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RTC Completes First Phase of Ecommerce Reserve Initiative as TSC Stores Canada Continues Omni Channel Transformation

Tractor Supply (TSC Stores), a Canadian owned and operated retailer with 49 corporate stores, engages RTC to implement a Reserve management facility within their JDA MMS merchandising system. “Store Reserve” allows a store to receive ecommerce product(s) and upon receipt, the inventory will be put into a separate “bucket” called Store Reserve so that these quantities will be omitted from the rest of the available store inventory. Any product that is in Store Reserve will not be included in replenishment for the store and is the first phase towards available inventory accuracy that can be published on the corporate website. Read More

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Thoughts from the President! RTC Off to Blistering Pace for the First Half of 2015, as We Continue to Add Mid-Tier Retailers to Our MMS & Store Systems Portfolio

Halfway through 2015, and RTC has seen its busiest year since before the economic downturn.  We have signed several new Store Systems & POS deals and entered into three significant agreements to take on MMS operations, software development & maintenance, as we continue to grow our customer base in supporting JDA® MMS® retailers.  Our consulting and ASP Hosting Partnerships continues to expand, so we have had to bring on additional MMS consultants to meet the growing demands as retailers look to increase inventory visibility to accommodate their Omni Channel plans.

Retailers continue to see value in our MMSxTend Solutions, especially our – Warehouse Optimization RF, Replenishment and Allocation modules.  Furthermore, RTC is once again at the forefront of the “Mobile Revolution” with our StoreMobile Inventory applications providing retailers the real time functionality they need to fulfill in today’s retail environment.

 

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Planet Hollywood Retail Store Systems take Center Stage as RTC’s StoreMS POS and StoreMobile Inventory Replace Aging Micros POS System Chain-Wide

Working with a 20 year old Micros POS system that was never meant to run a retail operation, Planet Hollywood was faced with a tough choice given they had already committed to replacing Micros with Aloha’s Restaurant POS software on the restaurant side of the operation.  For many years Planet Hollywood has had limitations regarding its retail POS and inventory management systems capabilities.  These limitations have been felt from the store operation to the warehouse and throughout their merchandising and accounting systems alike.  Given the prospects of more the same with the Aloha Restaurant POS system, Planet Hollywood turned to its long time JDA® MMS® ASP partner, RTC, to finally solve this problem.

RTC was given the chance to prove what it could do by installing its StoreMS POS, StoreMS Mobile POS and StoreMobile Inventory MMSxTend application in the Planet Hollywood Disney Hollywood Studios store back in January of this year.  With RTC’s suite of store systems up and running, the Planet Hollywood Disney store now has complete control of its retail operation including real time visibility of all retail inventory regardless of the location it resides in including the warehouse,  “on order” and “in transit” inventory.  In addition, inventory can be viewed on any PC, phone or mobile device logged onto the Planet Hollywood network both in the store, at the corporate office or from a mobile device in any physical location!!

Store personnel productivity and inventory control problems are resolved and rolling out the RTC solutions are all that remain.  Planet Hollywood is committed to rolling out RTC’s StoreMS POS suite and StoreMobile’s applications in all its retail locations.  The first phase of the upgrade began with the two Orlando Florida locations and will extend to the remaining stores.

Rich Olgee,  Vice President Corporate Controller at Planet Hollywood  Int.  says, “we are very excited to continue our long standing partnership with RTC. Their complete suite of store systems is the answer to Planet Hollywood making our retail operations more efficient in regards to inventory management, customer experience, employee performance and overall reporting needed to manage our retail business. We look forward to the complete roll-out to all of our locations in the near future.”

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RTC Completes 360º Nickelodeon European Store, Warehouse & MMS Install – in Just 4 Months

RTC was recently selected by Entertainment Retail Enterprises (ERE) as their Store Systems and JDA® MMS® partner for the launch of their new flagship store under the Nickelodeon brand.  Up front, ERE executives laid out an aggressive 4 month plan to open the first European store in Leicester Square London, one of the busiest foot traffic areas in the world.  The project included a full scaled 360º front to back implementation of JDA®’s MMS® System and a full Store Systems deployment including StoreMS POS (with mobile) and StoreMobile MMSxTend for complete store visibility to inventory.  In addition, RTC would integrate MMS to a 3rd party warehouse in the UK and install their MMSxTend Warehouse Optimization module.

To further complicate and strain the timeline, a completely new credit /debit certification was required to certify StoreMS-POS on the new Verifone EMV Chip & Pin platform.  Typical new store installations take a minimum of six months, when you add the complication of this being an international location and implementing JDA®’s MMS® with a third party warehouse from the ground up and the timeline could easily have stretched to 7 or 8 months.  In the end, RTC was able to leverage our store systems expertise and JDA® MMS® consulting services group to overcome a significant number of challenges and still meet the expectations of the client and get the entire retail operation up and going in just 4 months!!

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TSC Stores Canada Signs Mega Deal to Outsource the Bulk of Their IT Shop to RTC and Replace WinDSS POS Chainwide

TSC Stores, a Canadian owned and operated retailer with 52 corporate stores, recently signed a “mega deal” to have RTC outsource the bulk of its IT operation.  This all-encompassing deal includes RTC taking over responsibility for all MMS operations (ASP), software maintenance and development and further leverage RTC’s suite of MMSxTend applications.  While TSC has already leveraged several of RTC’s MMSxTend applications including StoreMobile and Warehouse Optimization over the years, TSC is considering adding RTC’s Advanced Replenishment & Allocation modules, in the near future.  With the Corporate retail systems operation now in the hands of RTC with the management and guidance of Susan Ross, Director of IT for TSC Stores, TSC then turned its attention to its biggest remaining IT headache, which is their legacy WinDSS POS store system.  Susan and the TSC Executive Management team was not shy in turning to RTC to solve this problem as well.

Given JDA® “sunsetted” WinDSS POS several years ago, TSC has continued to fall behind in the industry with regard to the limitations of its legacy store systems capabilities.  The result of these technical limitations prevents TSC from making simple POS changes needed on an ongoing basis and enhancing the POS system with advanced features such as Mobile POS and Inventory Management from one device.  These systemic restrictions continue to inhibit TSC’s retail store operation from making technological advancements that are proven to increase its customer service levels given the state of store systems technology available today and had to be overcome.  TSC turned to RTC to implement its StoreMS POS and StoreMS Mobile store systems knowing that its store systems suite of applications has a reputation of being fast, easy to use, easy to modify and supports mobile POS within its core POS application.

“In my time working with RTC, we have found them to be a strong strategic business partner and consider the RTC team an extension of our own. We are looking forward to rolling out the new StoreMS POS and continuing to build our relationship with RTC”, says Susan Ross,  Director, IT & Capability Building at TSC Stores.

With the first pilot store scheduled in late August, TSC is looking forward to overcoming the current systemic limitations and gaining a technological advantage within its store operation.  TSC has noted the ease and efficiency of using StoreMS POS, its advanced Sequel database design, as well as the integrated mobility built right into StoreMS POS making it agnostic to typical POS hardware as well as a wide variety of mobile devices.  The expected net result is an increase in customer services and satisfaction.  Look to our next newsletter toward the end of the year to highlight the results of our StoreMS POS implementation within TSC Stores as the rollout begins in September.

“As a long-time customer of RTC, TSC Stores is one of the few customers that we have actually worked closely with in building two of our core MMSxTend applications, so we have intimate knowledge of their operation over a long period of time.  That was a critical factor in stepping in and providing the level of outsourcing from MMS to store systems at TSC that we are now responsible for.  I am very confident that this partnership will not only stand the test of time, but will ultimately provide TSC with a competitive advantage”, says Bruce Hicks, RTC President & CEO.

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RTC Guides Variety Wholesalers from Proprietary ACI Switch to “Black Box” Payment Processing

In 2014, Variety Wholesalers (VW), a privately held company located in Henderson, NC with more than 355 retail stores, was faced with a sunsetting switch from ACI leaving VW with more PCI headaches and few options.  As a longtime RTC customer, VW approached RTC for assistance and guidance in developing a strategic plan to transition off their proprietary ACI payment card switch and onto a processing platform that significantly reduces its PCI liability exposure.

RTC’s Store Systems Division, led by Duane McGlamery (VP Store Systems), quickly stepped in to provide “industry best practices” guidance on behalf of VW that not only eliminates the ACI switch, but allows VW to “Black Box” their entire payment card process and virtually take it out of PCI scope.  Furthermore, the plan puts VW ahead of the field with EMV Chip & Pin, which is the future of credit in the US.

First project steps were to engage several PCI vendor industry leaders for partnership consideration including CenPOS, Eigen Development, Ingenico and Verifone.  After careful consideration, VW selected Eigen Development as the solution partner running their software on the Verifone MX915 customer facing pin-pad.

With Eigen Development and RTC as the technology partners for this project, the project objective was defined to move all current payment card processing off the ACI switch and onto the Eigen platform by the end of August and ensure all transactions are encrypted at the point of swipe.  Once the pilot proves to be successful, VW plans an aggressive roll-out schedule with completion slated for 2Q16.

“While most retailers have taken a wait and see approach to EMV, Variety was able to leverage RTC’s expertise and guidance to dive into the EMV pool and prepare for EMV today.  They are a leader in the mid-tier retailer space and join the list of mostly Tier 1 retailers including Home Depot & Target, who are ready for EMV,” said Duane McGlamery.

“With this latest EMV project involving Eigen and Verifone, RTC has again shown a sense of urgency to make sure that the project remains on schedule, and that published target dates are met. RTC continues to be an excellent partner in our company’s advancing to the latest technology and processes in the support of all of our stores”, says Gary Boxler, Director of Information Systems Support Services for VW.

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Update on RTC/StoreMobile Tablet Gun

As many of you know, RTC/StoreMobile Solutions has embarked on a long engineering journey to build a very unique mobile device we named the Tablet Gun.  In 2013, we piloted our first prototype in a Margaritaville store located in Myrtle Beach and that test went very well.  This year we took our second prototype and installed it in the Planet Hollywood store located in the Disney Hollywood Studios Theme Park in Orlando, Florida.  While the overall concept and operation of our Tablet Gun went very well within the Planet Hollywood store operation, it became very clear to us that the Tablet Gun running exclusively on Android was a problem.  The fact is our StoreMS POS server is a Windows based product and given any store “network down” situation, the Tablet Gun running Android is also completely down with no business logic redundancy built in.

After months of pilot store experience, it became obvious to us all that we had to go back to the “engineering well” and choose a different processor and chip set that ultimately supported Windows as well as Android.  We are now several months into that reengineering process and expect to have it completed in 4Q15.  We will look to our customers who are interested in using the Tablet Gun in their store operation to again pilot the device and run it through its paces.  I know this is a setback from our original plan and it has inconvenienced several of our close customers; however, I strongly believe it is better to “get it right” during the testing phases then close up the R&D process, than feel the pain of our Tablet Gun’s shortcomings in a production phase.  As a longtime customer satisfaction leader and one in business for 26 years in the retail technology sector, I could not accept our Tablet Gun falling short of our highest standards or that of our customers.  We believe we are now on the right track and we will see it through.  Thank you in advance for all your patience.

Bruce Hicks
President, RTC & StoreMobile Solutions

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EMV will soon be here. Are you ready? Contact RTC to learn more today!

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The industry is abuzz with talk about EMV, Chip & Pin and EMV enabled payment infrastructures.  Learn the facts about the promises of EMV including reduced card payment fraud and encryption and tokenization as well as the shift in liability.  At RTC, we recognize that retailers are struggling to understand the impacts chip cards can have on an organization.  In the absence of government mandates and guidelines on how to adopt smart cards standards, we have launched an initiative to help our customers navigate the EMV waters.

Learn the Facts…
EMV is a technical standard that ensures chip-based payment cards (also known as smart cards) and terminals, are compatible around the world. A chip-based payment transaction occurs when a microprocessor embedded in a plastic card or mobile phone connects to an EMV-enabled POS terminal (either contact or contactless) in order to execute a payment.

The smart card technology provides an additional form of card authentication for the transaction—validating the legitimacy of the payment type being used and helping reduce the use of counterfeit, lost and stolen payment cards at ATMs and retail points of sale.

Call today to learn more 800-993-3944!

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RTC’s Rankings Continue to Soar in RIS Software Leaderboard

Retail Information Systems (RIS) News released its annual Retail Software LeaderBoard in December, and RTC was once again well represented.   RTC’s Store System Suite of Products and MMSxTend Solutions ranked #1 in Three categories including Quality of Support, Quality of Service and Leaders in recommendations.  Furthermore, RTC ranked in the top 5 in all 27 categories among a group of 99 other retail software vendors.  RTC finished #2 in seven categories including Leaders in Customer Satisfaction, Leaders in Return on Investment, Leaders in Software Reliability, Leaders in Quality of Service, Leaders in Quality of Support, Apparel Vendor Leaders in Customer Satisfaction and Targeted Solution Vendors Leaders in Customer Satisfaction.

The RIS Retail Software LeaderBoard, commonly referred to as the “Oscars of retail technology,” ranks an ever-changing field of retail software vendors based on three main criteria: customer satisfaction, revenue, and retail concentration. The survey also ranks vendors in 40 breakout categories. LeaderBoard results are based on retailer surveys and vendor forms.

“RTC consistently provides excellent support and always maintains a sense of urgency in responding to any issue  or problems.  They are a true “partner” in participating in discussions and recommending cost-effective business solutions,” says Joe Skorupa, editorial director of RIS News.

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Data Center Update: RTC Replaces Legacy IBM iSeries Power 5’s with an IBM iSeries Power 8

RTC announces a significant investment in our ASP & Hosting Hardware infrastructure.  We are installing a new IBM Power 8 iSeries in our Time Warner Data Center.  The new system will more than doubled our DASD and more than quadrupled our memory.  With the new Power 8 technology and bigger hardware components, we are expecting our clients to see a noticeable improvement when using the JDA® MMS® system.  This new box will provide the speed, dependability and scalability that will allow RTC to continue to provide excellent service and up time to our current and future ASP and hosting clients.

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RTC Launches New Solution Zone to Showcase Latest Point of Sale software and Mobile Technology

Located in our Orlando headquarters, this New Solution Zone is dedicated to showcasing RTC’s StoreMS POS and StoreMobile applications on the latest available technology including Tablets and Handheld devices.   This area simulates an actual retail check-out lane complete with items and shelving.  Visiting retailers can experience, test and interact, in real time, with StoreMS POS and StoreMobile on the latest Point-of-Sale registers, Windows, Android and IOS tablets and iPod Sleds.

At RTC, our solutions are all agnostic to hardware, however, we have elected to demonstrate proven technology that our customers have selected and rolled out in their stores.  Hardware solutions include, the Tablet Gun from RTC, Toshiba (Formerly IBM), NCR, Epson, Honeywell, Verifone, Zebra HP, POSX and AD Tech 10” Tablet.

If you are looking to upgrade your POS hardware or you are planning a visit to Orlando and just want to come by the office and experience the “store of the future”, please give us a call and schedule your visit.

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People Spotlight: RTC Expands MMS Consulting Group and Hires Two New Seasoned Consultants

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Sr. Technical Consultant Angela Kearsley comes to RTC from JDA® where she worked for 12 years as a Sr. Technical Analyst.  Angela performed customer support for JDA®’s MMS®, Retail IDEAS and JDA® Integrator software products.   Angela worked in the support division there and was the liaison to India when JDA® moved all the cloud support off shore.

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Sr. Technical Consultant Stephen Piland is a highly skilled and seasoned resource for JDA® MMS.   Stephen’s skills are vast in nature, covering the full suite of JDA® products on multiple platforms.