GERS set to introduce POS system next year
By Jeff Linville -- Furniture Today, September 3, 2001
SAN DIEGO — GERS Retail Systems has announced its big introduction for 2002 — Customer1, a full-service point-of-sale software solution.
GERS is the largest provider of software solutions for the furniture industry with about 5,000 storefronts using the software to manage $15 billion in annual sales.
"Recent advances in technology have opened countless new channels by which retail organizations can reach, communicate with, service and sell to their customers," said Jim Henderson, president and chief executive officer.
Customer1 allows retailers to use a variety of means to enter and view information on their databases. It enables real-time sales and order management transactions that connect customers, orders and inventory via multiple devices and interfaces, such as traditional point-of-sale registers, kiosks, call centers, browsers and personal digital assistants like Palm Pilots.
The program is part of a new graphical user interface. "The is the first of our solutions built on Genesis, the technology, architecture and platforms that we have developed to facilitate the delivery of next-generation applications."
Customer1 will be available for general release in mid-2002. Z Gallerie, 86th in Furniture/ Today's top 100 furniture stores with $61.5 million in 2000 sales, has signed on as "an early adopter" to try it out.
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In addition to this new software in testing, GERS has released seven programs in the last year and a half, according to Henderson.
During that time, the GERS staff has spent 213,000 hours in program development and 22,000 hours in training, and has made 600 enhancements to its main program, Big Ticket. In 1997, the average time to satisfy, or close, a complaint call was 2.6 days; in the first half of 2001, that time was cut to four hours. -
At its annual user conference here last month, GERS announced that it would hold certain fees at current levels for 2002.
"We know that many of you are facing some tough business challenges right now," said Henderson. "In response, we've decided to freeze maintenance and support fees to assist our customers during the economic recovery."
Kevin Johnson, vice president of support, said users will have predictable pricing to plan for the next year even when upgrading to the latest software versions.
