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By implementing a complete EPOS solution into your pub or chain of pubs, you give yourself a huge advantage over your competition. Why? Because you streamline your operations which then allows you to increase productivity, improve efficiency and maximise profitability.

Using a series of integrated applications you control every element of your business at the touch of a button, making your establishments more productive overall. You can manage orders, prices, menu items and staff on a chain-wide basis, increasing the effectiveness of seasonal or promotional changes.

Introducing a system which organises front of house, kitchens, supply chain and labour is a must in an age where pubs are highly competitive. With an Enterprise Management solution you can support the requirement for chain operations to manage and control pub level databases for both EPOS and back office applications.

With a solution like MICROS’ RES product, the Enterprise Management module provides chains with an enterprise-level management tool that enables their pubs to focus on operations and customer service, not database administration. Add menu items to implement a new promotion for one pub, a region, or the entire chain. Change pricing structures in response to local competitive pressures in key target markets. EM enables the HQ to easily manage pub level data to increase market share and maximize margins.

The future of enterprise EPOS technology

Where does the future lie for pub EPOS? Well like most things in this day and age, EPOS is heading for the Internet. With products such as MICROS’ ‘mymicros.net’ a content rich internet portal; pub management can now access hosted applications for electronic point-of-sale, back office, data warehousing, business intelligence and other business applications and content creating the next-generation model of pub enterprise systems.

mymicros.net offers outstanding benefits to both independent and chain pub operations. Independent pub owners and chain operators can experience a freedom they have never had before. Using this Internet technology, they have access to their operations’ real-time data from a Web browser – any time and anywhere. They can make adjustments to pricing, menu items, or inventory from across the street or across the country – all they’ll need to do is log onto the Web.

Sitting on top of the mymicros.net product is MICROS’ iCare Solution which provides a suite of CRM modules that deliver a 360 degree view of your customer’s activities. This allows pub chains and independent pubs to communicate with prospective new customers and stay connected to existing regulars. By creating mailing lists you can then support permission based email campaigns to prospects and customers about events, offers and promotions. If you accompany this solution with a ‘gift card’ scheme, you can reward your regulars at the same time by setting up a loyalty programme, all of which is available with the MICROS iCare Solution.

Also integrated with mymicros.net is MICROS’ MyInventory product which works with any EPOS system that is feeding data to the browser-based mymicros.net portal. Of all the cost components associated with back-office functions, inventory carries the greatest risk to a pub operator’s long-term success. Inventories require cash to produce adequate stock levels, fixed assets to store them, and human capital to manage them. Even if a pub is enormously successful, bloated inventories could mean that cash is declining.

Much to the chagrin of the users of other pdaphone products, the iPhone has taken the smartphone market by storm and is becoming a household name. Now, as companies prepare to release new phones to make up for lost grounds against Apple’s surprise competitor, everyone scrambles to discover the golden secret for the ideal set of features to woo people away from Apple.

No one’s figured it out yet, unfortunately for other manufacturers, but fortunately for Apple.

The key thing to realize is that the iPhone added depth to the smartphone battleground. It has not merely revolutionized hardware (because even the iPhone, although it features some slick hardware features like it’s multitouch-recognizing touchscreen, lacks key features such as 3G support or true GPS access). The iPhone has brought software and interface as a crucial part of the mix: its successes show, at least partially, that a slick interface can make up for technical lapses elsewhere.

Iphone competitors need to focus on catching up to what Apple has innovated in both the hardware AND software categories, quite simply.

1) Larger, multitouch screens

More phones are coming out with touchscreens (such as the AT&T Tilt, Sprint HTC Touch, LG Voyager, etc.,) but the simple fact is that no other screen out in the market can match Apple’s gorgeous 3.5 inch, 320×480 screen (and devices that can lack in other areas). It’s surprising that HTC, the producer of the AT&T-branded Tilt and the Sprint-branded Touch, despite having phones that in all other ways meet and exceed expectations, sticks with the older QVGA screen resolution-certainly, to compete with Apple, they will have to improve in this area.

2) Hardware “goodies” (e.g., accelerometers, proximity sensors)

The iPhone’s 3-axis accelerometer is what allows it the futuristic ability to sense horizontal versus vertical orientation on the fly. Other phones can switch orientations, yes, (such as the Tilt’s ability to change with a few clicks of the stylus or by simply pulling out the keyboard), but Apple has simply used these advanced hardware features to polish this function.

3) Uncluttered, intuitive operating systems

Windows Mobile, for better or for worse, has become somewhat of a beast of an operating system for mobile devices. Similar to linux on the desktop arena, Windows Mobile allows users to dig deeply into the operating system, add third-party applications or tweak the system to their liking. Theoretically, quite a lot can be

Microsoft Shows off New Technologies at Faculty Summit

Another fun demonstration consists of six vertical tubes back lit to look like lava lamps. Valves at the bottom of the tubes release bubbles and can be programmed to send up bubbles across the tubes that take the shapes of letters. One of the device’s creators, Andrew Malota from the University of Texas A&M, envisions it could be used in a bar to advertise drink specials and generally contribute to the ambiance.

Sphere is a multi-touchscreen, similar to Microsoft’s Surface computer, but it is round. Microsoft envisions that it could be used in a collaborative public environment, like a hotel lobby.

“There is no master-user position,” said Hrvoje Banko, a Microsoft researcher who showed off the Sphere at the Microsoft Research Faculty Summit in Redmond, Washington, on Tuesday.

That means that users standing on either side of the globe could separately manipulate the device, viewing photos or videos independently of each other. But it was designed to ensure that such users could also interact with each other, he said. A user on one side can swipe a photo to send it around to the other side.

The Sphere was one of many devices on display at the event’s demo fest. Ken Perlin, a professor in New York University’s science department, showed off what he calls the UnMouse Pad. It looks like a mouse pad, but rather than using a mouse, people just touch the pad with their fingers to navigate a computer. It’s quite sensitive, Perlin said, so it could be easier on wrist and hand muscles than a mouse, and it could be useful to people with disabilities who may have limited use of their hands.

Graduate students from design institutions also showed off prototypes of concepts they developed as part of Microsoft Research sponsored classes. Nadim Matuk Villazon of the Universidad Iberoamericana, Mexico, displayed Foodmate, a system designed to help kids eat better. Kids would wear a bracelet that they can wave over the barcode of a food product. The bracelet grows wider based on the nutritional value of the product. The bracelet will then shrink if the child does enough exercise to work off the calories from the food.

Foodmate comes with a service that parents use to monitor the calorie intake of their children and the number of calories they’ve burned off. It also offers them tips on balanced meals and good nutrition. Villazon and his colleagues are working with the health department in Mexico to set up a pilot of the product, he said.

Microsoft demonstrated a number of technologies that it is developing in its research department or in collaboration with university researchers, including a sphere-shaped touchscreen device, at its annual faculty get together.