Volante POS Systems & NCR Partner in Point of Sale Solution

Toronto, Canada, January 25, 2007 --(PR.com)-- Baycrest, a premier academic health sciences center focused on aging, provides care and service to approximately 2,000 people a day through the Baycrest Geriatric Health Care System.  This system includes wellness programs, residential housing and outpatient clinics, to a 472-bed nursing home, and a 300 bed continuing care hospital facility.  So when they saw that their cafeteria’s aging cash register system was in dire need of attention, they turned to Tesoro Technologies Inc.’s Volante Systems and NCR to come to their aid.

The staff at Baycrest were using antiquated, 20 year old cash registers, which were not only slow and inefficient, but had also become impossible to repair.  Making the simplest changes to a menu item had become a complex task requiring hours of work.  For Andrea Bronstein, Project Manager at Baycrest, the time had come for a new, powerful, and reliable point of sale system that would increase efficiency, productivity, and hopefully impact the bottom line as well. After sourcing out a few POS companies, Bronstein finally decided on Tesoro’s Volante Systems for the software engine, and NCR’s RealPOS™ 70 terminals for the hardware.

“In addition to our patients and residents, we also welcome outside business.  We needed a reliable point of sale system that wouldn’t go down in case of a network failure,”  explains Bronstein.

Baycrest made a wise choice- Volante leads the POS industry with its innovative Redundancy Management System. Once data is entered into the system, its integrity is immediately protected. With other POS systems, server failure leads to an entire system crash, bringing your business to a grinding halt. However, Volante’s unique implementation allows all terminals to be connected yet function independently, ensuring that business will continue to run smoothly in the event of a terminal or server failure. Few, if any, POS systems on the market today offer this “fault tolerant” solution. More information can be found on Volante's website, www.volantesystems.com.

Making changes to menu items and simple programming was also very important to Bronstein. “We were looking for something where changes could be made without having to be on the floor. With the old system we had in place, it would take hours at each register to make any changes at all.  Now, we can update the whole system quickly from the back office.”

The installation at Baycrest not only represents the first partnership between Volante Systems and NCR, it’s also the first install in a senior’s community for both companies.  This installation has taken technology at Baycrest from irreparable, antiquated cash registers to a state of the art, java based point of sale system that offers, among other features, platform independence, data synching and peer to peer technology.

Volante is developed entirely in Java. Java is a platform independent language, meaning that Volante will run on the operating system of your choice, either Windows, Linux, Unix, or Windows and Linux, for example.  This can translate not only into increased flexibility for customers, but into some real cost savings as well.  The ability to run on Linux can save proprietors costly Window’s licensing fees, for example. In addition to having a powerful processor and an extremely rugged touch screen monitor, NCR’s RealPOS™ 70  terminals are certified for Linux and Microsoft® operating systems, from MS DOS to Windows® XP. The partnership between Volante and NCR has been a win-win situation for everyone.

Implementing this type of technology was a big step forward for a facility such as Baycrest, who has already seen the benefits. “We’ve definitely noticed more accurate tax reporting,” Bronstein adds. “We’re now also keeping better track of actual sales, inventory control, etc. Everything is now streamlined, so the cost benefits will be sure to come.”

And for the many veteran staff at Baycrest, who had become accustomed to the aging registers, training on the new system was a non-issue.  Bronstein was surprised and relieved at how quickly the staff adapted to the new system.  “We needed a system that was very staff oriented. The whole system is now user friendly and easy to use.  Some of our staff have been here a long time, and they found the system easy to grasp. We set up in the morning, around 8am, and we trained the staff on the spot.  The system was very simple and straightforward, most of the staff had it down in a couple of hours.” Baycrest staff will also realize some of their own demands as well, which were impossible to meet with the old system. “The staff have been requesting debit processing, which is finally now possible,” says Bronstein.

For Andrea Bronstein and Baycrest, Volante Systems and NCR have breathed new life into their food and beverage operation. Baycrest’s point of sale system has finally joined their health care services in being a premier, 21st century solution.

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