Most of you would have heard of the 20/80 rule which states that 80% of all rewards is done by 20% of the work. This formula seems to come up repeatedly in just about everything, for example, a person who works in a council told me recently that about 20% of the people make about 80% of the complaint.


What is not often realised is it's heavily weighted on the top so that it is quite common that about half a percentage makes about 30% so much that in retail often, your top 40 stock items make up about 25% of your shop sales?

Windows 10 users need to get ready for promised Windows 10 Anniversary update on their point of sale system as its big and so will take awhile to load.

In the traditional manner, I expect that for most of our Windows 10 users, they have no decision to make as they will be getting this update, whether they like it or not. It is part of Microsoft's switch in strategy that rather than have separate systems; they will have continuous incremental updates.

Like many, I am still in two minds about Windows 10, but I do feel that my users should not have old antiquated systems, and they are safer and better off with the security patches despite all the problems then without them. Furthermore, I strongly believe that they should have the latest in technology that we can possibly give them.

I like the new start menu, the improvements to Cortana - its nice to start the day with a comment "Cortana tell me a joke" and she does and I particularly like the improved memory control with the Task Manager.

We have also tested our software though the Windows developer channel of this latest update. Our software works well on it. Furthermore, a patch for our POS Solutions Software will be coming soon that will allow you to take some more advantages of Windows 10 improvements in our software.

Unfortunately, there is no official free update available to Windows 10 from Windows 7 and 8 any more although there are ways to cheat the system and to receive the free upgrade. So I am wondering if part of the purpose of this upgrade is to close these loopholes.

In any case Windows 10 is not that expensive, and I think it's worth upgrading as Windows 10 is better than Windows 7 and 8 and after this upgrade Windows 10 is better than the current Windows 10.

These days, many people are upgrading their main computers to take advantage of the new SSD drives. What is happening now is that as computer speeds are increasing, so it is the harddrive that is the bottleneck! That is what is wasting you, your customers and your staffs time.

However, some intend to upgrade when their harddrive when the current one runs out. The problem is knowing when? You do not want one-day someone to ring you up from the shop to tell you nothing is working. We cannot do anything so you need to come to the shop now. With the older harddrives, you never know when they fail, it acts all right, it

even reports that it's okay but often this is misleading. The problem is that Windows if it detects a problem with these drives automatically fixes it. So a harddrive appears healthy until it drops.

What you need to do is a hard disk test. Here is one free program that can do it for you, Click here Crystal Disk Info and select the Standard Edition, and run it.

It will give you a lot of detail about your harddrive and as well a status report. Here you can see that the harddrive I tested is in a "Caution" status. This means this disk needs to be changed soon.

If you replace it, I would strongly recommend a SSDs (Solid-State Drives) as they have heaps of benefits, but the two most important ones are speed and reliability, mainly because unlike the older harddrives they do not have any mechanical or moving parts so once installed it will speed up your whole network.

Occasionally some people have commented that some updates; we do refer to the use of the software Dragon NaturallySpeaking, when they ring up, they are told not to worry about it.

Dragon NaturallySpeaking is a speech recognition software. What it allows is skilled users to work a computer by speaking to it. The main reason what we use if for is for people primarily with multiple sclerosis, although we do have people with other dexterity impediments and people with a variety of physical disabilities using it too.

The next question is why this package, well, firstly; we did not pick it but the Multiple Sclerosis society picked it, and we have worked closely with them, so we adopted it and followed their standard. As far as I know when I spoke to the Multiple Sclerosis society, we are the only ones in our market space offering this type of support. Having said that in our experience, the free Windows Speech Recognition software does work, but it's not as good as this software.

Many people with such problems actually do not tell their employers until they must. Which is fine but it is a problem is many of our clients as they are family businesses? They know when a family member has such a problem. They also lack the resources to keep these people all the time under care. So often these people with these conditions are taken to work where they sit all day with little to do. When I talk to them, almost all of them want to do something. Anything.

As a computer does not involve physical work. Sometimes if we are lucky, we can get them productive on a computer.

First, we try special keyboards, mouses and filter key software. However, some people shake too much. They lack motor skills. So what we try with some success is Dragon NaturallySpeaking. This allows them to control a computer by talking. Unfortunately, it has not proven an easy program to work. When it does work it allows such people to work, but the big problem is that it requires a lot of skill with this software. Fortunately, the Multiple Sclerosis society does provide training.

Often they end out going at a slower rate then most, but they feel that they are doing something useful. They can also use it to keep in touch with friends though Facebook, email, and they can read or listen to newspapers and books.

As such we support it so that is why it comes up occasionally in updates.

I was reading today about the Bauer program here on Reader Rewards, which is a loyalty marketing program to increase sales of their products. 



According to the article, it lifted sales by 1.6%, which is believable for a loyalty program but as the article makes clear it is not primarily a loyalty program but a data collection program. This is the point of all good retail loyalty programs, that extra percent or two you can pick up by getting the customer's information to market to these people. That way, they buy more by either making bigger purchases or buying more often depending how you structure the program. This is what justifies the cost of the program, and it is what your program aim.

And they do buy more if it's done properly. You can see it on the Average Daily Sale value, Units Per Transaction, Margin on Goods sold compared to the non-member customers.



What is also important is that not only do they buy more, but as they are happy that they get others to join such as friends and family.

In my experience, the biggest mistake retailers make when launching such a program is that they do not communicate enough to the members; you should not be waiting till they come into the shop, if you do that many of the members of your program will just forget you. You need to communicate with them online.

Here are a list of return fraud at the Point of Sale that I have seen.



People have brought items, left the shop and subsequently come to back. Then they grab the same items off the shelf, next go to the Point of Sale, show the receipt and demand a refund.
Possible solution: A good camera system.

People buy an item, e.g. a book, read it and then come back to return it.
Possible solution: Unknown but its a toughie. It happens a lot in the clothing industry too. A guy is going to a wedding and needs a suit. So he buys one, uses it once and comes back, stating his wife or girlfriend did not like it and wants his money back. On the positive you can demand before you do a refund that the items are in marketable condition so at least you have not lost anything.

People come in with a fake receipt and the goods and demand a refund.
Possible Solution: Scan all receipts and see what is in your computer system. A fake receipt will not be in your system.

Senior employees process fake returns. They just look for a high priced item recently sold, then do the documentation for a return and keep the money.
Possible Solution: All returns have to be signed by the employee who must put the item and this signed return form together until you inspect them. Only then can they be returned for sale. One point you need to watch here is that the item attached to return form is not one straight from the shelf.

A variation on this fake return that I have seen is that the goods were return, and the refund paid but your client only got part of the refund, e.g. the price less delivery charge and the employee kept the delivery charge.
Possible Solution: All returns before payment have to be signed by your client too with the value paid clearly marked. This document is put aside until you reconcile the amounts.



Do you have more to add?

Today email is free. Several of my clients take advantage of this by sending email newsletters free. The most popular method of sending such newsletters by far with our point-of-sale system is with MailChimp.

It is one of the best solutions for small-business owners who are just starting email marketing campaigns, mainly because of its free service. For those starting (learning) you can send monthly 12,000 emails to 2,000 subscribers free. This isn’t a trial so you do not need to even put in your credit card details. So my advice try it first, if it does not work out as say you feel after a while that you want something better well at least you will have acquired the necessary experience and knowledge to move on.

Of course, this free service will not come with the necessary bells and whistles that many experienced marketers that knows more and needs more features then clearly for you this is not the best option.

Now the first step is to collect emails, lots of them. The first step is to get our existing client's email addresses into the system.

Please go to cash register reports.

Then go to customers.

Once there select

Customer List (Excel)

Now run the report and it will give you a listing of your customers and their email addresses. You can import that list into MailChimp. I would recommend doing this regularly. That way, your email marketing has all the latest email addresses.

Now run a contest in your shop, to build up your loyalty program. Some ideas my clients use, a free second change at lotto, a cake, a gift voucher, etc. To enter you need to fill out a form or deposit your business card. What you need is about 500 to get it going. We could supply you for your geographic area a list of email addresses for the local businesses too to help out.

Now what you need to do is write an email newsletter which is not much harder to are then writing an advertisement. Make sure you do it at least once a month.

The read rate is about 20+% so on 500 emails you will have 100 readers which is a good start to build on. If you need any help, let me know as I use it and feel I know it very well.

Try using your point-of-sale system to market your business.

Note about Spam.

There are strict laws in Australia about spamming, and check with your association first before sending any email newsletters.

My understanding of the law and I am not a solicitor nor expert in such matters is that if a person gives you, an email address say on a business card, then its okay to send them an email newsletter. If they are in a business that you supply goods that they require like a tap supplier, you can send an email newsletter to a plumber about taps but a solicitor even though they use taps too in their office, you cannot send without permission.

Above all make sure that your email newsletter has your name and address, and an unsubscribe note; you can get into big trouble if you do not.

The magazine distributors requested the ACCC that they be allowed to do a magazine distribution trial. This resulted in many responses from many interested parties. As a result, they decided to make a hearing. I was invited to attend. Where it was decided to allow the magazine companies to do trials on magazines. The Magazine Networks then engaged Boston Analytics to assess the results of their tests. This report of these trials is starting to be released. We received an advanced copy today as we have been closely involved probably more than anyone else, and I expect in a few days everyone interested will be able to get their own copy here.

Overall what will happen at present is in doubt, as it has greatly changed magazine distribution recently with the exit of Bauer Media, leaving Gordon & Gotch, which has taken over much. Gordon and Gotch never seemed greatly interested in this project, so what happens from this moment in time on this is unclear.

Overall, I would like to make some comments.

What the Magazine companies did was divide about 60 shops into three groups, the first group (A) Stores, they limited supply to those magazines that they thought could sell, and they gave additional layout and range advice. The second group (B), all they did was limited supply to those magazines that they thought could sell and the last group (C) they did nothing but made sure that they were similar shops, so they could compare the results.

What they found as a result of the trial.

Group A - Sales dropped 8%, and its return rate was 39.2%

Group B - Sales dropped 13%, and its return rate was 38.5%

Group C - Sales dropped 3%, and its return rate was 47% (these figures, I averaged)

Now before you think between A & B groups that there is a big difference, one shop in group A in the middle of, the trial gained a huge subagent, so increasing its sale of magazines by 58%. So I think it should have been removed, but it was not and if you remove this shop from the mix, I get Group A and B as having an almost identical result say about 11% drop.

To me, these figures do not look that good. Yes, there is an 18% drop in returns, which would save a shop much in time and work, but I think most would say that saving is not worth an 8% drop in sales.

It is interesting to read the comment at the end of the report by newsagents here which I think agrees with my conclusion.

Update: Although in what many involved in this project would consider bad faith and a blatant violation of trust, this document was recklessly published early by a competitor. You should not do things like this. In any case now the document, however, is available at the above address for viewing and discussion.

Let's take a look at %Scan, which is consider to be one of the five most important retail KPIs in modern retailing, and it can be easily generated from your software program.

This KPI tells you where you are scanning, so you can determine where are you not scanning?

If you are not scanning, besides taking longer to process, you are probably not using point of sale.

So let's look at the %Scan KPI to see where the problems are, the lower the figure the low percentage of items are being scanned.

To get this KPI, please go to cash register reports

Then go to sales

Once there select

Dissection Sales / Profitability for a Given Period.

Now run the report with a year of data.

What you will see is a column with %Scan. Now if you look through this list, you will see an item with 92.52%, which is the lowest. This is clearly where most of the problems are, and this row is what you should investigate.

Note the 104.37% that you can see refers to double scanned items, which our system can handle, but we will discuss them another time.

Your point-of-sale system will soon get a script for the coming price increase of these newspapers that will be automatically updated. Its script number 2349.

For those on DOS who need to do these changes manually here they are.

[2016-07-22]: The Saturday edition of the Daily Telegraph will change from $2.20 to $2.40 GST inclusive from Saturday 23rd of July
[2016-07-22]: The Saturday edition of the Courier Mail will change from $2.20 to $2.50 GST inclusive from Saturday 23rd of July
[2016-07-24]: The Monday to Friday edition of the Geelong Advertiser will change from $1.40 to $1.50 GST inclusive from Monday 25th of July
[2016-07-22]: The Saturday edition of the Geelong Advertiser will change from $2.20 to $2.30 GST inclusive from Saturday 23rd of July

A notification now will come on the screen to say if an PC-EFTPOS Unit, e.g. NAB Commbank ANZ, etc is offline.

This will stop staff members from putting through the transactions without realizing the EFTPOS unit is offline before trying to put through a transaction.

Several people asked me today about the Magazine distribution report to the ACCC on magazine retailers. Based on its own criteria, the proposed model failed. It does not show that the Magazine Networks, could do a significantly better job of distributing magazines then the existing system based on the model they proposed. It does, however, leave questions. The reason everyone thinks the trial failed was because the control group sales which were similar shops to those in the program which they were measuring did amazing well in selling magazines. The control groups magazine sale dropped only 3%. The current industry average is an 8% drop in magazines while the historical drop of magazine sales based on the report is 6%.

If this control group magazine sales had fallen 6% (historical trend) or 8% (industry average) we would all be saying this trial was a great success.

This brings up the issue that I spoke about from day one about the lack of transparency in this trial. We do not know who the control group are so we cannot determine what is their story.

Let me say this in the stores that we measured with our POS software we found exactly what this reports states that sales of magazines continued to drop within the historical trend but that the workload had dramatically improved with an average saving in cost of handling a magazine department of over $5,000 a year.

If these trials stop, I predict the workload in these shops will go up and the magazine sales will continue their historical drop.

In Australia, most organisations ask that you change passwords two to three times a year and its not that hard as I will show.

Why? Although I have spoken about some very sophisticated ways, people break into your POS system, the fact is that most hacks are not external but inside jobs. The hacker is known to the victim, and the cost is often huge. For example, I know of one retailer not a client of ours fortunately that had $250,000 stolen by an employee over almost three years.

How do these people get the passwords to do this, generally from poor password security, for example, they see it written down; they see it as you type it in, you tell them, etc.?

Tip

If you are reluctant to change passwords because of memory issues, here is a tip that although not as good as changing the password, this will help.

Say your password is yummycabbage

A password cracker like here will take about two months to crack it.

Now as its the 2 half of the year put in the front or the end either *2.* or a *B." If you want to be more creative by all means do so eg put in B2.

However just putting in now 2.yummycabbage means this password cracker will need two years.

Anyone inside your organisation that knows your password is yummycabbage will not be able to break in.

Change your passwords now.

More and more we see the need for a faster and reliable Internet network in for point of sale. The biggest problem now is that as cable TV gets more popular, retailers are reporting particularly in peak periods that their Internet slows right down so as such we are switching as much of our POS software internet for after hours.

The issue is that many of the services are critical to a business like EFTpos which also can slow down and in some occasions just cuts off in these periods. Cut EFTpos and you can cut half of most retail today. That is not to mention other services like email, which are critical for a modern business. I would argue that the Internet is now after power the more important service a retailer requires before telephone, water and gas. So you need to choose carefully.

Australia itself has a reasonable Internet service with several good players. If you are interested you can get a feel of our country status by clicking here from the state of the Internet report by Akamai which is considered the best report on this subject.

Of course, you can make many different conclusions depending on what position you hold, for example, since 2007, we have fallen behind New Zealand, but you could say that New Zealand is a small country and its not a fair comparison. You could also argue that Russia is a bigger country, the people are considerably poorer yet they are doing much better on the Internet then us. Alternatively, you could say that compared to US, we have improved relatively. So be careful before making any conclusions.
 

Selecting an ISP

You need to consider who is going to be your Internet supplier very carefully. It's a great idea to simply walk around your proposed shop location and talk to similar business near you. That is what I did before we moved into our new office. It also gave me a great chance to introduce myself, and I learnt a lot. For example, one ISP people complained was slow in my area and that another one continuously was having network problems.

You will find its great getting a good deal, but also you need to include in the calculation the cost to your business of your customers, staff and you sitting around waiting because your Internet is slow or down.

Perhaps the most highly regarded comparison between ISPs in Australia is the Netflix, who after all monitors more Internet connections then anyone in Australia. You can click here for the latest result. June 2016 looks like this, note how quickly they can change.

From this, you can get a feel of what the overall speeds are like.

Another good site worth visiting is Aussie Outrages here which gives you a feel of how reliable. An Internet service is.

This is what Optus looks like today

Here are some other good questions to ask.

What are the contract lengths and what happens if I break it?

What are the limits on the amount of data I can download each month and what happens if I exceed the limit? One kid in one shop costed the owner quite a bit when he used youtube nonstop for a month.

What are my speeds?

Procedure for support?

How is payment done?

Hope this helps.

Your point-of-sale system will soon get a script for the coming price increase of the Victorian Saturday Herald Sun that will automatically update this papers price. Its script number 2347, buy we have done a lot of automatic proce updates over the years, saving our clients heaps and heaps of time.

Anyway for those on old systems like DOS that still have to manually adjust from the 23 July 2016 the retail price of this paper will increase by 20 cents.

The net price will be $2.40
N/A retail commission is $0.30 or 12.5%
N/A distribution commission is $0.2601 or 10.8%

The latest copy of Artwrap catalogue file, is now available for importing into your point of sale software

For this and other supplier files please visit here

Our hamper system is now being improved in the latest version.

Hampers are a great way of getting rid of unsellable stock. Rather than trying to sell an almost unsellable item say $5 with a RRP of $30, what a lot of people like to do is add such items with a hot-selling item and add say $10 to the price so the hamper sells with a $20 discount. In practice, this works very well particularly if the items are related in some way.

The problem is that what can happen is that the items in hamper pack if you add them up individually price is lower than hamper price. This can of course causes arguments at the point of sale as people can count. The solution here is if you are using hampers do not let this happen so remove at least one item from sale.

In any case our software will consider that the hampers is a fixed price *entity* and the hamper price takes precedence.

It can cause problems in stock analysis too as some would argue that both items are discounted and some would say that the hot-selling items sold at the normal price, but the discounted one sold at a discount. The argument gets more complex if the hamper has ten items which are the discounted ones. This you need to be aware of but there is no easy solution at present so we discount everything for sales analysis.

With our Point of Sale software, retailers are able to maximise the hamper possibility open to them as we administer and monitor each hamper, report on the stock at the item and hamper level so providing you with superior reporting and enabling you to make more informed decisions.

We are pleased to have an chance to help retailers make the most of this.

You switch on your computer expecting to see your normal screen instead, you suddenly see this demanding you pay to an unknown person money otherwise everything on your computer will be lost, welcome to ransomware.

Everyday at least, one of my clients is reporting that they have been attacked. Some we managed to save, but some not. At the moment, its going viral and there is not a cure partly as there are different types of ransomware. The concept is that they prevent you from using your computers and demand you do something generally but not always that you pay them money (a “ransom”) before your computer works. Usually, this is about $700 although one of our clients got a demand for $5000.

I have heard of them hitting home systems retail shops, police stations, government agencies and doctors.

Generally, it is spread by spam in emails. A woman signed up with AGL, a few days later before the switch was done, this email arrives.

She presses the button, and she got hit by ransomware.

A similar story occurred to one of our clients who has an Australian Post dealership. He received an email from Australia Post. Nothing looked wrong, so he pressed it, and he got ransomware too.

What can be done?

Unlike many other viruses as ransomware is fairly new, and as I stated no-one has really got a full solution, although being careful and having a properly maintained antivirus software is a good start.

As a tip if you use a service such as gmail or hotmail and something does not look right put the suspicious email aside for a day. Google and Microsoft have a very active program in viruses and often they will catch it.

A new tool from BitDefender is worth knowing about. It works by tricking many ransomware software into thinking that your computer is already infected so the ransomware stops working.

It's completely free. 

The very best defence and the only one that works 100% is having an image backup that's not connected to your machine in any way. There are many online backup services available to do this, if you find one, you like, please let me know.

If you want to do it manually you will need a portable hard drive, make sure it's fast otherwise it can be very slow and some software, the one I recommend is Aomeitech

which has a standard version that is free, and you can find it there. This is what I use.

Should you pay???

That is a difficult question, by paying you are contributing to the spread of ransomware by providing a reward to these people. Another point to remember that once you are identified as a person willing to pay ransoms, you may be targeted more often. Lastly often people that pay are not given the rights to unlock their machine - they have paid for nothing.

Another issue is that often ransomware will imbed itself on your computer and will strike again later. Any computer hit with ransomware must be totally reformed.
 

Having a point-of-sale software is only half the battle. The other part is learning how to use it. That is why we hold frequent training, write information sheets and hold user meeting so you can master your POS system’s features.

Readers here may be interested in knowing that my previous post seems to have generated some comments. What was annoying to me is that despite this, they seem more absorbed in getting points than fixing the inaccuracies in their report! Despite what they say, their clients or anyone else POS software clients, including ours, should not have tranquillity about their customer credit card details and fraud. I certainly hope for the sake of their readers that they do not take their advice.

It is a severe problem, for example, the latest trend Micro report states

"Australia ranked second in the world for countries with the highest number of PoS RAM Scraper infections in Q1, with 10% of the world’s PoS RAM Scraper infections,"

If you want to read just how serious this problem is, here are some links from recent credit card data breaches using this technology.

{links have since been removed}