Implementing a retail platform.

01

What retail needed.

I first used the retail system as a seasonal employee. The business used SBI for retail as well as wholesale and manufacturing. My later implementation work focused on connected payments, retail reporting and ecommerce.

Cashiers entered payment amounts separately into the terminal and POS. Connecting those steps and bringing gift-card management into the retail system were practical requirements for the replacement.

02

The first replacement went into production.

I researched alternatives. We needed payment terminals connected to the POS so cashiers would not have to enter amounts separately on both devices. We also wanted to move ecommerce forward. I had chosen Ecwid for that work, and Alice POS offered both a semi-integrated payment arrangement and an Ecwid integration.

We implemented Alice and used it in production before later moving to NCR CounterPoint. I continued evaluating the platforms against the business’s retail requirements.

03

Retail started with new records.

I led the CounterPoint implementation from research, quotes and due diligence through hardware selection, setup and configuration. I worked with the vendor throughout; my responsibility was getting the platform established in the business and following the work through.

We entered the retail items by hand and established opening inventory. I designed the reporting categories and structure. We were starting retail with new records, rather than automatically carrying the old item data into the replacement system.

SBI stayed in use for wholesale, manufacturing and crop planning. Those parts of the business still had a use for it. CounterPoint took over retail, where we needed a more specialized system.

04

People needed to learn it.

Training and retraining were a substantial part of the work. I developed SOPs, helped people learn the system and stayed involved when questions or problems came up. I worked with the vendor on support tickets and followed the implementation through on the accounting side as well.

That responsibility continued after launch. The software needed configuration and attention, and the people using it needed procedures they could follow. I remained responsible for both sides of that work, with vendor assistance.

05

The change carried through into daily work.

We moved gift-card management into CounterPoint and replaced magnetic-stripe cards with custom-printed barcode cards.

I saw checkout become faster. We also removed one physical POS station to make more room in the checkout area.

I also built and configured our Shopify site as the retail ecommerce storefront. A connector supplied by our CounterPoint reseller synchronizes relevant item and transaction information between the two systems. I’m responsible for the storefront setup and for operating and troubleshooting the combined environment; the connector itself is vendor software.

CounterPoint remains our retail platform. I continue working on its reporting, integrations and the issues that come up in use. I use the reporting I established to make retail hard-goods buying decisions, including adjusting commitments and trying new products. Other departments handle plant buying.

I still work on the system, and I also rely on it to decide what we buy.