As part of the leading hospitality group in South Africa, FRS operates airport retailing and catering services in duty-free shops and distribution depots. It has five operating divisions: Traveller`s Retail Services (Johannesburg, Durban and Cape Town International airports), International Travel Shops Africa (a 50% joint venture with Helnemann/BAA), Kraal Kraft Curios, The SilkWorm Company and Roosters, an FRS franchise.
International Travel Shops MD Phillip Joel says the company had to replace its under-performing POS system.
"After months of struggling with our legacy system, we urgently needed an alternative to maintain our business momentum," he says. "Within weeks of meeting with Precept we had transferred our old data and were operating 30 POS and 15 back-office systems at Johannesburg International alone."
Precept POS is a store stockholding management system, from receiving and barcoding through to shelf positioning and scanning. It enables the merchant to know exactly what stock is in the storeroom, what is on the shelf and what has been sold, integrating tightly with existing IT infrastructure and databases.
"Precept adapted to our needs to provide us with the information we required to drive our business," says Joel. "This includes statistical information, stock reporting, movement analysis and sales histories."
Precept`s modular design offers a set of building blocks or tools that clients can adapt to their own business requirements.
"Traditionally, POS systems were written specifically for one industry or industry segment," says Precept GM Ian St Clair. "With Precept an application can quickly be adapted to different business situations, saving our clients the cost and learning curve of a dedicated system."
9m airport passengers pass through FRS`s stores annually, with another 12 000 permanent airport staff to cater for. Its Beit Bridge border shops services a further 2m visitors a year.
"With such volumes, accuracy and efficiency are crucial," says Joel. "Precept`s hands-on approach meant we could transfer our needs to the development team and have them translated into customised modules, delivering the benefits we were seeking."
Precept soon showed FRS that its theoretical and actual margins were poles apart.
"It allowed us to hone in on our weaker areas, ultimately improving our bottomline by as much as 2%," says Joel. "Precept paid for itself, not to mention the value-added service Precept and Ixchange offered."
Precept also ties in with FRS`s NetWare network and Microsoft Office. POS data is transferred to the central database and extrapolated for report and query generation. Database and spreadsheet data can be uploaded to the POS and made available to till operators in realtime.
FRS IS manager Tom Denholm adds that Precept can also operate in standalone mode, making it failsafe should the network be down.
"If our POS system fails, our business stops," he says. "Precept goes some way to preventing this, while retaining integrity with our day-end batch download process to the network server."
FRS has more than 60 Precept POS systems installed across South Africa and Namibia, and expects to have over 70 by October when it adds the Diplomat chain of stores to its stable.
"Precept has given us the confidence to grow our POS complement," says Joel. "It will play an important role in our growth."
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