Epson revealed its new Omnilink smart solutions product line. Think of a T88V with a full-blown computer built in. The applications here are very impressive. One of Epson’s ISV partners, Livelenz, was on hand at the booth to illustrate what such a powerful printer can do in the QSR space. Think about this: regardless of what hardware or software is being used for the POS, a receipt printer spits out detailed transaction information in a uniform manner. The new Epson T88V-i printer can send that transactional detail to the cloud where Livelenz sits. The ISV takes that data and crunches it in every way possible, giving restaurant owners and managers rich data and reports.

Livelenz CEO Joel Doherty — who’s also a restaurant owner — pulled up reports for one of his stores. Using data only from the Epson Omnilink receipt printer, he can see his sales for the day, which employees had which sales in the day, how many voids were made, what his top-selling items were, what items were also bought with top-selling items, and on and on. The interface is clean and polished and the amount of detail is frankly amazing. Doherty told me that the service (yay, recurring revenue) costs retailers about $59 per store. He’s looking for VARs and offering between 15% to 30% revenue share. Because the solution is truly software agnostic, any of your customers can use the service, provided they have one of Epson’s new printers.

I’ve got a handful of product demo videos I need to edit in the coming days, so keep an eye on the Business Solutions Youtube channel to see some of these products mentioned above in action.

Article written by: Mike Monocello+

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The launch is significant because Epson’s new Omnilink printer, which uses Livelenz’s analytics software, is the only product available that allows fast food operators an analytics tool in a free standing printer. That means franchise owners can install it without an expensive upgrade to their entire Point of Sales, or POS, system.

What’s more, Epson — the California-based subsidiary of Seiko Epson Corp. of Japan – has a 75 percent share of the market for receipt printers in North American fast food restaurants, which should help the partners roll out the OmniLink printers quickly.

“The really big news is that this technology offers the only POS-agnostic solution for data analytics in the [quick service restaurant] industry,” said Livelenz CEO Joel Doherty in an interview this morning.

Livelenz offers fast food franchise owners the analytic capabilities that are usually available only to larger corporations. By producing and analyzing data on sales, inventory and staffing levels, the system can tell the owners when to schedule staff, what products sell best at certain times, and how to reduce employee theft. This information helps to cut costs while increasing sales and profits.

The Epson OmniLink represents the next generation of analytic tools, and is offered in partnership with a company that dominates the market for receipt printers. It offers a cloud-based solution that allows the restaurant owners to retrieve and analyse the data in real time from any PC or hand-held device. It can be delivered through Ethernet or WiFi connectivity. The response to the new product has been tremendous, said Doherty.

Livelenz and Epson announced the new product at the National Retail Federation’s 102nd Annual Convention and Expo in New York.

Livelenz received a $1 million venture capital financing from Innovacorp last year, and the provincial innovation agency’s investment director Greg Phipps has temporarily joined the management team at Livelenz. The company, which recently attended 48 Hours in the Valley in California, is now working on a new round of venture capital funding with a target of $10 million.

Doherty said he hopes the company is weeks rather than months away from closing the round, but he added funding arrangements always take longer than expected.

View original link: http://www.entrevestor.com/blog/livelenz-epson-launch-omnilink-printer

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Epson is really on to something in its recognition that a smart printer could become the heart and soul of the new mobile, cloud-based POS. Livelenz sits in the cloud gathering detailed transaction data from an OmniLink-enabled Epson T88V-i printer, creating instant access to all sorts of powerful real-time analytics like promotions efficacy, product cost, labor cost, daily sales, LP/shrink metrics, and so on. READ MORE

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Point of Sales News Article

Written by Craig Aberle

NRF 2013, the retail industry is off to a screaming start – roaring out of the gates with new products and some very smart apps. Apple, not surprisingly, kicked ass, again. The iPad was everywhere! Although this year I was not subjected to desperate cries of “it’s not ruggedized and therefore can’t be used in retail” from paranoid industry competitors. No sir, this year EVERYONE had a solution that ran on the iPad.

Based on what I saw, 2013 is about the tablet, and about mobility, in whatever form you choose – be it the iPad, iTouch, iPhone, or a commercially ruggedized tablet, portable printer or other device. It was all anyone was talking about or demonstrating. And Wi-Fi, bless it’s little invisible soul, was in almost every device, including a cash drawer from APG, connecting everything.

A number of companies were showing the latest versions of their portable printers. Nice, attractive solutions were shown by Zebra, Star Micronics (see image on right), Seiko, Brother and others. Some printers were, ahhhh, more portable than others and I’m totally grateful I don’t have to wear one of them at work. (Am I being indelicate? Trust me people, they ain’t so portable.) But I LOVE that retail and service businesses are adopting the technology like crazy. When I return a rental car and Hertz hands me my receipt within seconds, it is sweet! (When they email me a digital receipt a moment later, my heart truly swells and I get a warming sensation deep down inside.) Just put my receipts in my email please. Of course, the market for those printers is much bigger than just receipts. The wonderful printers I saw at the show were cranking out shelf labels, product labels, bar codes, tags, coupons and much more. If there were an app that could, at the touch of a single button on the printer, download my daily schedule from my Google calendar, and print it out for me, or an app to print my shopping list, I’d probably buy one of those printers and hang it next to my front door.

At the Epson booth I saw one of the most interesting devices and applications of the whole show. It was an OmniLink printer that captured transaction data as it printed receipts, and reported that data via wi-fi for consolidation, without having to send it up to headquarters through the POS system. Why was it this so interesting? As Joel Doherty CEO, of LiveLenz explained, it offers franchisors a way to get real time data from the 15 year old legacy point-of-sale systems in the field, without having to upgrade the entire POS system. (See picture at the top of the article). This has already been rolled out in national franchises – with strong demand. This printer is a no-brainer for any franchisor or franchisee seeking to get the benefits of a contemporary POS reporting system without a heavy upgrade cost. I witnessed a live example, with real-time data, coming in from stores with older, electronic cash register type hardware where they had merely replaced their old printer with the Omni-Link model.

Even more exciting – the printer is remotely configurable through wi-fi. No need to mess around with programming the disparate POS systems at different franchisees. Epson offers several versions of this technology – including one with an Intel Atom processor built in and fully programmable. Way to go Epson!!

More coolness at the show – I love the use of color and design and have, in past columns, severely criticized the bar code industry for being boring. Yes, being functional but mundane can be a crime. Breaking out of the box were devices like those offered by POSBANK. Sleek black, white or maroon colored POS terminals that I would be proud to have in any retail establishment. Color, style, pizazz, je ne sais quoi, hipness and funk matter. Out of the box and proud of it. Nice work!

Memo to industry: superior technology inside the case needs to be matched by a pleasing design and consumer friendly ergonomics of the device itself.

I won’t waste a lot of time berating the hardware business for it’s common plain brown packaging, but would it severely hurt profit margins to put the product in a colorfully printed laminated box, instead of brown cardboard? Are we talking about more than an incremental fifty or seventy five cents per box, in quantity? I think not. Somebody IS selling your product on Amazon right? Maybe it’s time to spruce it up!

Speaking of large companies, Retail Anywhere was acquired by NetSuite. I spoke with former RA CEO Branden Jenkins, who just completed the sale of the company to NetSuite, and is now the General Manager of Retail and Etail Products for Netsuite. RA was a 15 year old point of sale company. He told me that they are hiring 70 staffers to work on the RA product and move it further up the food chain towards bigger clients. NetSuite is traded on the NYSE, symbol N. It does seem like we have a trend of acquisition this past year. POS is being commoditized further and are more acquisitions due to come? Have a tip? Share it with us!

Conclusion: the show was bigger than ever, and better attended than ever. The booths were dressier and everything looked great. The level of enthusiasm and energy was palpable.

Net net: the retail industry is alive and well, and hungry for business in 2013!

The post The Retail Industry Roars into 2013 appeared first on Livelenz.

Today at the NRF (National Retail Federation) 102^nd Annual Convention & EXPO, Epson America, Inc.,a leading supplier of value-added Point of Service (POS) solutions, and Livelenz Inc., a provider of real-time, operational and consumer analytics for the retail and hospitality segments, announced the availability of its cloud-based data analytics suite on Epson’s OmniLink™ smart solutions family. OmniLink combines an Epson industry-leading POS printer with PC functionality to deliver cloud-based services, open platform mobility and flexible web-based printing from any mobile device. Paired with Epson’s OmniLink, Livelenz is the first POS independent solution to bring real-time data analytics, sales and consumer data, labor and inventory cost management and loss prevention to the hospitality and retail segments – without any upgrades or integration to existing POS systems.

Epson’s OmniLink solutions provide the data gateway that enables delivery of cloud-based services via Ethernet or WiFi connectivity. Since the Livelenz application resides on the OmniLink printer outside the POS system, retailers gain the benefits of rapid deployment. The Livelenz platform gives retailers instant access to trending, performance results, gap analysis and predictive modeling to drive sales lift, reduce and manage cost of goods/inventory while minimizing employee theft.

“We’ve been up and running at several Moe’s Southwest Grill locations for more than a year now,”

commented Joel Doherty, CEO at Livelenz.”With our platform in place, Moe’s has realized measurable financial returns through operational improvements, upsell opportunities and labor cost reductions. With Epson’s OmniLink, retailers gain all the features and functionality of real-time data analytics – without updating their current POS systems. Even the oldest legacy systems are supported, and getting started is fast, easy and cost effective.”

“We’ve been working with Livelenz for a couple of years,” commented Gregg Brunnick, Director of Marketing for Epson’s Business Systems Division. “Our efforts have resulted in retailers gaining access to a new data gateway for comprehensive web-based data analytics, and we’ve seen the results. This solution can truly transform a business.”

Availability

The Livelenz solution with OmniLink has been deployed throughout notable tier-one hospitality brands. The solution will be available in the first quarter of 2013 through the Livelenz designated sales team (888) 407-0501 or via email atsales@livelenz.com. To watch Epson’s NRF 2013 video, click here. For more information about the Epson OmniLink, please visitpos.epson.com/OmniLink.

About Livelenz Inc.

Livelenz Inc. was founded in 2010 and is headquartered in Canada, with offices in the UK and USA. Livelenz was designed by people who know and understand the retail, hospitality and software space, and understand how to apply smart technologies to drive store and brand profitability. Today the company supports over 3,000 retail locations in six countries. Livelenz has been recognized as one of Canada’s most innovative technology companies and continues to design and introduce pioneering and disruptive solutions for retail and hospitality clients globally. To learn more about Livelenz, please go to www.livelenz.com or follow us on Twitter @livelenz.

About Epson America, Inc.

Founded in 1975 and headquartered in Long Beach, CA, Epson America, Inc. is the U.S. affiliate of Japan-based Seiko Epson Corporation, a global manufacturer and supplier of high-quality technology products that meet customer demands for increased functionality, compactness, systems integration and energy efficiency. For over 40 years, Epson’s advanced technology has been at work in millions of POS systems around the world. Today Epson’s Business Systems Division continues to bring industry-leading, open architecture, smart technologies to the point of service. To learn more about Epson America Business Systems Division, please visit: pos.epson.com, or connect with us on Facebook (http://tinyurl.com/EpsonFacebook-BizSys), Twitter (http://twitter.com/EpsonB2B_PR) and YouTube (http://tinyURL.com/EpsonYouTube).

Epson is a registered trademark of Seiko Epson Corporation. OmniLink is a trademark of Epson America, Inc. All other trademarks are the property of their respective owners.

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As it seeks to raise $10 million in equity funding, Bedford, N.S.-based Livelenz Inc., has been selected to participate in two high-profile American programs and agreed to develop machine learning technology with Acadia University.

Livelenz, which develops real-time data analytics software for the quick service restaurant (QSR) and retail industry, issued a statement Friday saying that it is partnering with Acadia computer science experts explore using machine learning techniques, and predictive modeling, to increase the accuracy of restaurant sales forecasting.

Company President Greg Phipps also revealed in an email exchange after the announcement that Livelenz was the only Atlantic Canadian company chosen for the November cohort of 48 Hours in the Valley, the C100-organized event that introduces Canadian tech companies to Silicon Valley execs.  Phipps and Livelenz CEO and Co-Founder Joel Doherty will spend a total of about two weeks in the U.S. meeting potential investors and partners.

Livelenz will also attend Pipeline — a one-on-one networking and investment pitch event in Boston Dec 4-5.

The company received $1 million in equity investment from Innovacorp earlier this year and is now trying to raise $10 million, which will allow it to roll out its next generation of software to help QSR operators improve efficiency.

“We are engaging traditional VCs, and potential corporate investors,” said Phipps. “On the VC side, we are casting our net widely, engaging VCs in Toronto, NYC, Boston, and Silicon Valley.”

As it develops new products, Livelenz has teamed with Daniel Silver, Director of Acadia’s Jodrey School of Computer Science, to fine-tune its technology that provides managers and owners real-time data and analytics to improve sales and operations and increase profitability.

“The goal of this initial project is to determine the effectiveness of using machine learning methods,” said Silver in the statement. “We’ll be developing forecast models that predict net hourly sales for up to nine days in advance.”

The final objective is to provide Livelenz users with tools to predict what their sales may be in the future, to help them with inventory control and labour scheduling.

The project is being funded through a Network Member Agreement program Acadia University has with NRC-IRAP.

Doherty and his partner Daryl Fraser launched Livelenz in March 2010 in the belief that the owners of fast-food franchises don’t have the data they need to make prudent business decisions. The franchisor takes care of marketing and the grand strategy for the chain, but the owner of the individual outlet needs real-time data to figure out how to squeeze as much profit as possible out of his operation.

Phipps is a Director of Investment at Innovacorp and has been seconded to Livelenz to help the company until early 2013.

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These questions are getting much more important with the introduction of business analytics solutions, such as LiveAnalytics and other competitive products in the marketplace. The debate has moved from whether I can get enough data about my business, to when do I really need access to the data that is now available. If you find yourself asking the following questions…then read on!

• Do I really need to have business results and data that are in real-time?
• Isn’t end of day, or end of week data and reporting sufficient?
• How would I effectively react or make use of data that was available real-time?

Industry and operational best practices have proven that yes, real-time data DOES matter! While end of day, weekly and monthly data can be extremely relevant and effective in identifying business and operational trends, highlighting gaps and providing the basis for predictive modeling, there various scenarios where real-time data makes all the difference. In considering best practices for the use and access of real-time data, the litmus test is to consider where you believe you can affect real-time changes within the business. Two tangible examples would be sales and labor results. Consider the following…

If my labor and productivity performance I being reported as an end of day or end of week result or trend I have two problems that cannot be easily overcome. One, if I don’t like the result, there is nothing I can do about it where it is historical. Secondly and most importantly, I cannot reflect on how labor in unfolding through my day parts…where do the peaks and valleys occur in relation to my sale and labor through each hour of the day??? If I have access to that real-time data I have several options to affect real-time changes to my labor results.

• I can send someone home if the current sales do not support the current labour mix
• I can re-assign labour to non-customer facing tasks
• I can move labour to respond to real-time sales activity such as couponing on the street

And in doing so, I can positively affect my labour and/or productivity results because I am able to respond to the situation as it is being measured NOW.

Other examples around sales point to providing real-time data to the employees to affect behavior changes in real-time. Assume you have a new Limited Time Offer you have high expectations for. You set a target and ask the staff to up-sell and cross-sell the new LTO. But how do they know how the LTO is performing in real-time and whether they are above or below the set target for sales?

By giving them access to real-time data on how the LTO is performing relative to our target for the day, they have visibility and a baseline from which to work from. If the Store Manager see that the metric for LTO performance is below target s/he can rally the team and bring focus to the upsell efforts on the fly. Now take it a step further…what if the employees could also reflect and have visibility to how other stores in the same territory are doing relative to the LTO sales? A little friendly competition? This focus on how our performance is unfolding relative to the “other guy” drives human behavior change and the result is your store will be working hard to outperform the others…and exceed all targets set. The net result…higher sales lift by using real-time data instead of waiting for the weekly report from your POS system to tell you what a bust that new LTO turned out to be!

Real-time data forces us to think about the business and how we respond to the ebb and flows that occur. And above all else, real-time data gives us a barometer or benchmark to understand exactly where the ebb and flows are occurring and what immediate actions can be taken to respond. Don’t under estimate the power of real-time data nor the financial returns it can be entirely responsible for.

The post Does Real-Time Data Really Matter? appeared first on Livelenz.

]]> http://www.livelenz.com/transaction-data/does-real-time-data-really-matter/feed/ 0 http://www.livelenz.com/point-of-sale/curse-of-the-disparate-pos-systems/ http://www.livelenz.com/point-of-sale/curse-of-the-disparate-pos-systems/#comments Fri, 14 Sep 2012 11:27:16 +0000 ian http://www.livelenz.com/WordPress/?p=212

...or, why I’d rather have a root canal than put a report together for our stores’ profit/loss performance. We see it all the time, both from our perspective as software-as-a-service providers, and in the context of our role as QSR owners.

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]]> …or, why I’d rather have a root canal than put a report together for our stores’ profit/loss performance.

We see it all the time, both from our perspective as software-as-a-service providers, and in the context of our role as QSR owners. It’s a frustrating and challenging reality of quick service, fast casual and full service brands alike: across the country and around the world; franchise or corporately-owned and managed operations. As brands grow and scale, open stores at varying pace, and in different geographic locations: they invest in, and specify (or settle for) different POS hardware solutions and now, have to figure out how to extract useful information from transaction-based data, collected from each. At best it’s a daunting and complicated process. Worst-case scenario – it’s an impossible task. Many of the POS systems we’ve worked with in the past had no reporting or data analysis capabilities, and information had to be manually collated, input from the Z –tape or X-reading, into a spreadsheet and then someone had to interpret it. Some POS vendors then began to offer a bolt-on analytics option, proprietary to their system only, but, if you’re rocking six POS systems, you have to pull data from each and then and figure out how to export and integrate into some useable form and format. Of course, by the time you accomplish this Herculean effort, any option for responsive decision-making has passed, and profits evaporated like a puddle on a hot summer day. As the old cliché goes, you can’t drive a car by looking in the rearview mirror.

One solution considered by many brands, is to spec and adopt a standardized POS platform across all units. It’s an expensive solution, but a solution nonetheless.

An alternative, clever, next-gen solution, like Livelenz, allows operations to extend the life of their POS platforms, and leverage what they’ve already got – at least for a few more years. Furthermore, a reporting manager at the franchise, franchisor, or corporate level, can now grab transactional data from all of their disparate systems, regardless of what make, and drill down into performance metrics that affect profit – at the individual store level, or all of the restaurant units in aggregate. Want to impress your boss? Drop a report in her e-mail basket that defines sales, cost of goods sold, labor cost, mix and ratio, year over year, by region, as of yesterday at 11 pm. Export to Excel, to save as an appendix, throw in a few dashboards for graphic effect and appeal, and the next thing you know, you’re sporting a corner office.

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]]> http://www.livelenz.com/point-of-sale/curse-of-the-disparate-pos-systems/feed/ 0 http://www.livelenz.com/drinks/how-a-5-percent-shift-in-soda-pop-sales-can-make-you-7000-dollars-richer/ http://www.livelenz.com/drinks/how-a-5-percent-shift-in-soda-pop-sales-can-make-you-7000-dollars-richer/#comments Tue, 11 Sep 2012 18:00:47 +0000 ian http://www.livelenz.com/WordPress/?p=59

The beautiful thing about being presented with meaningful data about your business is that you can use that information to make real differences to your bottom line. We want to take you through how you could use one small part of Livelenz’s analytics capabilities to make an easy adjustment to your sales model that will give great results with minimal effort. So, here’s how you can use the drink percentage calculators to drive your profits.

The post How a 5% Shift in Soda Pop Sales Can Make You $7000 Richer appeared first on Livelenz.

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The beautiful thing about being presented with meaningful data about your business is that you can use that information to make real differences to your bottom line. We want to take you through how you could use one small part of Livelenz’s analytics capabilities to make an easy adjustment to your sales model that will give great results with minimal effort. So, here’s how you can use the drink percentage calculators to drive your profits:

Let’s say that right now, 60% of the meals that go through your restaurant have a drink order attached to them. You can see this on your Livelenz analytics in simple chart form, print off that chart and share it with your staff team when you tell them that your new goal is to increase drinks percentages to 65%. A 5% change isn’t huge, and is certainly manageable with a little staff education and cooperation.

You tell the staff that from now on, instead of asking customers if they want a drink, to which they always answer no, they are going to try a new tactic: Grab the large cup, slap it on the tray, and say, “Gonna have a large today?” 85% of the time, that customer will say, “No, but I’ll have a medium.” Boom, they just added $1.39 onto that customer check, and given that there’s a 99% profit on soda, that’s pretty much all going into your pocket.

If your staff manage to up that drinks percentage by 5%, and you average 200 meals a week, then over the next year you’re able to bring in an additional $7228. So just by moving that moving that barometer up 5%, which is not hard to do, we moved over $7000 back to the profit line. And this is just one store, apply that to four stores, then you’ve pocketed an extra $30,000 a year, if you’ve got ten stores, you’re talking over $70,000.

Running a franchise restaurant is a pennies game, and it is by making small changes that you’re going to notice big results over the long term. The data that Livelenz gives you allows you to make minor tweaks to the way you are doing things that yield sustainable increases to your profits. Because you can see everything that is going on, from second to second in all of your stores, you can see very quickly how the changes you are making are benefitting your business. When something works, that will be evident straight away – you won’t waste time on initiatives that don’t get you anywhere.

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