Epos System Query

[Allan123]

Hi all,

I am looking for an all-in-one solution to the various order processes which i currently undertake manually.

A brief explanation:

Ebay Sales - Notification of Payment email recieved, address and purchases are copy & pasted onto our letter headed reciept, printed, booked in via City Link, picked and packed.

Mail Order / Telephone - Manual entry onto a letter headed receipt using Word, then address and card details transferred to a seperate epos system which we use for instore sales and processed. Then again, booked via City Link, picked and packed.

Online/Website - Order notification recieved via email, and the same process as an ebay sale is carried out.

As you can see, a lot of manual entry is being done, and my day is now consisting of copy and paste, pick and pack, and i'm being tied down to just this aspect of the business.

So basically i'm looking for a system to speed up this whole process. A complete Mail Order, & Stock Inventory System. At present our website does not determine the true units of products in stock, and our epos system is also at a different value to that of the website as they are not linked together.

I would like to find a system that could possibly automate all our online sales, and as they are purchased, it literally pops out the other end of the printer ready for me to pick and pack. I also need my website powered by Oscommerce and my til powered by Fidelity Gpos intergrating together so that stock levels are accurate with regards to instore and online sales.

Could anyone give me any recommendations? I have been looking at a system called M.O.M., but thought there would be more to the system that a simple 1 disc CD ROM they seem to advertise!

Thanks all,
Allan

[FireFleur]

A CD ROM is 640MB, that is 640 million characters odd :)

say 30,000 words a novel, and a generous 12 characters a word, that is 1777 novels :)

What you want are basically scripts to automate and hook into systems, that is about 50 pages of a novel if that.

Anyway, it is fiddly work primarily because a lot of this stuff doesn't come with complete or stable APIs, so things can change.

Each main element you will have to hook into, and there are probably scripts out there that do this, but I would suspect they need to be updated and cared for, to avoid bitrot.

If M.O.M. does the job, don't let it coming on a CD ROM put you off, I am sure they haven't filled it, unless they have put a load of media on as a padding :)

[Allan123]

Ye, i understand where you coming from.

I haven;t made enquiries about £, but when something seem's too simple and easy to be true, it usualy is!

[bovine]

have you spoken to fidelity? Are you using their backoffice software, Total Stock? If you can come up with a specification, they could put in bespoke work for you (although this may be costly) They have also in the past mentioned some web developers they have worked with so between should be able to help.

Speak to the guys at Fidelity, prob Paul (there are a couple of pauls, one is sales director and the other is MD, so both should help)

[Allan123]

Cheers Bovine.

We purchased the epos system through a company called North West Business Machines, but they said at the time of purchase they personally couldn't link it to my website etc.. so going directly to Fidelity would make sense. Thanks.

[FireFleur]

Well, I would say it is complicated, you may find you are tied into one 'API' in the loosest sense, an update of one component knocks out the connectivity.

It is just fiddly at this level, ebay often change their site to hamper scrapers, and data can be input incorrectly.

I would say you get what you pay for, and you will probably find more problems than that described above, but that is computer systems for you. Most of the time is spent on balancing the systems, and making sure you have interoperability throughout, trying to do that on a shoe string without technical know how is going to be very hard.

I would look at macros in your position, get a good macro program and learn how to train that, it is a different way of approaching the problem, but at least you will be able to change it, and you can interface with anything that a human could.

If you were on Unix Xautomation is the suite, but there are things for windows, some admins tend to use them. It is not optimal in a comp science way, but it could be acceptable in a business fashion.