Faster, easier and more cost-effective ticketing

The Midcounties Co-operative Society: A Case Study

"The introduction of the Eastman-POS net.tickIT system throughout our whole store network has been warmly welcomed by every store team. We are hugely impressed by the simplicity of in store execution as well as the professionalism of the Eastman project team. Retailers always demand better, faster, easier and more cost-effective in store solutions ­ we can confirm this delivers exactly to expectation!"

The Midcounties Co-operative Society has an enviable and growing reputation for their deployment of technology in the retail environment for the benefit of both customers and store colleagues alike. Eastman-POS is delighted to partner The Midcounties Co-operative Society in their latest development ­ the introduction of our store based POS printing solution net.tickIT. The Society is the largest regional independent retailer in its area with an annual turnover of around £335 million, 12,000 Members and 4566 employees.

The Society covers a geographical area which spans five counties, including most of Oxfordshire and Gloucestershire and the area around Swindon in Wiltshire. The Society is made up of six trading groups: Retail, Motor, Funeral, Travel, Property and Corporate Development which includes Childcare.

There are over 200 retail stores, most of which are community focused, located in villages and areas in towns often ignored by other retailers. The Society is committed to providing a local service. Every three weeks or so, a national set of products is identified and every Co-operative store commits to promoting these lines. The Buying arm of the movement is called the Co-operative Retail Trading Group (CRTG) and they release the product details to each Co-operative Society for the management of each promotion. Many Societies have chosen to develop and produce their own point of sale materials to advertise these promotional lines. The Midcounties Co-operative Society investigated various production methods on the market and concluded that they gain the greatest benefit from the purchase of Eastman-POS¹s net.tickIT web solution for in store POS colour printing. By purchasing the entire solution of software, hardware and consumables from Eastman-POS.

The net.tickIT web application, database, templates and graphic storage requires a server running Windows SQL Server 2000 and IIS. By using the in store browser, print construction is completed by the browser print function allowing the network to only carry data and one occurrence of graphic elements. This minimises traffic and reduces any overhead for sustained on line store requirements.

 

 

"Having investigated numerous options within the marketplace, we selected net.tickIT by Eastman-POS. Their solution is cost-effective, easy to implement and has been received very positively by our staff. The Eastman-POS team have proved to be highly professional, reliable and customer-focused. They are flexible, deliver on their promises and work in co-operation with us to realise our expectations."

 

The management benefits are considerable, these include:

• Rapid response to corporate and local needs
• Improved compliance with Trading Standards
• Elimination of POS wastage
• Up to 30% improvement in store implementation
• Total Solution with brand consistency
• Ability to print by store brand
• Facility to print local ad hoc tickets
• Ability to choose POS to suit store fixtures
• No in store software requirement
• Minimal network traffic
• Easy to use and less than an hour to train