19 NOVEMBER 2010

North Bristol NHS Trust

North Bristol NHS Trust has chosen MCR Systems to provide the market leading Symphony EPOS management and Reporting system across their retail catering outlets.

The Trust provides hospital and community healthcare to the residents of Bristol, South Gloucestershire and North Somerset. With over 9000 staff, it is also a specialist regional centre for neurosciences, plastics and burns, orthopaedics and renal services.

Michael Branch is the Food Services Manager for both facilities and is reaping the benefits of the web based Symphony system with real-time sales information and the fact he can manage both outlets from wherever he may be is a real advantage for him. Michael comments, “North Bristol NHS Trust was formed from several different hospitals some years ago, with catering departments on two major hospital sites, both running different stock and EPOS systems.  Once a decision had been made to run with one stock system earlier this year, we were keen to link in an EPOS system to finally have a fully joined up system.  We were recommended several companies and MCR were able to provide everything that we were looking for”. 

SymPOS Touch screen terminals have been installed at the new Kendon Cafe at Southmead hospital and at the staff/visitor restaurant at Frenchay hospital, and all with integrated Chip & PIN. In the past, the retail outlets have not had the facility to take card payments, and it was evident that customers have not always been able to purchase what they want on some occasions due to having a lack of cash on them, and not being able to pay by card. Therefore, a decision was made to introduce integrated Chip & PIN with the new EPOS system to make it easier for their customers to pay which will drive sales and increase turnover.

Michael has been impressed with the efficiency of Symphony and the instant availability of sales information, he goes on to say “The Catering Departments have been moving to a more commercial model and Symphony is able to give us useful and accurate sales data instantly, something that had previously taken many hours of manual calculations.  We are now able to make informed business decisions based on this sales data.  A real benefit for us is that we can access sales data and update tills instantly wherever they are across the estate”.

One of the reasons that North Bristol NHS Trust selected MCR Systems was because of their reputation in the market place, and this has been endorsed by Michael, “The pre-install training was very thorough and the install day went very smoothly.  The staff took to the tills instantly as they are well designed and intuitively laid out; I was confident enough in the system to take two weeks' leave only two days after the install and found no problems on my return.”