The name behind many of northwest Tasmania’s hotels, motels, bottleshops and entertainment venues, the Goodstone Group has, over the past 15 years, expanded from a single hotel to 14 venues. With plans to continue growing the business, Goodstone has put in place a high performance POS infrastructure featuring Toshiba TEC WILLPOS A20 terminals.

Challenge: Support business growth and customer loyalty

As Goodstone grew with each acquisition, so too did the complexity of managing stock, retaining customer loyalty and financial control. According to Goodstone Group Financial Controller Mathew Cock, a mix of POS systems that resulted from new venues joining the group made it increasingly difficult to consolidate financial and stock data. “It really came down to the point where before we could expand the business much further,” he says, “we needed to put in place a POS infrastructure that was reliable, efficient and, importantly, versatile enough to support new business initiatives.”

Solution: Toshiba TEC

In consultation with its IT services and support provider, Goodstone opted for a high profile POS software system. From that point, it became a discussion on the best possible hardware platform; and Mathew says: “The software we chose has an enormous range of features and functionality, and we knew that it needed POS terminal hardware that could support that at every level. When our IT services and support provider and the software’s developer put forward the WILLPOS A20 as the best possible platform, we immediately took one on board for a two month trial.”

Well before the two month trial was completed, the results were in and the decision made to rollout 30 WILLPOS A20 terminals to every bottleshop and bistro in the Group.

A versatile hardware platform

With the WILLPOS A20’s range of options and peripheral connection ports, Goodstone is taking great advantage of the extensive business and operational efficiencies they represent. Among the first of those was a number of customer loyalty programs, which assist in achieving one of any business’s most important goals – customer retention. 

“We have a number of customer loyalty programs in which all members are given cards that are read at the point of sale by the POS terminal’s magnetic swipe card reader,” Mathew explains. “The POS software then registers the member’s details and automatically updates the back-office database.”

The ease with which the various loyalty programs can now be managed using the WILLPOS A20 and software combination has given the company the confidence to move forward with additional loyalty incentives. Those include a Venue Jackpot Loyalty Program where members swipe membership cards and are automatically in the running for a weekly jackpot prize.

“Having the technology that enables us to introduce such programs is increasingly important to our business,” Mathew states. “It’s a highly competitive environment and we now have a solution that puts us well and truly among the leaders.”

Another WILLPOS A20 add-on benefit is an RFID (Radio Frequency Identification) reader, which automatically associates each POS transaction with a member of staff. According to Mathew, this functionality plays an important role in monitoring stock control and identifying staff members who may require additional training and support.

Straightforward and timely support

With 14 venues located across northwest Tasmania, the issue of technical support is an important one for Goodstone; and the WILLPOS A20s have provided an environment in which POS terminal and software technical support can be provided in little more than a couple of minutes.

Goodstone’s IT support account manager comments: “Because Goodstone’s WILLPOS A20s are running a Windows operating system, we’re able to log on remotely to consoles and deal with the vast majority of support issues before they can impact on the venue’s operations.”

That same speed of access also plays a part in providing remote system updates to all of the terminals. Where it used to be the case that pushing out terminal updates to reflect price changes, specials and key mappings would take 25 minutes per register, it now takes barely 30 seconds.

“Now,” Mathew says, “we no longer have to hold off updating systems because they’ll be off-line for nearly half-an-hour. When we need to get updates pushed out to any or all terminals, we can do so without hesitation.”

Promotion and advertising

Taking advantage of the WILLPOS A20’s dual screen capabilities, Goodstone was quick to introduce a range of promotional and advertising initiatives. In commenting on the ease with which new promotions and advertisements can be prepared and put on display, Mathew says: “All we need is an image file, which can also be a PDF, and then remotely send that through to the terminals we want to be displaying the information.”

This has proven to be quite valuable in cross-promoting between venues. When a high profile band, for example, plays at Goodstone’s nightclub, the customer facing displays are used to promote the event across all other venues. Similarly, by promoting the fact that all Goodstone bistros are offering the same great bistro deal for customers, the company is helping ensure customers stay within the Goodstone family of venues.

The company is also looking to utilise the advertising capabilities of the WILLPOS A20 to actually turn an extra profit by selling advertising space to certain key suppliers.  

“There’s no doubt that introducing the Toshiba TEC terminals and POS software is one of the most important business decisions we have made in quite some time,” Mathew states. “We regard the solution as one that has opened the doors we need to have opened in order to grow our business even further.”

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