The RNLI has approximately 175 shops around the coast of the UK & Ireland which aid fundraising efforts for the life saving work it provides. These shops are run by an army of dedicated volunteers and all profit from sales goes straight back into saving lives at sea.
Our Authorised Partner, CRS-epos has been working with the RNLI since the early 2000s and over the past couple of years has completed a full upgrade across the whole RNLI network.
Having originally been operating with two variations of cash registers, the RNLI were looking for a consolidated, consistent setup that would allow them to gather more data and manage all their sales easily.
Ease of use for the volunteer shop assistants was key to the success of any new EPoS solutions, so a number of requests to ensure the till system could be used efficiently by all members of staff were made.
“The old system was becoming obsolete, difficult to maintain and did not provide the back office information we needed.”
The CRS-epos team started by installing a customised trial TouchPoint terminal in their nearest RNLI outlet in Southwold. This gave an opportunity to gain feedback and data and the response from Volunteer Shop Manager Ian, and his team, was great.
“The new touchscreen system is much easier to use – the buttons are larger, clearly labelled and in different colours helping with identification, the most commonly used functions are on a separate screen to the less common functions.”
During the initial install, a number of further enhancements were made to TouchPoint via ETAL to meet the RNLI’s requirements. These included:
Auto sign onWhen entering sales mode the volunteer sales clerk is automatically signed on and off again when exiting sales mode. This means volunteers don’t have to worry about signing on and off manually, speeding up service and reducing confusion.
Filter ReceiptSome shops wanted to turn receipt printing off to save paper, but head office still required sales that included a donation or were over a certain value, always printed a receipt.
HelpA ‘Help’ button is on the till, when pressed it shows handy how-to videos or step-by-step instructions on how to perform a procedure. These instructions could also be printed to the receipt printer if required.
Following the initial trial, the team at the RNLI head office saw clearly the benefits of TouchPoint and its integration with TouchOffice Web. Having access to a significant amount of data, decided to roll out the new ICRTouch setup across the entire estate of shops.
CRS-epos have currently installed 115 touchscreen terminals running TouchPoint across the RNLI’s network of retail outlets. The remainder of fundraising shops are scheduled for installation early next year.
In 2022 to date, RNLI has processed over 300,000 transactions through TouchPoint and the CRS-epos team are expecting this to increase following the rollout next year.
Feedback from the RNLI team shows that, thanks to the intelligent ICRTouch software, alongside the support and expertise from CRS-epos, they are operating far more efficiently and effectively than ever.
“The new solution enables a user-friendly system for our volunteers, increases our ability to communicate with our customers and provides us with vital back office information that helps us to make more informed decisions. As time has gone on the roll out has progressed we have also found additional benefits that remove a lot of manual work such as stocktaking, inventory management, adjustments and promotions.” – Steve, Senior Retail Operations Manager, RNLI
The volunteer network finds TouchPoint far easier to use than any previous system and the new installations have made a huge difference to operations.
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