21 OCTOBER 2010

Simple with Symphony

Two of the UK’s largest universities have installed the Metro Symphony Enterprise application.

Metro Symphony Enterprise, the web-hosted EPOS management and real time reporting system designed and manufactured by MCR Systems, has been chosen by Reading and Warwick universities to replace their current point-of-sale and cashless payment handling processes following a detailed TUCO tendering process.

The University of Reading is ranked as one of the UK’s 20 most research-intensive universities and as one of the top 200 universities in the world.

The University caters for over 18,000 students in 11 halls of residence and a student village spread across campus and surrounding areas of Reading.

The procurement team selected MCR Systems Metro Symphony following a number of different site visits and supplier interviews, having set out a detailed list of specific business process changes that the University needed to implement in anticipation of the changing financial circumstances within the education sector. These included opportunities to increase revenue and sales per customer, effective management and control, increased sales volume, improved customer experience and real time data.

At the University of Warwick the social facilities on site are impressively modern with a mixture of catering and retail outlets including a Costa outlet. It has cost a fortune to create and the investment has been made so that there is no impediment to Warwick achieving ‘World Top 50’ status. Here the selection criteria were as equally detailed. The University required a company and system to drive the business forward and enable the Management team to focus on protecting margins whilst generating additional sales by implementing proactive promotional activity, ensuring increased bottom line revenue.

Simon Oke, Systems Manager at the University of Warwick explains how the team have benefited since the implementation of Metro Symphony: “The new EPOS system has given a great deal more functionality than we used to get. From a till operator’s perspective the units supplied are simpler to operate, meaning they can afford to spend more time interacting with the customer rather than worrying about which buttons to press. The available functionality is far greater. From a managers viewpoint they can keep an eye on real time daily sales from an item and value perspective or look back at previous spend patterns using Symphony. There is a large range of reports to choose from giving excellent analysis. The system is simple to configure and being web based means this can be carried out anywhere.”

Metro Symphony provides complete control over all aspects of the maintenance and management of an EPOS , Stock Control & Cashless Payment systems estate, built on Microsoft Server  architecture, ensuring that Symphony has a solid foundation that inherently provides scalability, resilience, security and simplified administrative operations.

Simon comments further: “The cashless system has seen a great increase in functionality along with easier administration. We can now allow customers to access their own account information on line and top up their cards without any fuss. This has proved a big hit and in the first year we’ve seen our take up of the card double.

Changing the system has also allowed us to automate our sign up process which has reduced administrative costs. The major innovation of the ‘Eating at Warwick’ cashless scheme is the fact that it can be topped-up online and is available to use in all of the University’s commercial areas including the Retail areas and shops as well as the Students Union.”

On behalf of the University of Reading Nigel Monks, Assistant Director of Commercial Services comments: “The procurement team produced a detailed requirements document to future proof the investment for many years to come. MCR Systems demonstrated a proven track record in delivering a fully functional system, offering full systems integration that meets our business needs today and allows for proactive changing requirements in the future.”