Retailer Incentive Program
05/07/2008 noreply@blogger.com (Tony Pitale)ICS has created a new feature that will allow any New Jersey retailer to track the incentives offered by vendors based upon purchases.
Within a specified period, usually a month, a vendor will offer retailers a cash incentive to purchase product. There can be one or more incentive levels for any product. Each level will have it's own incentive value, in dollars. As you purchase product during the specified period of time, the system will track those purchases and when you have met the target, Vision will generate an "invoice" for the retailer to send to the vendor for payment.
Las Vegas Trade Show
03/10/2008 noreply@blogger.com (Tony Pitale)Nightclub & Bar Beverage Retailer Convention and Trade Show
Feb 26 & 27, 2008
As is our tradition, Jim and I arrived in Sin City on Monday, February 25th and set up
our ICS trade show booth. The show officially opens February 26 at 11 am and runs till
6 pm. Tomorrow the doors open at 11 noon and the show will close at 5 pm.
As the show started, we were visited by Greg & Durrell from Beverage Warehouse, Joe
Anderson from Spirit and Wine Cellar, and Dave Dobbs from Red carpet Wines. Later in
the day, Dino from Monroe stopped by to visit. It is always great to see our current
customers visit our booth and enjoying the trade show and Las Vegas.
During the course of the day, we were visited by four different guests from Montana. We
do not have any stores in this state and are hopeful that we can close one (or more) of
these leads. This will open up a new state for ICS and Vision.
As we were about to shut down for the day, we were visited by a group from the State of
Idaho. Idaho is a state controlled environment. They own over 50 stores and are the
“vendor” to over 100 privately owned stores. This is exactly the same model as the
Maryland Liquor Control Board. So we are encouraged that our LCB version will fulfill
the State of Idaho requirements.
On Wednesday, the 27th, the show opened at 11 am and closed at 5 pm. In previous
years, the traffic on the second day of the show is generally painfully non-existent. To
our surprise, we had a fairly steady stream of visitors for the better part of the 6 hours.
We were visited a second time by the owners of Stockmanʼs. We did not have any of
our existing customers visit this day. And as the day wore on, there were less people
walking the floor.
In all, we were able to obtain over twenty leads, many of which we believe to be worthy
prospects.
We plan on doing the show again next year, as our customer base continues to spread
to new states, we feel encouraged that stores are continuing to look for new or
replacement systems.
St. Bernard Recovery Corp.
01/23/2008 noreply@blogger.com (Tony Pitale)I would like to deviate from what you would expect to be written by a technology company and instead, write about one of my passions.
In June, 2007, I along with my wife and college aged daughter, visited Andrew Jackson Elementary School in Chalmette, Louisianna. This school is in an area almost completely destroyed by Katrina. The purpose of our visit was to deliver 2,300 books to the school, that were collected thru actual book and financial donations, by my daughter. As each child selected a book, you would have thought it was Christmas. The entire trip was an extremely moving experience. Nothing short of seeing the devastation, in person, could do justice to the conditions that the residents have to endure. And the conditions they were forced to live in continue to this day.
We would like to continue to help these people. People like you and I, and your family. They had homes, families, friends, property ... lives. In the coming months, we will be mounting an effort to raise funds and home related furniture and appliances that can be used to improve the lives of the residents. We hope to contact each one of our customers to ask your financial help in assisting us in improving the conditions and lives of these people.
You can get a great deal more information by visiting www.thesbrc.org.
Please join my family in helping.
Tomorrows solutions - today
12/18/2007 noreply@blogger.com (Tony Pitale)Many companies tout ‘ongoing development’, however ICS continually backs up that statement. Every month we distribute a Release Notes document, explaining the changes made to VISION, based on customer feedback, sales focuses and new ideas. This document is seldom less than 2 pages – in some cases it has been as large as 6. Obviously, there are a many ideas brought up for discussion in planning new features.
One of the recent modifications is Enhanced Customer Order (or ECO). In the planning for a number of months, ECO has built on the initial Customer Order concepts, to more closely resemble the ‘Back office” ordering process of today’s Liquor Stores. Customers placing an order can pay a full deposit, split a shipment (great for futures!) and use multiple shipping addresses, charges and methods. Initial response to this new feature has been overwhelming and we thank the many customers who contributed to the design of this feature.
As your industry evolves there will be more emphasis placed on the customer ordering process, as retailers use this component to extend their business. By implementing ECO and adding refinements to this function, (including Web Order integration, scheduled for early next year) Vision customers will position themselves to take advantage of these new growth opportunities.
How to find ICS on the web
11/26/2007 noreply@blogger.com (Tony Pitale)How do you search the web for a point of sale system? What phrase do you use?
Wine and liquor pos. Retail liquor store pos. Liquor point of sale. Point of sale. Liquor and wine pos.
However you search, it is hit or miss on what you will find. In an attempt to improve our visibility on the web, we have now purchased www.wineandliquorpos.com as a web address.