Public Sector & College EPOS Solutions
Microsoft Dynamics Retail Management System (RMS) is your perfect partner if you operate a College or other educational institution or within the Public Sector. RMS has many references within this retail vertical and is experienced at dealing with public sector bodies and institutions, their niche requirements and way of operating.
The Retail Management System allows your public sector organisation to drive greater efficiency savings, improve customer service, reduce manpower and manual processes and empowers your staff with the ability to make confident buying decisions that produce results.
Contact RMS to discuss EPOS for Colleges & the Public Sector
This powerful solution has been deployed throughout many public sector organisations, schools and colleges and other institutions. The software is built on a stable Microsoft platform that works like the software you are used to using - thus reducing training time and leveraging on other technologies that you may already have installed.
If you are working in a centralised Headquarters multi location environment, then the rich set of features offered by Microsoft RMS HQ will allow you to control your enterprise from a central location. Being backed by Microsoft and a rich partner network encompassing thousands of installations and reference sites ensures that the solution will be a good fit and the support will always be there. For coffee shop and other café style hospitality outlets, we have Add-ins that satisfies the requirements of this particular vertical that the "out-of-the-box" solution does not provide.
Powerful Inventory Management System
At the heart of the Microsoft Dynamics RMS EPOS Software is a powerful built-in inventory management system that allows you to catalogue each item / product / service you sell. You will be able to code and price each item individually and track supplier information (one or multiple suppliers per item).
RMS will also monitor stock levels within your business helping you to maintain the correct amount of stock on the shelf -essential to running a successful public sector retail arm. Keeping the right amount of stock helps you to reduce your costs, improve cash flow and maintain budgets. RMS Store Operations and HQ can accommodate many different item types to deal with the varying product and service types you offer within your organisation, including:
- Non-Inventory for service, tickets, administration charges and other fees
- Standard Inventory - for hard goods, products, items that have a stock quantity and value
- Linked items - to auto-suggest selling one item based upon the sale of another
- Case items - "Parent / Child" items - packs / boxes and other items grouped together
- Matrix items - to group and automate the setup and sale of multi-dimensional items, such as clothing or items sold by size and colour (e.g. A4 stationery binders - the same product available in Red, Blue, Green, Yellow would all be setup under a "Matrix" to facilitate coding, control, sale and purchase in an organised manner - and keeping track of stock of each individual item as required
- Weighed items and liquid items (e.g. Fuel) - can all be setup
Through our training workshops, we work with you to find the best and most suitable way of coding your items and arranging them by department and category. In a public sector organisation / college, we are used to deploying Microsoft Dynamics RMS across many different business centres - all tied to one central database. That is the power of Dynamics RMS in its ability to deal with many different product types out of the box.
A college may have the following departments that all use EPOS:
- Café / Restaurant - Deployment of Microsoft Dynamics Store Operations in conjunction with our Hospitality Add-in enables sales to be tracked at the Café - all reporting under the "Café" department.
The easy to use touch-screen button interface and menu screen designer add rich functionality together with remote kitchen printing and other features required within this environment
- Library - for payment of fines, purchasing of DVD, Music and other titles or payment of photocopying / internet charge
- Stationery Shop - RMS Store Operations tracks inventory and sales of stationery and other course material
- Bookshop - RMS Store Operations has been successfully deployed within a fully featured public service bookshop to handle ISBN numbering, stock control, customer queries, supplier re-ordering and management as well as internet sales
- Vocational studies such as Spa and Salon - epos terminals in these areas can control transactions and customer database - especially where these departments are open to the public
- Accounts and payments office - installing an EPOS terminal in this location allows administration and accounts staff to process student payments and other transactions
Speed and Customer service at the check-out
RMS helps deliver enhanced customer service and speed at the Check-out / register. RMS Store Operations can be linked via our Add-in directly to your merchant provider to provide superfast and secure Chip and Pin transactions.
Because the card terminal is linked to our EPOS (as opposed to a stand-alone "PDQ" machine - the EPOS transaction only completes if the Chip and Pin process was successful.
In a public service organisation with many thousands of transactions potentially being processed, this "closed-loop" approach is essential to deliver consistency and reliability of information from an auditing and security perspective.
EPOS and banking transactions have a much higher chance of matching with this system as key-entry / double entry errors are avoided as is assigning the incorrect tender type.
The EPOS terminal can also act as a centre for processing customer orders, for instance for stationery that has to be placed on special order or a book that is not stocked as standard, but has to be ordered in.
The EPOS can capture the customer / student details and create a special back/work order to track the purchase, deposit and final payment.
Stock ordering and inventory control
Microsoft Dynamics Retail Management System can handle the Purchase Ordering for all retail aspects of your public sector organisation or college. Business units or stores are able to generate their own purchase orders based upon local requirements or needs can be assessed from a central location and ordered for all units and shipped to either stores or a central location - e.g. a warehouse.
The system is flexible and through our in-depth work-shopping and business flow analysis, we will suggest the best use of the software for your individual requirements.
Purchasing within Store Operations can also work alongside purchasing controls your establishment may require - e.g. centralised issue of PO numbers from an ERP system (e.g. SAP).
Back office and accounts
The epos back office software has a wide range of reports as standard that can be formatted and customised to output the information your accounts and auditing departments require, for sales, stock value and VAT analysis, we are sure to have the report that matches your requirements, that can be printed, emailed or exported to CSV to exchange data with other systems.
Departmental managers can use built-in reports to control and monitor their local business unit in terms of performance, for instance monitor staff patterns, sales and promotion performance, stock and inventory management and ordering. Commercial directors can have access to specific reports that give an overview of how the retail business part of the college or other public sector body is performing, highlighting performance, trends and profit margins.
The Store Operations back office software includes easy to use stock take software out of the box that is intuitive and easy to use. To compliment this, a mobile device can be added to perform stock taking using a bar code scanning gun.
Web integration
RMS can be integrated to an off-the-shelf e-Commerce package that has been designed to work with RMS from the ground up. Public sector organisation often starts trading on-line by using one of the following tools / methodologies:
- A readily available off-the-shelf package that is stand alone
- One they have developed in-house and possibly struggling to maintain
- One that they inherited when departments or business units were merged
- A.N. Other third party device or service
At RMS, we have partnered with NitroSell - a company based in the EU with global offices and customers in virtually every retail sector. Their software is based upon the same Microsoft Database Technology as is Dynamics RMS and the NitroSell concept was formed based upon the business rules and logic of RMS.
One key factor is that from day one, the two software platforms were made to talk to each other, so integration, connectivity and ease of use comes as standard.
We are confident to offer the NitroSell platform as an e-Commerce package serving the retail sectors of any Public sector or educational establishment, but where individual requirements dictate, we are happy to work directly with your IT department go discuss integration and collaboration.
Checklist
- Tried and tested solution with references in Public Sector and Education
- Backed by Microsoft with robust maintenance and support plans
- Tailored project scoping and work-shopping with your key staff
- Data migration from legacy systems available on request
- Project management and implementation service centred around your individual requirements
Features
- Multi-department / store / site capable
- Standard features out of the box to suit most business units
- Hospitality Add-in to automate Café and Restaurant facilities and ensuring all financials and controls reside within the one software reporting package
- Centralised database across your campus
- Customer and supplier databases
- Inventory Management, stock control and stock take
- Reporting
Follow up
If you would like to know more how RMS and the Microsoft Dynamics Retail Management System can transform your public sector retail enterprise, please contact us for further information.
We are here to understand your business, help you grow and cut costs as well as streamlining processes.
