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newsagent software

GNS Market Fair, Melbourne

gns.JPGThe first day of the GNS Market Fair in Melbourne was good. While I don’t know official numbers, our feeling is that it was busier than for the Saturday last year. It is a great opportunity to catch up with newsagent clients more so than to sell – especially since most newsagents buying a system now are switching from something else and they prefer to have these discussions in private. Our free stress balls were a hit as was our new Retailer Mobile software which we were demonstrating on the iPhone and another portable device.

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Saturday Help Desk

We have doubled the Help Desk at Tower Systems again today to help newsagents still challenged by issues from the collapse of Bill Express. Support is available through 03 9524 8000. This Help Desk coverage is in addition to our usual after hours service.

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Customer Service

Newsagent software exclusives

The term exclusive is tossed around a lot by software companies.  They want to show that only they have some great benefit that will sway you in their direction.  As the owner of Tower Systems it is important to me that when Tower claims something as exclusive, it can prove the claim.  Click here for a list of current facilities and services exclusive to the Tower newsagent software.

Of particular interest to me is the exclusive magazine supply chain projects.  In addition to those listed, there are two others I cannot detail publicly.  Our mission in the magazine supply chain side of our software is to help newsagents reduce workload and improve decision making around the category.  Being newsagents ourselves helps in pursuit of these goals.

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newsagent software

Walk through Sophie Randall

mc_sign.JPGWe are organising a walk through one or more of our Sophie Randall card and gift stores for anyone wanting to see the operation from a non-consumer perspective and, in particular, to see how we handle multiple stores off the one central point of sale technology platform. With more newsagents owning multiple retail outlets, this is a technology of growing interest for newsagents.  Tim Batt is organising this can can be contacted on timb@towersystems.com.au.

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newsagent software

Software training for newsagents

jt_training.JPGTower Systems‘ free online training courses are a real hit with newsagents. Hundreds have participated from the comfort of their homes and offices. Courses covered so far include: magazine management, new newsagent training, stock management, magazine returns and putaways. We have also run training sessions for suppliers with staff involved from different state offices.

One of the two sessions covered yesterday was on stock management. Jonathan Tay, pictured, led the session. Eight newsagencies from around the country participated. This is what makes online training valuable – we are able to connect newsagents who would otherwise not talk with each other. Connecting them as we do opens more possibilities for fresh business ideas.

One reason the Tower courses are rated highly is the technology purchased by the company to ensure the best possible attendee experience. Tower uses tools from WebEx. While these are expensive, the experience is better and the knowledge shared therefore more valuable. People who have had bad online training experiences have usually been using cheap online training software and infrastructure. This is not something you can be cheap with.

We are developing more online training and expect to announce new courses to the 1,500+ Tower Newsagents next week.

Tower continues to offer face to face free training as part of its user meeting program, having just completed a thirty city tour across the country. We also continue with our free face to face training for new owners out of each of our offices around the country.

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Customer Service

Happy Tower Systems newsagents

It has been a thrill to catch up with so many Tower Newsagents at the ANF convention these last three days.  They are a happy bunch of people.  This is a common comment from all of the Tower team at the convention – how happy our users are.  Back in the mid 1990s when our customer service was not what it should have been many of our newsagent customers were not happy.  It is the memory of those couple of bad years we caused which drives us on customer service today.

Once consequence of happy newsagent users of our software is the conversations which lead to new opportunities being uncovered.  Happy people share more because they trust you more.  We are returning from the Gold Coast with several excellent suggestions.

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newsagent software

XchangeIT declares DOS dead for newsagents

Finally the magazine distributors have started to get serious about IT compliance in newsagencies through their XchangeIT platform.  Their presentation today made it clear that DOS is dead.  For all their bleating that DOS has a life, POS Solutions has been ignored and their remaining 300 DOS users will have to make alternative arrangements to get access to the technology suite other newsagents will be able to access.  The announcement at the ANF Convention today is long overdue.

Of course, I am pleased because our Tower Systems newsagents community of 1,500+ is well placed. I feel for the 300 or so newsagents using DOS software. It should not be a surprise that DOS is dead because Microsoft an others turned their back on this old old platform more than ten years ago.

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newsagent software

More than software for newsagents

tower_sales.JPGIt has been a busy day at the Tower Systems stand at ANF Convention on the Gold Coast today.   Three of our sales team are here (from left – Luke, Nathan and Tim).   While their job is to pitch our software I don’t hear much of that happening.  Many of the conversations are about more than software.  Since they get to see so many newsagencies in their travels across the country, they become story tellers about what they see in the channel.  At events like this ocnvention they get to share these stories and collect more.

These three days are more about talking with newsagents about their businesses than they are about sales.  It is good to have time away from the shop to make that connection.

For Tower, our support of the convention is about supporting newsagents more so that any sales we may get over the three days.  This is a practical way we can demonstrate our faith in  the future of the channel.  I am disappointed no other software companies are supporting the Convention.

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newsagent software

Selling magazine subscriptions

Through eziPass, we can sell subscriptions for 4X4 Australia, Australian Gourmet Traveller WINE, Australian Gourmet Traveller, Australian Table, Australian House & Garden, Australian PC User, Australian Personal Computer, Burke’s Backyard, belle, BlueWater Boats & Sportsfishing, Bulletin, Cleo (Australia), Caravan World, Cosmopolitan (Australia),Disney Adventures, Disney Girl, Dolly, Good Medicine, HMG, Harper’s BAZAAR (Australia), Inside Cricket, Men’s Style, Money Magazine and Madison in our newsagency.

While we can sell these magazine subscriptions, we are yet to work out how and where we make the pitch to our customers.  We don’t want to pull focus from the physical product yet we want to get the gift subscription sale – especially where the gift recipient is a long way from our business.  So, we are creating some marketing collateral for use in-store to try and get these sales without losing our over the counter business.  It’s a fine line.

Of course, we could just not sell these but that would be us putting our head in the sand – customers want magazine subscriptions for themselves and as gifts.  They will buy them from us or somewhere else – I’d rather get the sale if I can.

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magazines

New stationery supplier link for newsagents

Wilson Stationery and Tower Systems are proud to announce the a significant development for newsagents in the stationery category in decades.

Thanks to the new embedded link between the Wilson Stationery IT platform and Tower Systems’ software, Tower Newsagents will soon have access to a stationery supply model which saves time and cuts business costs.

The new Wilson / Tower software interface facilitates more efficient placing of orders, receiving invoices, filling back orders and managing stationery overall.

James Golden, Managing Director Wilson Stationery said “Cutting the cost of managing stationery inventory is crucial in today’s competitive marketplace.  This new link provides our retail customers genuine time saving and ensures greater data integrity.”

Mark Fletcher, Managing Director of Tower Systems said “As a newsagent myself I know that stationery is a tough category.  What we are announcing today is more than a new IT link, it is a new way to manage stationery in a newsagency.  Newsagents can expect to sell more stationery and make more from it.”

The Wilson Stationery/Tower initiative has passed comprehensive acceptance testing and is now being rolled out to selected newsagencies for live use.

FOR MORE INFORMATION:  Mark Fletcher (Tower Systems) 0418 321 338; James Golden (Wilson Stationery) 0408 55 3333.

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newsagent software

Meeting with newsagents

Tower Systems is hosting a  national series of face to face (free) newsagent user meetings starting this. We will demonstrate new features in the latest update of lour software, provide free training and answer technical questions.  Bookings are made by email: bookings@towersystems.com.au.

  • Hobart – Thursday, May 8 – 10am
  • Launceston – Friday, May 9 – 10am
  • Canberra – Monday, May 12 – 2pm
  • Melbourne – Tuesday, May 13 – 10am
  • Geelong – Tuesday, May 13 – 2pm
  • Adelaide – Wednesday, May 14 – 10am
  • Albury – Thursday, May 15 – 10am
  • Wollongong – Tuesday, May 20 – 10am
  • Sydney (Camperdown) – Tuesday, May 20 – 2pm
  • Penrith – Wednesday, May 21 – 2pm
  • Newcastle – Thursday, May 22 – 10am
  • Gold Coast – Tuesday, May 27 – 10am
  • Brisbane – Tuesday, May 27 – 2pm
  • Sunshine Coast – Wednesday, May 28 – 10am
  • Cairns – Thursday, May 29 – 10am
  • Darwin – Tuesday, June 3 – 10am
  • Perth – Wednesday, June 4 – 10am

These events are available free to all of our users as well as those contemplating using our software. Several of us will be at each meeting covering management, technical and sales.

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Newspaper home delivery, a new approach

This post is an edited version of an article I wrote for the latest issue of National Newsagent.

Home delivery is in play in newsagencies across Australia. Some newsagents are selling their distribution runs while others are walking away. For those keen to exit distribution, there are others pursuing acquisition and creating distribution specialists.

While newsagents in South Australia and Western Australia have had the distribution only model for decades, it is a relatively new model in the eastern states. In this emerging model, retail-only newsagents act as the public face of the business for payment of the account and processing over the counter stop and start requests. This is where there have been challenges in managing accounting and other records.

Thanks to work with several distribution newsagents, new technology has emerged to make it easier to process home delivery accounts, stops, starts and other transactions at retail only newsagencies. In the past such processing has been slow, cumbersome and incompatible with existing systems. I know because I have experienced this myself in my own newsagency.

The newer technology delivers better outcomes. This leads to happier customers, happier newsagents and happier publishers and makes consolidation of distribution territories easier – thanks to maintaining an excellent public face for newspaper home delivery customers.

Any number of retail newsagents can act as shop fronts for a warehouse based distribution business and maintain stable access to their retail software. From their counter they can handle stops and starts, process payments, note missed deliveries, add new customers and handle queries. The distribution newsagent can control the level of access for retail newsagent staff using sophisticated security settings.

Above all else, the latest changes improve customer service and that is what matters most.

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newsagent software

Free training for newsagents

Tower Systems has scheduled more 1 hour online training opportunities for newsagents. We’re trying Wednesdays following feedback from our users:

  • Wednesday, 7 May 2008 11:00 AM Magazine Management
  • Wednesday, 7 May 2008 2:00 PM Stock Re-Ordering
  • Wednesday, 14 May 2008 11:00 AM Magazine Management
  • Wednesday, 14 May 2008 2:00 PM New User Training

Any newsagent is welcome to participate. Book by email: bookings@towersystems.com.au.

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newsagent software

Online training for newsagents

At Tower Systems we have scheduled more free online training opportunities for newsagents:

  • Tuesday, 15 April 2008 10:00 AM Magazine Management
  • Tuesday, 15 April 2008 2:00 PM Stock Re-Ordering
  • Thursday, 17 March 2008 10:00 AM Magazine Management
  • Thursday, 17 March 2008 2:00 PM New User Training

Each of these sessions runs for 60 minutes, longer depending on questions. Access is free. All you need is broadband and a phone – for a toll free call for audio.  Book by email, please email bookings@towersystems.com.au. Even if you to do not use Tower Systems you;re welcome to participate and see how this online training works.

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Customer Service

Marketing your newsagency

I have written a brief paper to help newsagents engage in free marketing opportunities using point of sale software. While I have written this from the perspective of Tower Systems software, some of the facilities used for this free marketing will be available in other systems.

Newsagents have tremendous opportunities to promote what they want, they control various mediums which leverage existing excellent traffic in their businesses. This can be done for little or no cost and little or no labour involvement. My paper, How to market your newsagency using point of sale software, highlights these opportunities. While some of the ideas will be obvious to the reader, most are not used consistently and professionally by newsagents.

Newsagents can easily use mediums they control to pull people back to their businesses.

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newsagency marketing

News Ltd plays favourites

Management at the Adelaide Advertiser, the SA arm of News Ltd, is playing favourite with newsagent software companies.  They are pushing one locally developed software system.  Even though Tower Systems (the company I own) has 120 newsagent users, Advertiser Newspapers refuses to include us in discussions on IT changes they want in their relationship with newsagents.

Earlier this week they sent advice to newsagents about data extraction.  The information they provided Tower newsagents was based on a version of our software we have not sold in eight years.  No wonder it does not work.  I am suspiicous that this was a deliberate move by Advertiser Newspapers to support their pitch to newsagents to buy the local software.

Newsagency software has changed considerably in the last five years.   Only natuional solutions will prevail – because of the critical mass software companies need for viability thanks to the cost of maintaining compliant software.   Advertiser Newspapers can’t protect theirhome grown software by favoring them.  Blocking competition is not good for newsagents.

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Warning to newsagents: DOS is dead

DOS software died close to ten years ago.  At least that is when most software companies moved onto Windows based software.  Newsagent suppliers moved on too and from the late 1990s Windows based software was the industry standard.  Any newsagent who hae purchased DOS software since has wasted money.

This matters to me today because scrambling continues in one software company to try and maintain relevance for its DOS software product.  This newsagency software package is what has been holding newsagents back for years, it’s one of the reasons suppliers have not made the IT advances with newsagents they want. While user numbers are small, around 500, it is enough for suppliers to not want to rock the boat.

Someone should take this DOS software out the back and kill it.

DIS is dead and the sooner newsagents realise that the better for all newsagents.

In the meantime, if you have DOS software in your newsagency, replace it with one of the systems which does meet industry standards.

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Newsagency challenges

More flexible Eftpos

We are benefiting from integrating Eftpos with each register.  Customers like that they don’t have to move to enter a PIN.  Team members like that they can provide better service.  I expect that we will see an increase in basket size as a result.  It makes sense – the more convenient the payment options the less people, think about what they will spend.  For business customers, using a business credit or debit card, this is even more true.

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newsagent software

Never selling out of magazines

We have been involved in three sales based replenishment trials in the magazine category on behalf of newsagents through Tower Systems over the last four years.  Two of these trials also involved our newsagency. While I cannot comment on the specifics of the trials for confidentiality reasons, I can say that the process is more certain now than ever before.

Newsagents are able to rely on not selling out of high volume titles based on a supply model which is driven by the sales cycle in the newsagency. This is very exciting for newsagents since it provides them with a supply model along the lines of what works for supermarkets and other key competitors in the magazine category.  Properly implemented, SBR will help newsagents cut costs out of their business – that’s what the latest trial is showing according to newsagents I have spoken with.

While I am not privy to roll out information, I’d expect more newsagents to be part of the sales based replenishment model later this year as this approach to magazine supply moves from trial to implementation.

The key to SBR is accurate sales data. Newsagents without current version Windows based software will not benefit from SBR and that will make their businesses less competitive.

Tower Newsagents have led the field in the many trials. (Yeah, I know, it sounds arrogant – we and our newsagent partners have every right to be when it comes to good data management.) We’ve helped publishers hone SBR over the last three years and made it easy for the others will start participating soon.

SBR will be important for newsagents to embrace when it is more widely released as it makes us more competitive. Newsagents who are not ready or do not provide sales data will potentially hold the whole channel back. So, this is call to action – if you don’t comply with todays IT standards for newsagents, sort it out. The whole channel is relying every participant being up to scratch.

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magazines

Free laptop for newsagents

Tower Systems is offering a free current model highly configured Dell laptop (with built in camera) to every newsagent purchasing a package from the company to celebrate the official launch of its national online training program for newsagents. The online training, in addition to face to face in-store training, a national free group training program and a national user meeting program is an exclusive service from Tower Systems which is bringing more and more newsagent together learning and sharing ideas.

free-lap-top-for-newsagent-blog-small.jpg
We have set no cap on the number of laptops being given away. The more the better!

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newsagent software

Making Elvis easier

Tower Systems earlier today released advice for its 1,450 newsagent users on how to handle the variable price model for the new Elvis partwork. This advice sheet, N5.1 at the Tower website, provides a data management standard to help ensure consistently accurate pricing for retail sales and putaways.

We have been able to develop this useful advice since we own two newsagencies and have a significant share in a third.

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newsagent software

New benchmark project for newsagents

Following success of the November and December newsagent benchmark projects I have decided to benchmark the seven months to January 31, 2008 to the same seven months a year earlier.

 

I have chosen seven months to get the most up to date data and include back to school 2008.

 

For Tower Newsagents, please send a Monthly Sales Comparison report: tick the box (lower left corner) to exclude home deliveries, and tick the box, lower right corner, to get the category breakdown.  Set your first date range (on the left) to June 1, 2007 to January 31, 2007 and the date range of the right to June 1, 2006 to January 31, 2006.  Once the report is on the screen, click the PDF button to save this as a PDF, go into your email software and send a copy of the PDF to me at mark@towersystems.com.au.

 

Newsagents not using Tower software wishing to participate should email me for a spreadsheet template to complete.

 

I’d like to complete the benchmark by mid next week so data by February 19 would be appreciated. 

I’ll publish the benchmark results here and elsewhere so all newsagents can benefit.  This benchmark project will provide a ood understanding of trends in newsagency sales data and those trends may help us make decisions for the future.

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Newsagency challenges

Technology news for newsagents – Feb 2008

Click here to download a copy of the latest technology news for newsagents newsletter being sent this morning to all newsagents. It’s been a busy month on the IT front since the last newsletter with new standards in a couple of categories imminent and an incredible response to the free online training being delivered by Tower Systems.

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newsagent software

More free training for newsagents

Below are the details of more (free) online training opportunities for newsagents using the Tower Systems software. The new courses on offer are:

Magazine Management Jan. 29 at 10am. This session will cover all aspects of magazine management; from Arrivals, Returns, Putaway Management and over/under supply. This session will be repeated several more times.

Re-Ordering 2pm Jan. 30 at 2pm. Learn how to make the most of the Tower software’s advanced reordering functions. Learn how to create an order electronically, send it to suppliers, then once the stock is in arrive it automatically without extra work.

Business Discussion: chasing magazine growth Jan. 31 at 11am. Join us for an overview of magazine performance by MPA category, suggestions on steps you could take to increase sales and discussion involving everyone on ideas they use in their businesses. A great free business building opportunity for all newsagents.

New Owner Training Jan. 29 at 2pm. Have you recently taken over a newsagency? Well then this session is for you. It is designed to give all new owners an overview of the software and its capabilities. We will cover all the things that new owners find challenging, from balancing registers to arriving stock.

Each session will run for between 60 an 90 minutes depending on questions and discussion. To book, please email bookings@towersystems.com.au.

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magazines
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