February 2010

Neotechnology Business Systems would like to extend a warm welcome to all current customers and contacts into the New Year. As always, Neotechnology is a hive of activity as we endeavour to expand NBS Support Services in Tasmania and Amicus POS nationally. Already in 2010 Amicus POS has become officially compatible with Microsoft 7.

We are continuing our relationship with IBM, recently signing a new reseller agreement, adding them to our already strong list of hardware suppliers including Hewlett-Packard, Senor and Toshiba Tec. This allows Neotechnology to tailor software and hardware solutions that fit your business and your budget. IBM is a top tier POS hardware provider, offering durable and reliable POS systems and peripherals.

After the success of last year, Neotechnology will once again be attending CeBIT, an ICT industry trade fair in Sydney on the 24th to the 26th of May. Stay tuned for more information.

And finally, Neotechnology will be releasing the new version of Amicus POS within the next four weeks.

Keep on top of all the latest development news and product improvements by taking a look at our employee blogs..

A trip to a crowded retail store is bound to affect your mood one way or another, but have you ever considered what subconscious affects a crowded shopping environment may have on your customers? One group of researchers tested the affect of a crowded shopping environment on buyer behaviour in a variety of real-world and controlled environments with interesting results.

The first experiment consisted of researchers constructing “wide” and “narrow” shopping aisles and observing customers chocolate selections at the end of each aisle as a reward for completing a questionnaire. The results revealed that those customers who felt the most confined in the narrow aisles had the largest variability in their chocolate selection.

The researchers then expanded this experiment into the real world, observing customer purchase decisions in a number of supermarkets for several months. The results were similar. The more crowded a supermarket the greater the customers’ variety-seeking grocery purchases. In all the experiments confined customers reacted to the invasion of personal space by making more varied and unique purchases. When feeling cramped customers sought more variety.

How does this affect your retail store? In less crowded stores shop-owners should be less focused on offering a wide variety of products, whereas crowded stores should focus on offering a large variety of products. Furthermore, companies wishing to promote lesser known brands or new products should distribute them through more crowded stores or stores with narrow aisles.

It may be worth taking a walk around your store and depending on your latest product push you may need to alter the position of your aisles.

It seems economists are in agreement that the Australian economy is again growing, with the majority of predictions believing GDP growth to be between 2.5 and 3.3 % for 2010. The recovering economy may not be beneficial to everybody! Some business owners may breathe out a long sigh of relief only to find that they have lost a significant proportion of their market share, while successful owners and managers have experienced growth greatly disproportionate to the growth of their industries. The difference between the two managers will be tactical steps taken now at the beginning of the recovery.

The first strategy to capitalising on the economic recovery is to focus on your businesses core markets and customers before peripheral markets and customers. By focusing on core markets and customers, the most profitable customers and markets, it ensures that customer loyalty and satisfaction is maintained. Inventories and service capacities are low in many industries causing some competitors to be unable to service their customers, severely damaging their customer loyalty.

By meeting your core markets needs your business will have an opportunity to capture these unfulfilled customers and therefore earning a greater share of the market. If your cash levels are too low to keep your inventory at appropriate levels you may need to narrow the focus of your core market and customers.

Another way to capture a larger share of the growing market is by getting creative. Innovation makes your organisation money and as the economy recovers there is no better time to find new ways to differentiate your products or services to capture the growing market. Talk to your customers even if they are not currently purchasing anything from you. As the economy recovers so will your customers and by maintaining a relationship with them until they are in a position to purchase again you will be their first purchase preference.

The final strategy for capitalising on the economic recovery is to invest in people. The human resource pool is currently over flowing with skilled and unskilled workers, so now is the time to select the employees to take your organisation forward. It may even be prudent to do an audit of your current human resources and to replace any weak links. Hire skilled workers now as many are still unemployed. It is tempting to contract the employee at a lower salary than normal; however this could lead to employee dissatisfaction down the track as employee salaries increase. When hiring lower skilled workers, look at hiring employees you want working for your business in five years. You can afford to be selective now, in five years time you may not have that luxury.

Are you currently an Amicus POS user? Have you been raving to other businesses about how good the system is for your business?

Well how about turning this into some money for you!!

If you refer a business to us, hospitality, retail, supermarkets or fuel, and this turns into a sale you will receive a percentage of the software licence sales. We are there to provide any support you need to refer Amicus POS to your business colleagues, be it promotional material, assistance answering technical questions or general sales advice.

Contact us for the full details of the Amicus POS referral program