Tightening the net

EPoS graphic

features

tightening the net

features, SEPTEMBER 2006, COMMENTS

While the big bucks are generally spent on a venue’s lighting and sound, more and more technology is coming on the market to tighten up the efficiency of your venue. NIGHT examined the key areas of a typical club set-up - the front desk, the cloakroom, the bar, table service and staff controls - and found that a club’s EPoS set-up is just one part of a larger network incorporating the security and marketing ability of your venue.

The incredible wealth of technology we discovered - from elaborate multimedia ordering systems to biometric recognition - is certainly futuristic, but is also based on an established principle of accounting: look after the pennies, and the pounds will look after themselves.

Front Desk

Whether or not you have a door charge, the front desk can potentially fill your backroom PC with useful information. An ID recognition system will not only indemnify your club from underage drinking and recognise the bad apples that need turning away, but will capture all sorts of vital marketing information. Entire databases, complete with addresses and phone numbers of your customers, can be created through the simple scan and swipe interface of most ID checkers, generating a powerful resource with which you can stay in touch with the crowd. As well as a useful membership system, the Club Scan from ID Scan is a high-speed software system that recognises a range of personal IDs, including passports, driving licenses and national identity cards from around the globe, and is in use in over thirty cities in the UK. The easy-to-use data collection scanner can identify and process both images and text, giving you a profile of your customers name, age, features and contact details.

But regulatory issues also need to be tackled at the front door. As the smoking ban looms large on the calendar, it will be important to keep tabs on your smoking customers as they exit and enter the premises for a quick fag. Already in place in the Scottish market, many manufacturers are addressing the problem. The popular Q-Entry, manufactured by Q-Systems, has been given a new wristband adaption that will allow smokers to come and go as the need takes them. Q-Entry takes just five minutes to learn, and can be integrated with the rest of Q-Systems’ multifaceted EPoS solutions.

The Cloakroom

Drawing incremental but steady profits, and providing an essential service to your customers, your cloakroom may nonetheless be low on your list of investment priorities. But one bad cloakroom experience, or damage to or loss of someone’s property, and word soon gets around.
EPoS manufacturers typically offer improved systems for keeping track of coats and bags, and their efficiency helps cut down queues at the cloakroom at the end of the night.

Often, a lost ticket can cause chaos at the cloakroom. Using biometric finger recognition, TAP Systems’ Coat Trak product offers a paperless cloakroom management tool. The customer simply places their thumb or finger on the biometric reader and hands over their money and coat. The system issues the next available cloakroom space to that garment. When it is time to retrieve their coat they again place the same digit on the reader and the attendant is provided with the location from which to retrieve the item.

Alternatively, Q-Robe is one of the most reliable cloakroom management system available, having been tried, tested and proven in thousands of venues worldwide. Q-Robe offers a fool-proof cloakroom terminal that anyone cane use within seconds, and can be integrated with other Q-Systems products and all back room PCs.

The Bar

With so much financial traffic at the bar, this is the key area to be technologically streamlined using an integrated software and EPoS package. Cash terminals designed by Q-Systems or SPA not only presents an idiot-proof interface, but allow you to keep tabs on your backroom activities - monitoring stock performance, sending out automatic purchase orders for new stock, and helping you tweak your prices. A microcosmic stock-market, the data generated by the bar can be collated by your EPoS software and tell you which are the hot products which you could be selling for more, and which slow movers could stand to lose a few pennies to improve performance.

Moreover, a comprehensive backroom management software will tell you the difference in turnover at different times of day, and even the impact of rearranging the bar to better show-off your stock.

The POSMaster software, designed by EPoS Group, is such a tool. It enables you to view and analyse sales and stock data, and to configure your EPoS terminal on site, from home, head office or abroad. POSMaster Lite is the single user, single unit version designed specifically for independent operators who want to reap many of the benefits of EPoS without huge investment, while POSMaster Consolidator is a comprehensive package featuring full estate management of any number of sites from a central or remote location. If your stock is still inexplicably thin, perhaps a TRUpour System will help your staff pour the drinks in perfect measure.

Getting the hardware right is also vital, and being able to provide your staff with easy to use and time saving machines will keep the customer happy and boost turnover. The DX915 terminal, distributed by SPA and designed by Uniwell Systems, is a 15” touch screen with an extensive range of communication ports, connecting the till to a host of third party enhancements such as real time link to loyalty software, CCTV, hand held ordering systems such as the Orderman.

Another handy product is the Q-Beta ticket-based till, which brings all the orderliness of a supermarket delicatessen to your bar. Q-Beta issues customers at the bar with numbered tickets so that they can go back to their table until their number is called. This delivers the obvious benefit of eliminating queues at the bar, and allows customers to rejoin their friends while they await their order. Plus, the Q-Beta units are surprisingly cost-effective at just £499.

Static tills are not the only option, and you can arm your staff with bar-code guns like the popular Q-Bar code reader, which Q-Systems claim will boost your bar’s efficiency by up to 30%.

Table Service

The most innovative technologies are to be found at the table. Eliminating the crush at the bar and creating a better experience for the customer, table service is also a great opportunity for your staff to influence your clientele with drinks suggestions. Without the hassle of queueing and carrying their drinks, customers are likely to place bigger orders from the table and have the time to choose more experimental orders. Staff tools have always been popular for this purpose. Nifty gadgetry such as Uniwell’s Orderman or WaiterPad can help staff take orders electronically, process the information to the bar, and will prompt the waiter or waitress with up-selling opportunities. Similarly, the WaiterPad device replaces the traditional pen and pad, transmitting orders straight from the point of service to the order printers.

You may not have the staff to spare, of course, in which case Escapism Media offer a unique and potentially revolutionary product - the BEDA Award-nominated Escape Pod, which features touch screen order menus embedded in table tops. As well as ordering, interactive content such as table-to-table chatting and games create an engaging interactive environment which adds a whole new dynamic to seated drinking. The Escapism system lets brands and venue owners to interact directly with customers, offer prizes and competitions in return for data, promote offers and in-house events, and collect statistics on behaviour and consumption- you’ll probably want one at home.

Offering similar advantages, systems such as those provided by Txt2Table allow customers to order drinks from their phone. The bar-staff receive the order via a touch-screen in the bar, confirm the order by return text, and the drinks are then served and paid for. Based on technology familiar to the customer, Txt2Table also accumulates phone numbers to be added to your marketing database.

VIP Room

The VIP room is a key beneficiary of EPoS, and can be an environment that will flatter your customer into parting with all sorts of information. Offering VIP membership to local businesses and organisations is a traditional viral marketing tool, and there are all kinds of toys to help you do that: systems available from Toshiba, Q-Systems and the widely used, widely praised Club Scan can create membership systems based on everyday ID cards.

Toshiba’s range of EPoS tills, for example, can be integrated with various membership software produced by Toshiba’s re-sellers. The ST-71 terminal has a dual-screen option that allows the vendor to display special promotions, menus and promotional material tailored to your VIP’s membership profile.

Profiling is also allowed by Q-Base, an equally sophisticated customer tracking and photo ID marketing tool that enables you to send tailored text messages, emails and mailshots ahead of your key nights. This system analyses the spending habits of your customers and lets you use that information to bring them increasingly personalised promotions.

There are also various futuristic ways of keeping track of your VIP members that don’t use ID cards. With Biometric’s thumb-print recognition system, or the similar biometric system from I-Control Hospitality, you can make your guests feel like a government official. The VIPs press a thumb or finger against a wall-mounted panel to gain access to the VIP space, and will update your databass with their info. You may also want to offer your VIPs table service, either personal (in which case, check out the Orderman) or automatic (Escape Pod).

Staff Controls

With an often high turnover of staff, and few ‘career’ pint-pullers, it’s naive to expect staff loyalty at the lower end of the bar chain. You may wish to tighten the net by combining your EPoS solutions with time keeping equipment or cameras on the tills. Software such as Panasonic’s WINICS Retail solution can successfully identify where, when and by whom fraud is being committed, by synchronising data from an EPoS system with CCTV footage of each till transaction. The kit is programmed to spot exceptional events recorded by your EPoS terminal, including retail transactions such as ‘Refunds’, ‘Voids’ and ‘No Sales’.

It is also worth looking at clocking machines. Timeliness is not merely an issue of staff discipline, it’s essential to your legal operation to have the requisite number of security and management personnel in place when the venue hits capacity.

A punch-in machine will help you keep track of your staff, plan work schedules and help identify where and when your staff are needed most. Distributed by Insite Solutions, TimePlus helps to eliminate expenses associated with employee badges or swipe cards, and prevents fraud caused by buddy punching. The HandPunch recognises the biotmetric dimensions of employees hands, and updates your payroll system with the number of hours worked by each member.

Words: Leo Batchelor

From: September 2006 Issue

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