computers will eventually fail. It does not matter how big or small you are, for example, there are continuous complaints from people that Google Gmail has lost their emails, and Gmail Help told them they couldn't recover them and there is nothing more that they can do for them.

Similarly I noticed that Apple stated in their contract "TO THE GREATEST EXTENT PERMISSIBLE BY APPLICABLE LAW, APPLE DOES NOT GUARANTEE OR WARRANT THAT ANY CONTENT YOU MAY STORE OR ACCESS THROUGH THE SERVICE WILL NOT BE SUBJECT TO INADVERTENT DAMAGE, CORRUPTION, LOSS, OR REMOVAL IN ACCORDANCE WITH THE TERMS OF THIS AGREEMENT, AND APPLE SHALL NOT BE RESPONSIBLE SHOULD SUCH DAMAGE, CORRUPTION, LOSS, OR REMOVAL OCCUR. It is your responsibility to maintain appropriate alternate backup of your information and data."

A backup is considered to be an obligation on the user.

In your Point-of-Sale system, a backup is crucial to your business. It should be done at least once a day.

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What does Google know about you

Sunday, 16 July 2017 6:10:59 PM

We take our client's privacy very seriously. Now others do too. Google however is an advertising company which wears several hats. You are important to it both as a client and as a receiver of advertising. Now if you want to know what information Google has about you.

Go here and log into your Google account and see what data you want to see.

You probably like me will be stunned just how much they have on you.

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Exporting to a spreadsheet

Sunday, 16 July 2017 3:09:09 PM

Most point of sale software can produce standard reports, that work about 80% of the time. For the other 20% of a time, you have a problem. For this reason, we provide a quick and simple way to export your information into a spreadsheet which gives you unlimited reporting capabilities and graphics too.

If you have Microsoft excel, you can use that, or you can use the free openoffice available here, both as very good.

Here is a training video which shows you how to do these exports.

Enjoy

Please let me know what you think of our minute training videos.

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Training video on Gross Margin Return on Investment.

Friday, 14 July 2017 4:49:28 PM

Gross Margin Return on Investment, (GMROI) is one of the most popular KPIs used in modern retail.

It is so well-liked that its promoters claim that it is the best KPI for retail and that by using it a shop profit can be increased dramatically.

What it measures is for every dollar invested by the retailer, what did the retailer get back for each stock item so they can determine which items are really profitable, which are average, which are poor and what is dead stock.

Here is a training video which shows you how to do the calculations.

Enjoy

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Cairns user meeting next week

Thursday, 13 July 2017 4:22:32 PM

We will be hosting another user meeting in Cairns on Tuesday 18th July 2017 @ 5.30pm

Nextra Marlin Coast Newsagency
Smithfield Shopping Centre
155 Kennedy Hwy & Captain Cook Highway
Smithfield QLD 4878

Everyone is invited to attend.

The agenda will be.

1. Bpay Payments

Learn how to integrate Bpay into Posbrowser and process bill payments for any Bpay bill!

2. Website Integration

See our great new integrated Webstore integrated using Webtail. Stock control, processing orders and managing customers from your webstore is now all possible through Posbrowser!

3.Magazine Reconciliation

Learn how to use our unique reconciliation report to make sure your returns are on track!

4.General questions

You chance to ask any questions you have.

Reservations are essential as if attendance is less than five (5) the meeting may be canceled. So please send an email to us if you intend to come.

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