Subcom

Recently a fast food home delivery service, installed an EPoS system and within a few weeks deliveries had trebled purely down to the control that the system allowed.

The benefits of the system are many; caller recognition – customer details appear instantly on screen alongside the shop menu when the phone rings, postcode look-up – new customers are added quickly and accurately and fast touch screen ordering with (optional) selling prompts. In addition, meal deals, offers and delivery charges are calculated automatically.

The system eliminates human error at the counter and the caller recognition saves time for the user and the customer. Order taking is faster – so customer throughput is much quicker and far more efficient.

After a customer has placed an order for delivery and the food has been prepared and is ready to go, the screen is touched to tell the system which driver is taking the order. At this point, a map is displayed to help the driver. Payment can be taken from drivers after one order, a few orders or at the end of the night.

The business has 3 services to offer – these are Takeaway, Delivery and Collection. The EpoS system co-ordinates everything and the delivery service is now 40% of the business and growing. Collection orders are increasing too – but not at the expense of the takeaway business. Collection orders are bagged and waiting at the front when customers arrive – staff just need to touch a button on screen and we can have a separate and fast moving collection queue.

There are also touch screen terminals which are wall mounted in the food preparation area. One of the terminals displays pizzas, baked potatoes etc. to be made as they are ordered; the other displays special orders for frying. The screens relieve employee pressure at busy times and enable the users to check on orders and not continually look around for scraps of paper with hand-written notes.
The EpoS software is not just intended for order-taking, kitchen efficiency and driver management – it is an invaluable tool for customer relationship management. Every time that a new customer is added to the system or a customer orders again, the customer database is updated. This creates effective local marketing allowing the marketing of the business to customers by mail, by e-mail, or text messages. The system also makes it easy to send special offers and coupons to customers. The results can be monitored and the home delivery service found that they had a 65% return on their first mailing.
Many small businesses today view EPoS as an unnecessary expense, but the real benefits are seen both by the customer and the business itself. Customers have a more efficient experience at the Point of Sale, and the business tracks and records everything through the EPoS package which in turn improves stock management, margins, purchasing information, and customer information.

Both Microsoft and AT&T are very well known companies world wide, however recently they have both created a partnership which will enhance the mobile phone buying experience. Microsoft has come up with a very innovative device called the “Surface” which is basically a 30 inch tablet-like monitor which has several infrared cameras which detect the slightest change in the surface and translates it into software commands which return a visually appealing response.

In order to better understand what the Surface does and how it will be of benefit to mobile phone retailers as well as casinos, restaurants, etc. is by comparing it to tablet PCs, as you may know tablet PCs have been designed to be user friendly, they have a touch screen on which digital artists are able to manipulate their images using a pen; traditional users are also able to benefit from tablets by being able to interact with their applications or browse the web using a pen instead of a mouse.

Incidentally, Microsoft’s Surface brings these elements and improves them dramatically in their latest product which will be launched primarily in retail stores such as AT&T. The way this new interactive virtual display works is by easily connecting to any device such as a mobile phone and instantly recognizing it’s content and giving the user several options to manipulate such content, some may say this is the perfect link between hardware and the virtual world.

Pieces of information and data found on a mobile phone such as contacts, MP3 files, videos, pictures, etc can all be seen through the Surface and then organized just the way the user wants. In retail stores the Surface will be used in a way which will allow interested mobile phone buyers to place two phones they are interested in and the Surface will then provide a table of contents for both items which will make it easy to compare the features on both phones. Plans can also be compared through the table which lays them out in a visually appealing way that is easy to understand.

Table users will also be able to transfer digital photos or MP3 tunes from their devices to their mobile phones by simply placing the devices on the Surface and dragging the media files from the source into the mobile phone, which is just amazing. The only problem is that not every phone is compatible with the Surface, so obviously buyers will have to acquire the latest mobile phones in order for the surface to be able to deliver all the benefits it is intended to. Without a doubt this is a great idea Microsoft and AT&T have come up with, lets see how the public will adapt to it when it is launched in retail stores in April 17th, 2008.