A Customer's Computer Died
A long time customer's store POS system computer died the other day. The computer was probably 15 or so years old. The customer had bought his MIB software outright when he purchased the system. He purchased telephone support as needed. The last time that he needed telephone support was seven years ago. He probably only needed support a couple other times in the last 15 years and as a result was careless with his backups. Sadly his backups were no good. On the plus side, he removed his hard drive from his old computer and shipped it to us. It was easy to get his data off his old hard drive. He was going quickly with our latest software and the new computer that he bought locally. All was not perfect because his other workstations were not working. It turned out that he had two bad cables to his workstations. Finding the bad cables required plenty of hair pulling and teeth gnashing. That could have been the reason that his old computer died. Now all of his workstations are going and hopefully it all runs for another 15 years.
Labels: backups, data recovery, Store POS System
Support forr Computer System Terminated
Every so often I hear about support for a POS System being terminated. Short of being forced out of business, I am truly amazed that a company would treat their customers so shabbily. Moreover, in many cases these companies make it difficult if not impossible for a third party to step in and support these systems. Some enterprising customers have been able to keep their computers going for years and years with no support. I admire these resourceful individuals. Others have switched computer suppliers but most have knuckled under and dug deep in their pocket to buy the "new and improved" version of their computer system. Sure Microsoft stops support on older operating systems but only after there is a huge amount of information documenting the system for anybody that wants to learn and an army of independent computer nerds that can support it satisfactorily.
Clearly, it is much easier to support customers that have the latest and greatest computer hardware and software. However, we at MIB have taken a different path than forcing customers to buy new. Since 1977 we have never terminated support on a system and we are not starting now. We give our customers the latest software updates free of charge so it is easier for us to support them. If our customers need to replace or want to upgrade hardware, they can usually buy it within a few miles of their store location. Customers that are happy with what they have now can go on as long as they want and not have to worry about losing support.
Labels: Store POS System, support
Leveling The Playing Field A Little
A friend of mine was talking about competing against the big chains. He said that flexibility is one advantage that independents have over big chains. For the most part a counterman at a chain can look up parts using the chain's electronic cataloging and give potential customers price and availability. For the most part they can't change a price. My friend said that a chain that he competes against has a web site that allows potential customers to see price and availability from the chain's local store. The web site saves labor at the local store but creates a vulnerability. When a potential customer calls my friend's store for price and availability, the manager is trained to look up the part on the chain's web site for price and availability along with finding price and availability from his own auto part store software. The manager then has the option to price the item to make the sale.
Labels: Auto Part Store Software, electronic cataloging, Store POS System
Decision to Buy a Store POS System
A long time ago I remember taking a potential customer to a store so he could see how MIB's Store POS system worked. He had flown half way across the country to see it. It was very busy in the store that day. There were probably 7 countermen working that day. Invoices were being printed at a rate of one a minute and sometimes up to three a minute. The potential customer was looking around at things and not paying any attention to what the countermen were typing. After about 15 minutes he turned to me and said that he had seen enough. He wanted me to take him back to the airport. I figured that we had lost the sale. He then said that he would buy. I asked him how he could make a decision when he didn't know how it worked. He said that he didn't care how it worked. He could tell by watching the customers come in, be served and leave in short order that the system did work.
Some time later after Triad had introduced their electronic cataloging system, there were full page ads in the trade magazines for an alternative electronic cataloging system. We called the company and scheduled a meeting. The same customer as in the previous paragraph decided to come along also. Three of us altogether went to the meeting. I talked with the company's sales representative while the other two tinkered with the demonstration system. We left within an hour. The two that had tinkered with the system said that it had serious problems. Very few of the applications that they tried to look up had worked. Sure enough within a year the company went out of business. Here are two situations where a little hands on effort help us make the right buying decision.
Labels: buying decision, electronic cataloging, Store POS System
Transmit Stock Orders
The Mib Store POS System transmits stock orders over the internet into Associate Jobbers Warehouse's FTP site. This saves MIB jobbers using the Auto Parts Software time and money. With this new update no longer will the auto parts store owner have dial up modems along with the problems that they cause.
Labels: Auto Part Store Software, Jobbers, Store POS System
It is broke and it is nearly new
I remember talking to a service manager at an automotive repair shop. In the past he had on going problems with customers coming in with problems on their car. They were sure that he had worked on that problem a couple of months ago and the customer felt that it should be a warranty repair. It turned out when he researched the problem, the last time he worked on their cars was more than two years ago. Also, the problem was something completely different. Once he put all of his service work on a Store POS System, it took only seconds bring up all of the invoices for a particular vehicle and the problem is solved.
Labels: service work, Store POS System
Fast System Recovery From a Lightning Strike
Last week a customer called whose store pos system had taken some sort of power surge most likely from a lightning strike. Two workstations that were networked using serial ports were out and the server worked fine. It took about 30-45 minutes for me to be convinced that the on-board serial ports were blown on the two workstations. It took about twice that long for me to convince the customer. In fact he wasn't completely convinced until he brought in an old laptop from home the next morning and it worked in place of the two dead work stations. I told him that if he bought two USB<->Serial adapters then he could have the two dead workstations going in a flash. He went to his local Radio Shack store and was able to buy two of them for $38 each. He was unhappy about the price since he could buy them on the internet for less than half that price. However, he relented and bought them. He plugged the devices into his computers. The computers recognized the devices automatically and he was going within 10 minutes. Any time that we can isolate the problems from a lightning strike over the phone, I am happy. If we can also fix the problem by 10:00am the next morning while they are up, I am really happy. The customer was mostly happy but still mildly annoyed with the two $38 price tags.
Labels: Diagnosing problems over the phone, lightning strikes, Store POS System
Programming Support is Important
It is easy to ignore programming support for your Store POS System software until you must have it. For example a few months ago some Canadian provinces changed their sales taxes. In the past they a PST (Provincial Sales Tax) for the province and a GST (Goods and Services Tax) for the federal government. There were different regulations as to who had to pay what taxes. The provincial governments decided to combine the taxes into an HST (Harmonized Sales Tax) which included both taxes. The term HST had to show in the invoice. This was an easy programming change but it had to be done. Without programming support it wouldn't have happened. Required programming changes happen every few months. They usually involve a minority of the customers but they happen and you never know when they are going to happen. Required programming changes can come from government regulations, changes in the operating systems and changes in hardware availability. Some require hours to make and others require years to make. If you don't have them, your software quickly becomes useless.
Labels: programming changes, sales taxes, Store POS System
If we don't give you your receipt, your purchase is free.
For years now I have been seeing signs at some businesses saying "If we don't give you your receipt, your purchase is free". It seemed frivolous until one day when I bought a meal at a local fast food restaurant. The bill was like $21.47 and I gave woman working the counter exact change. The woman put the cash on top of the register. She did not enter the order into their Store POS System so the kitchen help would know to make meals. Instead, she ran to the kitchen, made our meals and handed them to me. I walked to a table and watched her. The woman pocketed the money and made an extra $21.47 that day tax free. There was no record of the sale ever being made. The kitchen help, which included the supervisor, had to be in on the whole thing. Three things had to happen in order for the employee to pull this off. First, the sale had to be exact change. Second, the kitchen staff had to look the other way. Third, there was no sign saying "If we don't give you your receipt. your purchase is free".
Labels: Store POS System
More and More on Employee Theft
I was chasing down a problem with a system this week and saw something that looked like it could be theft. An employee had worked alone on a Saturday and ran a return on a non-stocking item. The item was a special order and it was not in their Store POS System's inventory. It was almost $100 so it was not a trivial amount. The Store POS System held all of the invoices run in the last 7 years so it was easy to search all previous invoices over the last 7 years for that part number. That part number had not been sold in the last 7 years. The item was not in their Store POS System's inventory so it would not show up as missing if they did a store inventory. That return would have slipped through the system without a hitch if there hadn't of been an error in setting up the system that caused that invoice to be tagged as a problem. We corrected the error in the system setup. I then talked with the manager and he allowed as how it could be an employee error or theft. They were going to find out if that special order was a real item.
Labels: employee theft, Store POS System
Reliability and Backups
Lately there has been heavy flooding in parts of TN and KY. I happened to talk with a store manager in that area during the flooding. She said that the electricity had been out part of the day and they couldn't run invoices on their store POS system. Moreover, they couldn't price most items in the store. Essentially, they couldn't run any cash sales. They were reduced to writing hand tickets for charge sales only listing the customer name, quantities and part numbers. These hand tickets were run later. That got me to thinking about the importance of reliability. Some 30+ years ago when personal computers were just starting to be widely available, the systems were not reliable. The systems ran on floppy disks. The diskettes and floppy drives themselves went bad. If users did not make good backups, then it was almost a sure thing that they would soon face serious data loss. People knew backups were important. About the same time as the flooding in TN and KY an associate upgraded a customer's computer. They have been using our system for over 20 years and have never been down. Here is a situation where increased reliability might make serious data loss more likely. It is hard to convince somebody that hasn't had a computer crash in over 20 years that it is important to make good backups. We knew that we had a potential problem with people forgetting about their backups. Our solution was to put the date of the last good backup on the main computer screen. It is visible every day for most of the day. The user has to choose to ignore the warning. It is like your gas gauge flashing a warning on low fuel. Ignore this warning at your own peril.
Labels: backups, reliable computers, Store POS System
Doing Things His Way
I was talking to the owner of an auto parts store the other day. His store is in a town of about 5,000 and is very profitable. He remains profitable because he is constantly changing his business to deal with the changes from his competition. In the same town was a store owned by one of the large program groups. The program group corporation took over the store a few years ago from some partners that couldn't make a go of it. A few years later the corporate store closed. I must assume that the store was not making money for or the corporation would have kept it open. After the corporation closed the store, representatives of the same corporation contacted the owner of the profitable store. These representatives tried to convince the store owner to take over the failed store or to convert his profitable store into their program group.The whole idea is insane. Twice people have tried to make money running a store the way that the program group says to run a store and both times they failed. Now they are asking somebody who is making money doing things his way to change and do things their way. That means that will tell him that he must spend an incredible amount of money on one of their signs boosting their business image. They will tell him what parts that he must buy and what items that he can't sell. The will tell him how to lay out his store. They will offer him many add on options from the corporate plan all of which cost big bucks. They will force him to buy their store POS system which makes it easier for them to control his business. Every one of these things that he must do limits his ability to make more money. To be fair, for every store owner that does things his way and prospers there are more that fail and they usually fail quickly.
Labels: changing a business, doing things his way, insane decisions, Program group, Store POS System
Special one time orders
A common special one time order is the yearly order for lawn and garden items. Come spring time when love is in the air you had better have sent in your spring order for lawn and garden items long ago. Otherwise, you are going to take a beating on freight charges. A first cut for ordering a part number is to order what you sold last year less any that might be left over from last year. The next step is to look for lost sales on the item and to maybe order more to cover any lost sales on the item from last year. You also have to look for supersedes and order the new part number if the old one has been superseded. Your STORE POS SYSTEM should have all of this information immediately available for you in a format that your supplier can use. Finally, you have to look at your latest bank statement and figure out what you can afford to order.
Another type of special one time orders is as follows. A wholesale supplier may offer their customers special prices on fast moving items with an extended payment schedule. For example, they might offer a 10% discount on some minimum purchase of lighting items and the terms might be 30-60-90. That is, you pay 1/3rd in 30 days, another 1/3rd in 60 days and the final 1/3rd in 90 days. Assuming that you don't have plenty of extra cash, you want to make sure that you sell what you ordered before the 90 days is up so that you can afford to make those payments. Here again you would look on your STORE POS SYSTEM at the sales of the specially priced items over the same 90 day period last year. Depending on your financial strength and sales outlook, you might order more or less than you sold last year.
Labels: lost sales, sales history, Special one time orders, Store POS System
Buying a Cash Receipt Printer
Invoices are a cost of doing business. However, you might want to think about also using paper tape receipts for cash customers. It is a simple calculation to figure out if adding a paper tape receipt printer to your STORE POS SYSTEM is a good investment. When all is said and done, you have to figure that you will spend about $300 to buy and install a paper tape receipt printer for cash sales. Beyond that your expense for paper tape is nil compared with invoices. You take the price of your invoices in pennies and divide that into 30000. For example, if you pay $.02 for each of your invoices then you would get 30000/2 = 15000. That tells you that you would need to run 15,000 cash receipts to make the printer pay for itself. Since any STORE POS SYSTEM will tell you how many cash invoices you run in month, it is simple to figure how many months it will take for the cash receipt printer to pay for itself.
Labels: invoices, paper tape receipts, Store POS System
Selling With a Smile
There is a lyric for an Eagle's song that goes something like "Some women know how to open a door with just a smile." These same women can do wonders selling with just a smile. In particular I think about an associate that owned and operated an auto parts store for several years. She had a woman working for her that had a special talent selling with just a smile. Even now some 25 or so years later she talks about this woman's ability to sell. When a man walked in the door of the store, this woman had a talent for estimating how much money he had in his pocket. She made it her goal to take every cent of it. What is more, she did it and the man walked out the door a happy customer and a smile from the woman. Often she was able to sell at list price. Of course, she was allowed to set the selling price on their STORE POS SYSTEM at the time of sale.
There are a couple of other out of the ordinary selling situations with women that I can remember. One woman would lean forward on the counter when talking to men. She got a lot of attention and brought in many regular customers. However, sometimes that attention can cause problems. One parts store had a young attractive woman delivering parts to repair shops. When she arrived at a repair shop, all work stopped until she left. That was all well and good until the wives of the repair shop owners noticed this and complained to the parts store owner. The young woman was soon history and the replacement driver was a pleasant lady in her 60s.
Labels: Selling to men, Store POS System, using a smile to sell
Watching out for problems
The other day an associate was telling me how she looked for problems when she owned an auto parts store. She scanned the daily summary from her store POS system examining the gross profit margin for each invoice. Those invoices that are below or above the threshold that she established for her business were a concern. She looked closely at the items on the invoice, the customer that made the purchase and the clerk that ran the invoice. Sometimes a low profit margin was related to a pricing error, an employee giving a friend a price break at her expense or the customer received a rebate. Rebates are a necessary part of business for some products and hopefully your store POS system will account for your rebate when computing your daily gross profit margin. Also, store POS systems will often tag invoices on the daily summary when a sales clerk sells an item at a price different from what should have been priced to that customer. Tagged invoices beg for your attention. Scanning through invoices on a regular basis is not fun, but it helps you stop small problems from becoming big problems.
Labels: daily summary, gross profit margin, Store POS System
Keep Control While on Travel
Many store owners or managers want to control their store even when they don't show up for work. It is easy to do and the cost is minor. This can be a real godsend for those that have to be gone for health problems, family matters, long overdue vacations or whatever. You only need a fixed address for your internet connection, any of the widely available inexpensive software packages designed for this application, a laptop computer and an internet connection where you are staying while away from work. The biggest expense is the laptop and there are many new ones that are under $400. If you want to print reports, you will have to bring along a printer and you can get good new laser printers for under $130. Be sure to save the boxes so that you can ship them to your destination with minimal hassle. Most hotels and motels, many restaurants and even airports have wireless internet connections available. Sitting in your home, hotel room or vacation home you can use your Store POS System to do almost everything that you could if you were sitting in your office working on the computer. The one important thing that you can't do is to remove your backup media and put it in a safe place. Hopefully, an employee will do this for you. Oh yes, the users that I know of that manage from remote locations have not had any problems with computer viruses. However, one would do well to resist the temptation to surf the web on either your server computer at the office or your laptop for remote computing.
Labels: backups, computer viruses, Manage while you are gone, Store POS System
Another Different Way to Make Money in the Parts Business
Something that I have seen on a few occasions is people opening a store with the intent to sell the store once they have turned it into a profitable business. Essentially they are banking on their superior business skills to allow them to create a thriving business where many others will fail. Of course, some of the success of these ventures came from the real estate boom over the last several years. However, they study the area where they are going to build their business and do their homework in order to find a good location at an excellent price. An important part of the plan is to have sufficient money to buy the land and building for their needs. That fixes a major part of the cost to do business even before they open their front door. Next they work on containing the daily costs to do business. Their buying decisions for the products that they sell are based on quality and price not on convenience. They may buy from as many as a hundred or more suppliers. They work hard to keep their expenses at a minimum. They work with a minimum number of employees, they have a minimum number of phone lines and cell phones, and they keep their Store POS System cost to a minimum. You name it and they spend the minimum amount that they need. They are usually knowledgeable in the business that they plan to open. In these days most auto parts stores are struggling to survive. However, I have seen a person with no experience in the auto parts business open an auto parts store and turn it into a money making business. He paid good wages to hire people with experience in the parts business to teach him the business. Most important, he knew how to run a business. I hate to say it but it seems clear that in the parts business, knowledge of the parts business is not nearly as important as management skills.
Labels: containing costs, Parts store, Real estate, Store POS System
Different Ways to Make Money in the Parts Business
If you are an independent retailer selling mass produced items such as many types of light bulbs, your competition is mass retailers. Mass retailers are going to win that competition every day of the week. Their cost for product is way below yours, their employees need minimal training and get minimum wages, and their store hours are much longer than yours. Time and again I have seen independent retailers spot a niche and make a good profit filling a niche. For example, suppose that there is an item that only one person in 10,000 will need in a year. A knowledgeable retailer talking with a customer can determine the need for that item and a mass retailer doesn't even want to go there. In that situation the independent retailer might stock the item and sell it for 10 times what he paid for it and the customer is happy to have it. If you do this enough times, you have a business with no competitors. Equally important, your customer will immediately think of you when they need another rare item. A similar business is ordering specialty items for customers. It is a labor intensive business. You must develop a fool proof routine on your Store POS System for tracking deposits, tracking the special orders, contacting customers and returning those items ordered by mistake. Over the years a retailer will learn where to buy those hard to find items. However, even so a retailer has to be willing to search for those odd items that customers sometimes need.
Labels: Independent retailer, mass retailers, niche market, Store POS System
Problems with Electric Fuel Pumps
A knowledgeable gentleman that works for a major automotive parts manufacturer told me the other day that his employer loses tens of millions of dollars per year because of new fuel pumps that are returned as defective and they are not defective. I know from personal experience that this is a problem. A local mechanic charged me $1200 in parts and labor and was not able to fix what turned out to be a fuel problem. Another mechanic chased the problem down to either a corroded connection or a relay in the fuel pump electrical system. He cleaned the corroded connection and replaced the relay and it has been running perfectly since then. When we on site working on Store POS Systems, we look for ideas to help other customers. The other day I saw a fuel pump tester in a parts store. It was quite a gadget. It had a pressure regulator, a battery and connectors for the fuel input and output of the pump. You merely set the pressure regulator for the operating pressure for the vehicle, hook the battery to the fuel pump, hook the hose connections to the fuel pump and start the fuel pump running. Assuming that the fuel pump is good it will pump a specified volume of fuel in a specified time. In reality it will pump a lot of fuel or it won't. At this time there is no doubt as to whether the fuel pump is defective or not. Needless to say this parts store does not send back any fuel pumps unless they are really defective. They also save the mechanics a lot of labor.
If the fuel pump is not the problem, it requires a lot of labor to chase down the problem in the fuel pump electrical system. You have to drop the tank and make several voltage measurements on the fuel pump electrical system with the fuel pump under full load. You are usually looking for a measurable voltage across some part of the electrical system. In reality the only measurable voltage should be across the fuel pump itself.
Labels: Electric Fuel Pumps, Fuel pump electrical system, Store POS System
