Call it the gift that keeps on giving.
In 2018, the Exchange completed the rollout of the new enterprise point of sale (EPOS) system, bringing the Exchange’s many lines of business together under a unified POS platform.
Now, more than two years after the system’s launch, the Exchange’s IT/omni-channel team has leveraged features to realize benefits that go far beyond the initial promise of administrative consolidation.
Take, for instance, disseminating communication messages to cashiers, a longstanding challenge given that cashiers do not have Exchange email accounts.
“I used to be a store manager, and I remember always having to print messages out and bring them over to the register,” said Lisa Comstock, chief of Point of Sale Business Systems Analysis. “Thanks to EPOS, we can now send that information directly to our cashiers at the click of a button, giving managers more time to do their jobs while reducing printing costs.”
By clicking on the EPOS dashboard, cashiers can instantly access information such as store communications, system information, special event notifications, associate surveys and even messages to the workforce from Exchange Director/CEO Tom Shull—all without ever leaving their post.
“Before, you’d have to get on a computer in the back and sign into an email account to see messages,” said Mikala Bressler, a cashier at the Fort Carson PX. “It’s not as complicated now, because it’s already laid out for you in the POS.”
A great deal of thought is put into what messages are disseminated through EPOS, Comstock said. Each proposed message is reviewed by IT leadership, routed through other directorates as needed and assessed for risk and impact.
“It’s very monitored and controlled,” Comstock said. “We take care to ensure they’re getting the most relevant information. We try to ask ourselves, ‘If you had to pick one message to send them today, what would you tell them?’”
More features are planned, such as the ability to simply press a button in EPOS to add items to a customer’s total that currently require scanning a barcode from a scan sheet. Examples of such items include hot dogs and popcorn from the shoppette, outdoor living items like paved stones and mulch, and the Exchange Protection Plan (EPP).
“We have an update coming up that will bring in all the information from the EPP brochure and place it around a button that will add the plan to the customer’s total,” Comstock said. “That way, our cashiers can speak to the benefit of the plan and add it to the sale, while removing the need to keep a big EPP binder at the register.”
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