A Bradford Council Café ‘cashes out’ with Smart Volution’s Register MPOS
Bradford Council has a busy café doing breakfasts, lunches and snacks in the town hall. Historically people could only pay for items with cash, which in this day and age has become rather antiquated. Another driver to moving to card payments was that cash handling is continuing to be more and more expensive.
Integrating With Council Systems
The council went on a search for a suitable solution which had to be easy to use, simple to implement and straightforward to update with new products when they are introduced into the café. Another key qualification issue was that the Register solution had to integrate with the Capita Account Income Management (AIM) System. Many councils utilise the Capita system and interfacing with it reduces the requirements for reconciling daily transactions processed through the Register solution.
Minimal Support Required
Yasser Mohammed from the corporate payment team said, “My involvement in the introduction of the EPOS machine was the setting up of the product to make it operational. I was given a list of products that needed to be on the application. As the tablet was using the public wireless network to communicate with the Register (hosts) server and the Capita Chip and Pin machine it needed to be on a secure network. We had to liaise with ICT to come up with a solution to enable both devices to be able to communicate with each other. Once a solution had been found I then arranged for all the products to be entered on to the system and tested that it worked according to the service requirements.”
Yasser continues, “Once testing was complete, I gave a practical demonstration to the end user as well as my manager, checked users’ understanding on how to operate the device and answered any questions the service had. Once the product had gone live I was available to help staff with any issues and helped Amanda with any reporting queries she had. The fact that since the initial period of installation there has been very little contact made by the department in terms of queries reflects positively on the thorough and effective implementation of this project.”
Amanda Wagstaff Business Manager of the café said, “The new EPOS system we have within catering is brilliant. Prior to 2018 we were using an old style till which did not give us as much information about sales or staff usage. Now we can look at sales per hour, items sold, staff sales and break down our busy periods. It also has the added advantage of linking to our card machine for transactions. We have so much control over products sold and this has made reporting so much easier. There is now no room for error. Our next step is to input stock so we can see what items need replacing. Staff picked up the till operation very quickly.”
Ben Priestley of Secure Retail who supplied the solution to Bradford Council said, “We are delighted that the council café is successfully taking card payments. The team at Smart Volution handled the provisioning of the interface with the Capita system with no problems. We are hoping other councils may see the benefits of this integrated solution.”