RSPA/ VSR  2009 Best of the Best Award Winner:
WavePOS

Innovative Solutions

RSPA and Vertical Systems Reseller, VSR, teamed up in 2008 to present the Innovative Solution Awards. The Innovative Solution Awards will be given to those nominated companies that have created a dynamic solution in their respective market; Credit Card Processing, Family/Fine Dining, In-Store Customer Touch Point, ISV/VAR Collaboration, Quick Service/Fast Casual, Specialty Retail, and Supermarket.

Credit Card Processing:
ShipRite Software
Merchant Warehouse's BINsmart Solution

Keeping their eyes open for new opportunities has led Mark Ford and his colleagues to launch a series of businesses, including ShipRite Mail & Copy Centers, Speedy Signs & Graphics, University Shipping & Storage and ShipRite Software, which started out with a POS application for mail centers and has grown from there. So when the company’s credit card costs topped $30,000 one year, they began delving into the often confusing world of payments and its complex rules and fee structures.

Then Ford met up with Merchant Warehouse, and learned about BINsmart, a software solution that analyzes each payment transaction to determine the lowest-cost method to conduct each individual transaction and guide the transaction appropriately. Fee structures are rarely intuitive; some transactions are actually MORE expensive using PIN debit, for example. So Merchant Warehouse created an algorithm that takes into account the type of card being used (credit, debit or corporate), sale amount, merchant’s SIC code, merchant’s zip code, the merchant’s specific rates and account structure, debit network costs if the transaction is run as PIN debit, and likely interchange category if the transaction is run as credit. Once the card is swiped, BINsmart communicates with Merchant Warehouse’s secure server to evaluate each transaction and quickly responds with the method that provides the estimated lowest cost to process the transaction. It also provides further guidance when a corporate card is used by prompting the clerk to ask the customer for the information necessary to keep the transaction from downgrading.

ShipRite integrated BINsmart through a partnership with Merchant Warehouse to open separate accounts for its customers for keyed (versus swiped) transactions, and to reduce merchant processing fees. The result is called ‘Smart Swiper’. The company incorporated Smart Swiper into its own software products, which include POS applications for storefront mailing businesses and appliance stores, as well as quick service and general retail, both just released.

Then they developed the application into freeware, downloadable and usable by anyone who uses Merchant Warehouse as a processor. Smart Swiper works directly through integrated systems along with a PIN pad or on specially programmed Hypercom IP and dial-up terminals. ShipRite gets a residual from usage of the software.

“It’s a door opener for our POS software,” says J. Mark Ford, president and CEO of ShipRite. Within two weeks of sending out 600 test mailers, 50 people had downloaded the application, and a larger campaign is in the works.

“We always hope to explode into markets we’re not in,” Ford continues. “The collaboration with PAR Tech and Merchant Warehouse has brought our company up a notch or two. Each time we collaborate, we grow.”

Family/Fine Dining:
Computer Visions
SoftTouch Touchless Sign-On Solution

In the hospitality business, there is usually a trade-off between speed and control, says John Scheefers, vice president at Computer Visions. So when someone comes up with a product that weighs less than an ounce and delivers both, it’s a real door-opener.

That’s the experience Computer Visions, a Boca Raton, Fla., VAR, has had with SoftTouch Touchless Sign-On. Computer Visions has been serving the South Florida hospitality market since 1985, exclusively selling SoftTouch products for the last few years.

Restaurants make most of their money in a short period of time, so speed is truly critical. Many operators struggle with how to authenticate the user for a shared POS station. All the available solutions, from mag stripe cards to biometrics and key codes, got in the way of productivity and/or security, Scheefers says. “In a busy bar, they don’t want to take the time to put in a number or swipe a card.” So the tendency is to turn off those features, which also shuts down the owner’s controls.

When SoftTouch introduced the Touchless Sign-On, Scheefers saw an opportunity. The solution consists of a Touchless Sign-On reader for each POS workstation and waterproof Touchless Sign-On bracelets. At the start of a shift, the staffer clocks-in at POS, and is automatically prompted to self-assign a bracelet. The bracelet is automatically deactivated at clock-out. Whenever a staffer reaches toward the touch screen, the reader reads the RFID chip in the bracelet and the system automatically authenticates the user.

“The Taverna Opa in West Palm Beach, Florida is a big Greek restaurant, and it’s extremely busy,” Scheefers says. “This is a perfect solution for them.”

The Taverna Opa used a competitor’s POS system, but a business contact got Scheefers five minutes with one of the principles. One look at the solution, and he gave Scheefers the hour. “We got the entire POS contract off of that,” he recalls, including 12 POS stations at that location and promise of more work in a newly opening restaurant. Now the Taverna can get accurate data on transactions and fulfill IRS reporting obligations without sacrificing the productivity of its large, busy staff. They also no longer have to police staff to guard against sharing codes or borrowing mag stripe cards.

SoftTouch Touchless Sign-On has had similar impact with other customers. “When they see it, they instantly grasp the benefit of it,” Scheefers says. “Any time you have a competitive advantage, it’s huge.” He’s sold the solution as an add-on to existing customers as well. “There is no question there is a bottom line impact,” Scheefers says. That’s true not only for the customer, but for Computer Vision as well.

In-Store Customer Touch Point:
SpeechGear
Nuance Speech Recognition Software Solution

Twenty percent of households within the U.S. speak a language other than English within their home, and just under half of these lack any proficiency in speaking or understanding English. This equates to about 2 million people (up from 20 million in 1990). All told, this segment annually purchases over $1 trillion in goods, approximately 12 percent of all U.S. retail sales.

Many retailers are losing out on these sales due to the communications barrier. These consumers instead migrate to ethnic specialty stores and others friendly to non-English speakers.

SpeechGear is setting out to change all of that, equipping retailers with software to instantly translate back and forth between English and 14 languages. Starting back in 2001, the company began working with the military on a lengthy mission to develop a translation product, writing an application layered on Nuance’s Speech Recognition Software. “We’ve gone through for design spirals, starting from core requirements all the way to field trials in real conditions,” says Robert Palmquist, President and CEO of the Northfield, Minn., VAR. SpeechGear now has retail-ready products in tests in a large hardware chain. Retailers will be most interested in Interact, a PC-based application. SpeechGear is also targeting medical, banking and K-12. “We have a lot of interest from big box, Fortune 100 outlets,” says Palmquist.

Using Interact simply requires speaking. You say a phrase, and the translation is voiced out in your selected language. The technology is bi-directional, meaning the second person responds in their native language, and you hear the translation spoken in English. Users are not constrained to a fixed set of phrases or a limited vocabulary, and the application can also translate whatever you type or write. Because it uses rules-based translation, quality is high. SpeechGear’s software runs on Microsoft’s PC Operating Systems (e.g., XP, Vista, Windows 7) as well as PDAs using Windows Mobile OS.

SpeechGear advises that retailers start using Interact at customer service desks, followed by installation of a somewhat limited version on existing handheld PDAs, in which users build phrases -- retailers can teach their own terms and product names to this version the application. The next phase places the software at multi-lingual checkout lanes. SpeechGear is currently developing RFID tags to enable customers to read product information and marketing materials in their native language using their own Smartphones. Ingram Micro is currently distributing Interact.

“Retailers can significantly increase same store sales because they’re offering an improved customer experience,” says Palmquist. “Word of mouth tends to spread that a store is making an effort.”

Quick Service/Fast Casual:
Freedom Shopping
Fast Track Convenience Solution

It’s been a few years away for, well, years: RFID-enabled checkout, where all of the merchandise is instantly totaled and paid for. The folks at Freedom Shopping evidently didn’t get the memo. The company has offered item-level RFID solutions for several years.

But Freedom Shopping was experiencing issues with RFID tags for its self-checkout solution for unattended retail stores. Initially, Freedom Shopping used foam tags; however, they were expensive and obtrusive on smaller products. So the North Carolina-based technology company switched to a flat tag and tried several RFID printer/encoders, but each presented read problems with the new tags.

“They tried several manufacturers of raw inlays on the carriers, and had tried other printers, but they could not get it to read and write to the tag correctly because they were so close together,” says Mark Covington, senior account manager at The Danby Group. Zebra learned of the situation and referred The Danby Group, a southeastern data collection VAR, to help. Danby and Zebra brought in Zebra’s UHF RZ400, a 4-inch-wide smart label printing/encoder, to print UPM Raflatac ShortDipole tags. “Zebra was able to get a two-inch separation between labels. The readers need that space so they don’t read multiple tags,” Covington says. With the Zebra printer and modified firmware, the company can print labels in batches, with more detail on the label, reducing tagging time.

Freedom bundled the printers into Freedom Unattended Checkout. The solution provides RFID kiosks for retail locations, allowing customers to check out on their own. The checkout kiosks automatically detect and read the pricing and item information on RFID tags on each product. Operators can set up various automated payment options. The tags serve three functions: inventory, price and electronic article surveillance.

In addition, food-service provider Sterling Services saw this as a great way to offer a wider selection of products and low costs to its customers, which include offices, schools, fitness clubs, hospitals and other facilities. Those locations traditionally offer vending machines, which limit customer options to a few dozen items, or staffed cafés, which are costly and only open certain hours. Sterling offers fresh cuisine selections for vending, dining room management and executive catering to customers in the Detroit Metro area.

Sterling, which calls the solution Fast Track Convenience, prints the Zebra tags at its warehouse and then uploads that information to a database. At the food production facility, workers tag all products before they head out to Fast Track Convenience store locations. Small Zebra tags fit more easily on the caps of drink bottles, compared to the foam predecessors. With some firmware customizations by Zebra, Sterling can now print rich information on each tag.

A single tag has the RFID inlay, printed price, food ingredients, location and expiration date -- giving the warehouse and Sterling customers complete information to support inventory management. The company can also easily change labeling to promote sales items. “At our volume, the printer delivered a return on investment in less than six months,” says John McGlathery, general manager of Fast Track Convenience. “We’re very, very happy with the new addition to our processes and it’s having a major impact on the way we do business.”

Freedom Shopping sources all of the printers for Sterling and other customers through Danby. “We’re integrated with them now, and can further the relationship with them and their customers,” says Genie Ragin, the VAR’s president, and the two companies are exploring additional product options. “Danby helped solidify our relationship with Zebra’s engineering staff to write special firmware,” says Michael Daily, President and COO at Freedom Shopping. “They gave us good pricing for the volume we buy.”

Specialty Retail:
WavePOS
WaveSoft Mobile POS Platform Solution

Demand for mobile applications within the retail store are exploding; today’s applications facilitate transactions, help the sales process, reference customer records, handle inventory tasks, conduct customer surveys, and far more. But designing robust applications for the form factor has always been a challenge. For a mobile system with limited screen size, constrained programming resources and on-the-spot processing characteristics, software engineering is much more strenuous than for a conventional desktop system.

So when Rinpak, a Hong Kong-based retail VAR, set out to create a mobile line-busting solution to help an international retailer deal with sales peaks and track VIP customers, they turned to WavePOS and its WaveSoft Mobile POS Platform, a software developer’s kit. The kit offers ease of use, fast programming time and the ability to customize applications based on customer’s requests, says Francis Wu, managing director, Asia Pacific, at Rinpak. An important requirement was the ability for the application to be easily modified as needs change.

WavePOS uses the Microsoft Windows CE operation system, believing it delivers superior graphical user interface (GUI) capability and good software libraries to extend mobile functionality and connectivity. WavePOS and Rinpak rejected a thin-client approach such as Terminal Services as not viable for this solution since it can encounter critical drawbacks on reliability, scalability and battery consumption. The hardware-independent solution developed for the international retailer is a true native, fat-client software running on a handheld device. High-level XML based command and data messages are the primary communication protocols between handheld and server systems, in this case running on an AS/400. The two partners exploited Windows’ ability to support a message-based and object-based software framework. Objects neatly encapsulate complex programming details and data representations, easing configuration time. Because end users are often involved in application design and later modification, the product uses more meaningful function definitions and tools that are easy to use with more graphical flexibility.

WavePOS helped Rinpak design the interface and the integration to the AS/400 system to create the retailer’s application, then Rinpak’s installed the solution in two of its stores. The development took about three months, versus six for a typical from-scratch project, and for considerably less than the $100,000 in costs that undertaking might incur -- which leads to faster ROI. The retailer is currently using 10 Motorola Symbol MC50, MC70 and/or XAC mobile payment terminals in one store and two in another.

The retailer is still evaluating early results, but the application means Rinpak is now well-positioned in its market. “The Asia Pacific market is quick to adapt new technology,” says Andrew Brlic, VP at WavePOS. “This gives Rinpak a decided advantage over other retail and hospitality POS resellers. Since we’ve picked up this skillset from WaveSoft, we believe it will bring us lots of revenue in the future,” adds Wu, particularly in China. Collaboration between the developer and VAR helped enhance the product, and the two companies plan to continue developing solutions together.

Supermarket:
SNCR California
NCR SelfServ Checkout Solution

Offering a solution that boosts customer satisfaction, while reducing labor costs is a slam dunk for VARs. But despite the widespread popularity of one such solution, self-checkout, some retailers are still wary about the reaction they’ll get from their customers.

That was the case when SNCR California, an NCR partner serving Northern California, Oregon and Washington, approached Dean and Renie Ryan, the owners of Tops Super Foods, a family-owned grocery store located in the historic Gold Rush town of Weaverville, Calif. With a large population of retirees in the area, “technology does not come to a lot of those folks that easily. There’s not a lot of Internet service in the hills,” says John Creamer, president of SNCR. “The wife (Renie) thought it was great, but the husband (Dean) didn’t think it would fly.”

Despite the man’s reservations, Tops undertook a front-end remodel. First step was defining a layout for the self-checkout area, then implementing NCR’s Advanced Checkout Solution (ACS) and NCR RealPOS 80XRT POS in manned lanes. Once that was complete, SCNR installed four NCR SelfServ Checkout units. Creamer likes the more intuitive scanner/scale and configurable screens incorporated into this new NCR self-checkout model.

It was a huge success. “The community really embraced it,” Creamer says, with 38 to 42 percent of sales volume now going through the self-checkout lanes. Older users “go through quicker and they want less help.” The solution also helps accommodate sudden influxes of customers when busses take a pit-stop at Tops during their return trips from local casinos, without requiring additional staffing. Customer satisfaction is up and Tops freed up some front-end labor for other tasks.

SNCR, which had sold the SelfServ predecessor, ScanMaster, in the past, used that experience to assure that smooth result. In addition to staging the install and advising Tops on layout, they solved some early issues the retailer was experiencing in balancing the lane, which was taking too long and reducing the availability of self-checkout. “We supplied them additional coin dispensers and bill packs. Instead of pulling [the machine] apart, counting, then putting it back, they put the new ones in and take the old ones elsewhere for the count.”

Tops co-owner Dean Ryan is now such a fan, he spontaneously endorsed the solution at a recent technology show, a move that has already garnered SNCR additional customers. The solution also opens up new markets for the VAR.

“Normally we do not walk into a store with a competitor’s system, but self-checkout connects to any POS system,” says Creamer. “It also turns a 100,000 deal into a $200,000 deal.”