Payless Shoes lifts its sales with improved EFTPOS system

Australian retailer, Payless Shoes, has seen a lift in sales following the implementation of a network-based EFTPOS system provided by Primus Telecom.

The $1 million three-year agreement was signed in June 2011 and included a Primus Private IP Network (PIPN) and Accella hosted IP phone system across the company’s 232 stores as well as its Sydney head office.

The PIPN is designed to integrate voice, data and video traffic, together with EFTPOS transactions on a single data platform.

Payless Shoes IT manger, Kerry Smith, said that it decided to work with Primus Telecom for two reasons — cost savings and infrastructure improvements.

According to Smith, its previous supplier could not meet the pricing that Primus offered. “We were losing sales when the EFTPOS system went down. While we had a failover to a dial up connection, this was not working,” he said.

“We’ve now seen an improvement in sales and a decrease in complaints from store personnel about losing customers due to the lack of EFTPOS.”

In addition, the retailer needed to transfer sales and product information between its stores and head office once a day. “Around 10 per cent of our stores were unable to submit data but we’re now down to one per cent,” Smith said.

The implementation of hosted IP was needed due to a legacy PABX system which could no longer be repaired. “All calls between our stores and head office were an extra cost but now we have Accella that has led to a cost reduction,” he said.

Another benefit was staff members were more inclined to call into head office and get help. In the past, Smith said they would battle along on their own without help from head office.

In an effort to get the shoe buying public shopping locally, the retailer recently upgraded its online store and plans to create a mobile friendly website.

Smith added that it was looking to develop an app for iOS and Android powered smartphones within the next 18 months.

While the company is active on Facebook, it doesn’t have a Twitter account as yet. However, he said Payless Shoes was looking to employ someone to look after e-commerce and social networking.

Follow Hamish Barwick on Twitter: @HamishBarwick

Follow Computerworld Australia on Twitter: @ComputerworldAU

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