NEC Point of Sale Roll Out on NEC (not) imminent

[rrdude]

They have been on Amtrak-California for some time now, but the same mounting bracket, and protection H/W was seen today on # 138.

Anyone know the roll out schedule, and what S/W they are using? I think it is NCR hardware.....

 

[fairviewroad]

I must be a little dense, because I have no clue what this post is about.

 

[AmtrakBlue]

I think - Point Of Sale - using "computers" to handle sales in the cafe cars & perhaps the diner.

 

[Ryan]

You are correct.

 

[afigg]

I must be a little dense, because I have no clue what this post is about.

The pending rollout of the long awaited new Point Of Sale (POS) system for the NEC and eastern café cars. Will provide inventory and sales tracking and is expected to reduce losses on food sales.

I don't work in retail, but instead have an engineering and software background, so when I see the acronym POS, my first thought is a different meaning for POS.

 

[AmtrakBlue]

I must be a little dense, because I have no clue what this post is about.

The pending rollout of the long awaited new Point Of Sale (POS) system for the NEC and eastern café cars. Will provide inventory and sales tracking and is expected to reduce losses on food sales.
I don't work in retail, but instead have an engineering and software background, so when I see the acronym POS, my first thought is a different meaning for POS.

Piece of ?

 

[AmtrakBlue]

You are correct.

Of course I am! :giggle:

 

[Blackwolf]

I generally make small-talk with the LSA in the cafe while riding both the Capitol Corridor and San Joaquin routes, and find that the reception to the new POS systems is mixed. Sure, it makes for a great deal less work as all the paper stock cards are pretty much history now, and end-of-day tallying is done by simply pushing a button and waiting for the print-out. However, if/when the system has an issue and crashes, it can take the cafe out of service by as much as 20 minutes waiting for everything to boot back up again. And one LSA complained that one crash also lost all of his sales records and inventory data from before, meaning he had to hand-count his remaining inventory and guesstimate his sales totals. Which meant, if he was off, he was personally responsible for paying the difference out of his own paycheck.

 

[Acela150]

They are already in use on AE.

 

[Nathanael]

IIRC, funding has already allocated to roll out 'point of sale' on all cafe cars systemwide. Last I heard Amtrak did not have funding to roll out 'point of sale' on diners, and was considering doing that in 2014 if it seemed like a wise use of funds.

 

[amtrakwolverine]

The cafe cars on the wolverines have the mounts also.

 

[rrdude]

Sorry, "POS" has been my business for over thirty years, so the acronym is embedded into my brain. As many know, Amtrak has had "fits and starts" with POS systems for the last 15-20 years.

When I was working for a POS dealer in the DC area in the early 90's, I got wind of the fact they were looking, "again". (they had tried and failed with IBM in the NEC, and Amtrak California, at the time, was "doing it's thing" with POS)

Story on the NEC-IBM failure was legend in our small industry. They found IBM units strewn and smashed along the ROW, thrown off trains "at speed". I know, 'cause I saw some of these destroyed units in a storage room at DC's Ivy City comissarry, along with dozens and dozens of other POS terminals, that were just removed from service.

You have to remember, the reasons for any owner or company to install or upgrade a POS system are pretty simple:

• Reduce cosst (reduce theft, better inventory control, better reporting, less time to "do" reports..)
• Increase profit (make sure every item is sold at correct price, speed up service line)
• Improve customer service (customers are charged correct price, faster service, more trust in system)

POS systems "force" accountability. That is NOT something some LSA's wanted. They had been "gaming" the system for years.

So our dealership got wind Amtrak was looking again, well, "Intercity" was looking again. I meet with the right people, set up a demo at HQ, and blew them away. Why? I knew all the reasons that LSA's would try to reject the system. And I worked with two current LSA's/Train Managers. I had the reports coming out of the NCR system matching Amtrak's 896 report (multi-copy, hand entered, long-ass report filled out at end of every trip)

The LSA's still had to count the stock at the end of the trip, and, (this was one of our downfalls) and they had to take a floppy disc, and hand it to someone at the receiving commissary, who in turn put it into a PC.........This was before the era of EZ wireless, or USB drives.........

We also knew another major problem was theft of equipment left on board, while the trains were being serviced in either Chicago, or Sunnyside, NY.(VCR's TV's, Microwaves, Computers, coffee makers, anything that could be pried off the wall or counter, were routinely stolen)

As our project was only in the pilot stage, and not approved for all of Intercity yet, we had to devise an EZ way for LSA's to carry-on, and carry-off the the POS units. They were small, about the size of laptop, but still had to be plugged into power, and have the receipt printer attached.

We ran pilots on the Cap and LSL. All went pretty well, and Amtrak ordered about $250K worth of equipment from us. The rollout on those two trains was smooth, but then Amtrak had to take this to "open bid" to outfit the rest of Intercity. That's were politics got into the mix.

The CEO of another firm, I believe his POS product was called "Cache Box" was very experienced in the Washington and governmental procurement process, dealing with GSA RFI, RFP's, etc., etc.

Even though I was working for a major dealership, that carried both Micros POS and NCR POS (And NCR corporate staff assisted somewhat, they saw the opportunity) The principals at my dealership really didn't give the account as much attention (in the political portion of this) as they should have. In turn, the CEO at Cache Box got very involved in writing the RFP. Well, once that's done, everyone else might as well walk away. I knew we were dead.

Amtrak awarded the deal to Cache Box. I sat back and waited, knowing they would have to put out another RFP later, 'cause the product that Cache Box was installing was not a good fit in any way, shape, or form.

It did fail, miserably. Again they were pulled from the trains, and stored next to the IBM hardware.........More money down the drain.....

The VBU's were broken up, and "Amtrak Intercity" was no more. End of POS project. (Vertical Business Units)

They went back to the carry-out boxes being used as the "POS". What a shame. What a waste.

Amtrak did install cheap "banger" cash registers in a lot of the Cafe Cars, bolted down, to avoid theft. And that is better than nothing.......

I sincerely hope the new POS systems work, to bring more accountability to the system. Employees who *****-and-moan about them, well, that raises my "trust/theft radar" REAL QUICK. Sure, the CC swipe may take longer, due to Cell or WiFi, but that problem will fix itself over time. Most people just don't like change, of any kind. So it's natural to resist new technology, even if it will actually help you do your job better and faster.

We always say in our business, "Go back 6 months after it's installed, and tell them you are gonna take their POS system away from them....watch them raise holy hell then.........."

At least that's my version of Amtrak's POS history. What say you?

 

[Ryan]

Great story, thanks for sharing. Wife used to work for Micros here in Columbia - what a bunch of @$#holes.

 

[Guest]

I don't work in retail, but instead have an engineering and software background, so when I see the acronym POS, my first thought is a different meaning for POS.

That was my first thought too.

Where I use to work, we had a Problem Management System, or PMS.

 

[TVRM610]

Awesome story RRdude. I've worked in both types of retail environments and honestly I feel like POS and Inventory control is largely over rated unless there is a huge amount of sales (think Walmart). Also... If there is an issue at a Walmart with the pos, the cashier simply has to call for a manager and let them deal with it, on a moving train the LSA has to deal with the problem themself and figure out if they should wait till the system reboots and not serve anyone (bad Customer service), or Take the cash and try to keep track of sales and risk getting the money wrong and being disciplined. Those aren't good choices to have to make and frankly it shouldn't be the responsibility of the LSA.

I'm not sure what the perfect solution is... But it seems to me the current manual inventory does a pretty good job of kreping employees honest. Is the amount of possible theft really greater than the cost of purchasing and maintaining these POS systems?

On the other hand, Amtrak did a pretty amazingly smooth transition to e-ticketing and certainly the Conductors seem to be happy with the "new" method of collecting tickets.

 

[Acela150]

what a bunch of @$#holes.

Is that the polite version?? :giggle:

 

[Ryan]

Oh, that's the exceedingly polite "I'd say that around my grandmother" version.

The kind of crap that management pulled there is really worthy of a profanity laden rant that would make George Carlin blush.

 

[Acela150]

I should add that these POS mounts have been being installed for quite some time. I think the first one I saw was in the beginning of the year.

 

[PaulM]

... And one LSA complained that one crash also lost all of his sales records and inventory data from before, meaning he had to hand-count his remaining inventory and guesstimate his sales totals. Which meant, if he was off, he was personally responsible for paying the difference out of his own paycheck.

Sorry, but this sounds like an urban legend. What business would hold a salesman responsible for software crashes, especially during what must be a roll out period? If it is true, then that explains why customer service is not job one.

Not only that, but he would have to write down each sale to protect himself, thus defeating the purpose of the system.

Note: I wrote this before reading rrdude's post. His take on it rings true because I noticed the same thing when companies tried to introduce computerized production and inventory control back in the 80's.

 

[PaulM]

Awesome story RRdude. I've worked in both types of retail environments and honestly I feel like POS and Inventory control is largely over rated unless there is a huge amount of sales (think Walmart).

I've been out of it for a long time, but is this a generally held view in 2013? When I think of POS, I think of faster and more accurate check out, more accurate inventory control, and mountains of sales data for the marketing folks. It's my understanding that the later, especially when it is combined with schemes to collect personal data, that results in the biggest pay off.

Possibly wrongly so, I never thought of theft prevention as the main driver.

 

[TVRM610]

Awesome story RRdude. I've worked in both types of retail environments and honestly I feel like POS and Inventory control is largely over rated unless there is a huge amount of sales (think Walmart).

I've been out of it for a long time, but is this a generally held view in 2013? When I think of POS, I think of faster and more accurate check out, more accurate inventory control, and mountains of sales data for the marketing folks. It's my understanding that the later, especially when it is combined with schemes to collect personal data, that results in the biggest pay off.

Possibly wrongly so, I never thought of theft prevention as the main driver.

Oh I'm pretty sure this is not a generally held view in 2013.. unless you are Hobby Lobby. But I've worked in both environments (POS and non) and I've seen the head aches that can happen with POS systems, especially in smaller environments. I don't see that many benefits for Amtrak to adopt such a system. These things aren't cheap.

 

[afigg]

Oh I'm pretty sure this is not a generally held view in 2013.. unless you are Hobby Lobby. But I've worked in both environments (POS and non) and I've seen the head aches that can happen with POS systems, especially in smaller environments. I don't see that many benefits for Amtrak to adopt such a system. These things aren't cheap.

The Point of Sale terminal hardware with touch-screens, scanner, computer should not that expensive these days. Prices of computer equipment, displays have dropped by a lot over the years. The Amtrak FY2013 budget has $9 million for the POS/EATEC upgrade for onboard systems. Not that expensive a project.
Amtrak runs some 300 trains a day across the US. They are not a independent store, but in this case, more like a (moving) restaurant and food chain with over several hundred outlets. They should have deployed POS systems years ago, but poor management, a workforce with many set in their ways, too tight budgets, and waiting for the communications technology to get more reliable held POS off. Once the POS terminals are fully deployed, Amtrak should be able to reduce food and beverage losses, which may eventually get Congress out of the habit of micro-managing Amtrak's food sales.

 

[OBS]

Awesome story RRdude. I've worked in both types of retail environments and honestly I feel like POS and Inventory control is largely over rated unless there is a huge amount of sales (think Walmart).

I've been out of it for a long time, but is this a generally held view in 2013? When I think of POS, I think of faster and more accurate check out, more accurate inventory control, and mountains of sales data for the marketing folks. It's my understanding that the later, especially when it is combined with schemes to collect personal data, that results in the biggest pay off.

Possibly wrongly so, I never thought of theft prevention as the main driver.

Oh I'm pretty sure this is not a generally held view in 2013.. unless you are Hobby Lobby. But I've worked in both environments (POS and non) and I've seen the head aches that can happen with POS systems, especially in smaller environments. I don't see that many benefits for Amtrak to adopt such a system. These things aren't cheap.

You can also factor in the labor cost savings of not paying the LSA an extra 1-2 hours at end of each trip to calculate/process paperwork. It has some wonderful features, including not having to deal with paying shortages due to errors with paperwork, as everything is accurately done by computer.

 

[OBS]

... And one LSA complained that one crash also lost all of his sales records and inventory data from before, meaning he had to hand-count his remaining inventory and guesstimate his sales totals. Which meant, if he was off, he was personally responsible for paying the difference out of his own paycheck.

Sorry, but this sounds like an urban legend. What business would hold a salesman responsible for software crashes, especially during what must be a roll out period? If it is true, then that explains why customer service is not job one.

Not only that, but he would have to write down each sale to protect himself, thus defeating the purpose of the system.

Note: I wrote this before reading rrdude's post. His take on it rings true because I noticed the same thing when companies tried to introduce computerized production and inventory control back in the 80's.

Actually, the LSA is pretty accurate with the issues WHEN things go wrong, it is PITA. Especially when you have line of people, the POS quits working, you call Amtrak help desk to rectify problem and get phone message to leave name and number and someone will call you back WITHIN 24HOURS!

 

[OBS]

IIRC, funding has already allocated to roll out 'point of sale' on all cafe cars systemwide. Last I heard Amtrak did not have funding to roll out 'point of sale' on diners, and was considering doing that in 2014 if it seemed like a wise use of funds.

The last "deadline" I saw on paper was that the POS would be on all NEC regional trains by FEB. 2013. I guess that was a little too optimistic...