Qdos has been working with the team at St Vincent de Paul NSW to digitally transform and empower their retail business through intuitive POS software.
After learning about the challenges faced by the NFP retailer, Qdos put together a plan to assist Vinnies in the transformation of their retail experience for their volunteers and customers.
Read below to learn how Qdos partnered with Vinnies to implement a state-of-the-art NFP POS system that is intuitive, easy to use and allows volunteers/staff to generate reports on demand.
Vinnies NSW was exploring the market for a suitable technology partner for the future to digitally transform and empower their retail business, as the contract with the previous vendor was expiring. The RFI process was delayed, in part due to the Covid pandemic and no decisions were made.
Something that was inherently lacking in the previous POS system software was either no reporting for certain sections of the operation, or very little reporting. Configuring the features of the POS system was also extremely time consuming.
St Vincent De Paul NSW revisited the following requirements:
Currently, St Vinnies are using the QDOS POS system and it has proven to be popular with our teams across the state. We’ve also taken advantage of the QDOS Reporting Suite, which fulfills our reporting needs. The QDOS Inventory Management and Back Office have also become integral parts of our operations.
In the future, St Vincent De Paul plans to implement gift cards and we’re also looking at adding mobile app reporting as well. Another thing we’re keen to implement is the utilisation of automated emailing and alerts for flexibility of how our information is delivered.
At the moment, St Vincent De Paul needs to address the issue of banking discrepancies. We understand that QDOS offers certain alerting and reports which allows real time reporting to the area manager when a store declares a variance.
The most important thing QDOS systems have provided is easy of use, something that all of our staff members are very happy with. Reporting and visualisation features are also vastly improved compared to the system we were using before. The CDS Module and GL Integration and Auto Payments (ABA file) integration have also been added and proven to be extremely useful in the daily operations of St Vinnies.
All in all, 249 endpoints have been implemented in our stores in less than six months during the Covid pandemic, which is very impressive.
The ability to be able to pull reports quickly and access that data as needed is certainly a huge improvement for us and our processes. Due to having the business intelligence reporting suite, we are able to make much faster decisions than before. The reports are very well presented with great visualisations of the data.
The QDOS suite of features is intuitive and really fits our purpose. There are no redundant features. Many not-for-profit operations use commercial POS and reporting systems, which ultimately prove to be far too complex for their needs.
There are a lot of positive reviews for QDOS out there. The company offers excellent support and the applications are very easy to use, along with being very stable and with no issues. QDOS is also quite flexible and responsive when it comes to the development of ideas proposed by St Vinnies.
Another very important thing to note is that the pricing is very reasonable.
The reporting suite that’s available can be tailored to the needs of St Vinnies and the speed and ease of accessing back end reports are exceptional. Reports are available in a variety of formats, such as PDF and Excel files.
With the database constantly updating, we can see transactions change in real time. This is beneficial to Head Office. As in, they can see a dip in sales in a particular store and determine if it’s due to a staffing issue and therefore allocate more staff.
Real time reporting means that information is updated and viewed all the time. It used to only be weekly with the old software.
St Vinnies has a high volunteer base and we need to cater to varying needs. Outside of the metro stores, all other stores are entirely volunteer-led, mostly by older people. Therefore, the software needs to be simple to use with support that’s readily available.
Our stores don’t use barcoding with inventory which makes POS more complex in that regard. We have the need to be able to categorise and map inventory with so many different individual items. This is done by category sales in sub-departments, such as Womens, Homewares etc. Price guidelines are used by staff to determine the price depending on the brand and the quality of the item.
A complex inventory management system simply isn’t required by a store that’s selling second hand merchandise. It’s just far too complex for a team of not-for-profit workers to cope with and is unnecessary.
Paul Maskew | Retail & Logistics Project & Operations Manager.