Task Retail wants to conquer POS world with Sydney centre

Stan Beer
Wednesday, 10 June 2009 10:28

Business IT - Technology

Australian point of sale solutions provider, Task Retail Technology, intends to grow an existing network of franchise operators and their stores and expand overseas with a new $1 million Sydney-based global support centre. The centre already provides Internet-based real-time sales tracking information to 1300 retail stores in Australia.

The new support centre has been funded and developed by retail software industry veteran Kym Houden, who told iTWire that it has the capability to provide retailers with services previously not available anywhere in the world.

"I've been in and out of point of sale for over 30 years. We decided about four years ago that we needed to use .NET, SQL Server and those sort of products to deliver through the smarts of the Internet a instantaneous data using a hosted model," said Houden, the chief executive of Task.

"We've started off with franchise businesses but we've also put it into a couple of large race track venues."

Well known Australian franchise names such as Muffin Break, Jamaica Blue, Donut King, Michelle's Patisserie and Brumby's Bread, among others are involved in the 1300 store rollout across Australia.

According to Houden the big differentiator between the Task Retail tracking system and others is that data is tracked in real time through a central location.

"It's data that's coming back to the central location instantaneously," he said.

"A lot of franchised businesses have worked on the process of the data has to be pushed to rather than pulled back by a server. So the data could be up to a couple of months old before it gets back from the franchisee to the franchisor.

"With this system, you get instantaneous data within a second. So we can now introduce things like global loyalty, and other technologies such as multimedia marketing can be pushed down to the stores driving marketing panels.

"We've just introduced blue-tooth marketing into shopping centres. If you're walking into a Starbuck's coffee shop, a Muffin Break store might want to automatically send you a message saying that if you come and buy a coffee here we'll give you a free muffin."

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