Seriously. I dare newsagents to use their computer system, to the full.
I bet there is information you are not accessing today in your computer system that can help you make more money.
Newsagents spend good money on their computer systems and often only use them as glorified cash registers. If this is you, what a waste!
Do you buy a car with air conditioning and not use it? No.
Do you buy a house with lights and not turn them on? No.
Do you buy and iPhone and only use it as a phone? No.
Your newsagency computer system, regardless of the system you have, can most likely probably give you information you do not currently know about your business … information which could save time, guide business decisions or increase sales.
I see this happen often.
It is a tragedy when newsagents do not use their system.
So here is the challenge: either look yourself for information you do not know or ask your software provider.
At Tower Systems we provide a free Business Health Check service. We grab data from a newsagency and run a series of reports and come back to the newsagency with what we have found out. The response is usually a checklist of steps the newsagent can take to improve the business and usually make more money.
Here is some of the most valuable information newsagents can get from their newsagency software:
- A list of items not sold in the last, say, six months.
- A comparison of supplier performance in a common department.
- Details of what sells with what – and therefore what is not selling efficiently.
- Magazine performance to international reporting standards.
- Greeting card performance to international reporting standards.
- A list of stock stolen.
- A list of possible employee theft incidents.
- Sales by employee.
- Sales by hour.
- Sales basket depth compared between trading periods.
- Stock turn by department, category and item.
- Orders by supplier.
I could go on.
Computer systems can help newsagencies more than many newsagents permit. Imagine how strong this channel could be if every newsagent used the system they has to its fullest potential. Wow! Amazing!
I’ll happy look at reports from any newsagency. All I ask in return inconsideration of the advice.
I bought a newsagents where this was the case. The owner was clueless. Made the purchase harder to complete. They lost out thankfully.
Mark, it’s easier said than done especially when one has older DOS based software. While investing in a newer system may sound ideal, the cost of doing so may not stack up against the benefits gained – especially if one doesn’t know the business would still be around in a couple of years time.
CW, Switching systems is often nowhere near as expensive as newsagents think. Also, the business benefits could see it paid for in a year or less.
You wonder about whether the business will be around i a couple of years. Can I ask what challenges you face beyond those known to newsagents?
Mark, other than the generic declining sales in print media that all newsagencies face, I share a lot of issues many other shopping centre newsagents face (and you included as I understand). Landlords continually raise rents in complete disregard to the decline newsagents face and in my case, the landlord as part of the redevelopment process introduced a second newsagent merely 70 meters away (or 8 shops away). Granted that it was on new premises introduced as part of the redevelopment, it nevertheless took substantial portion of business away from me. In my view, only one of us would survive. Whether it would be me or the new player, it is hard to say. Hence I am reluctant to invest in anything substantial unless it pays off within one year. Since you believe the cost of upgrade pays for itself, I’d love to hear how it would be the case.
Specifically, the cost I see includes: hardware replacement cost to replace existing hardware that is geared towards DOS based solution, Software Licensing Cost (and what about the separate SQL Server license cost I presume would be required assuming Tower Systems run on SQL Server – or would it run on SQL Server express), conversion cost and training cost.
Benefits that I see specifically are:
Easier to access underlying data (I am assuing Tower Systems run on one of the mainstream database engines) – quantification of benefit is difficult.
Staff cost reduction from an easier return solution (right now I am using web based returns). It takes about half a day (I’d assign about $80 a week). I am not sure how much time it would save given that most of the time spent is on locating magazines for returns rather than keying in the return information even with a fully integrated solution.
Saving in the ExchangeIT licensing cost (which I believe amounts to about $200 per quarter).
I’d love to hear what you believe are other cost savings/benefit I haven’t yet accounted for.
CW, It don’t want to should like I live for slogans but I see issues as opportunities. I really do. Yes I have faced challenges in centres but through a process of focused small steps they are usually overcome.
I run my newsagencies as if I have a competitor newsagent next door. This makes us more efficient, competitive and, ultimately, successful.
There is no separate SQL server licence required. The conversion, training and support are fixed price. There is no charge for the business management assistance Tower offers all newsagents, where you can tap into the ideas and resources of experts to help unlock growth opportunities.
The lease cost of a replacement should be less than $80 a week. XchangeIT with our software should cost you not much more than $100 a quarter.
The other financially rewarding benefits are: substantially better reporting helping you do less of what is not working and more of what is working, better control at the counter leading to fewer mistakes and additional sales, the opportunity to easily reward your most valuable customers, greater control.
Used well, the system should be able to generate around five time what it costs in the first year in terms of lease payments. One newsagent switched and eliminated $40,000 a year in wages.
Mark, I’m in a similar position to CV and am also finding the cost of changing over prohibitive. I did get a quote from Tower last year but this included the hardware too. If there is scope to only buy the software, training and support while sourcing the hardware ourselves, we may be able to manage it in the next year or so. I need to look into it further I think.
Certainly Vicki. That said, getting it all from one place is usually cheaper unless you get generic hardware rather than brand name.
The best way to keep upgrade costs low is to use as much of chat you have today as practical.
Vicki and CW, we changed to Tower in Sept 2009 (we were a full subagent then and changed from MYOB Retail Manager) and were able to use most of our existing hardware. I did bring into the business a computer from home to use as a back office station and server. I’d like a faster back office machine now but the one I have (which is 8-9 Yo) is doing the job at present. It is not only the time savings that we appreciate but the ability to almost totally eliminate ordering mistakes and the reporting functions that enable us to manage the business more efficiently. We keep learning how to get the most out of Tower. The question that need to be assessed is “will a modern system give me an edge and help keep the business viable?”, in our case yes but you need to make your own assessment.