CitiXsys’ global Leadership Team will gather for the CitiXsys Annual Meeting in Bangkok in February, 2012.  Key topics of discussion will incorporate areas from, Sales Enablement, Channel Enablement, LPE organization, Development Roadmap, Delivery Focus and Support Structure  as we plan and  strategize our company direction for Year 2012.  We would like to extend a warm invitation to our valued partners to join us to learn more about how embracing a vertical offering in your SAP solution suite can help you grow your business to the next level.

Come, Learn in Bangkok

1. What Retailers want and how to position innovative technologies to ‘Make Profitable Retailers’.
2. How to position CitiXsys’s iVend Retail suite based on the customer’s needs.
3. How to implement iVend Retail and all other iVend Suite of Retail Applications.
4. Learn about the future roadmap on our Retail technology innovations.

Our vision is to ‘Make Retailers Profitable’ through innovation and supported by our wide network of qualified partners who believe in creating a focused ‘Retail Software Practice’. Please join us and learn how.

CitiXsys Partners attendees Dates: 29th February to 2nd March 2012

Destination: Bangkok, Thailand
Venue: Pullman Bangkok King Power

Dress Code: Business Formals Wednesday thru Thursday and strictly casuals on Friday
Material: Laptops, tablets

Fees: USD$900 per Participant (Airfare not Included)

Country: Australia

Industry: Retail – Home Wares

A proudly 100% owned Australian icon, MiniJumbuk has been manufacturing and selling exceptional quilts, underlays and pillows for over 30 years. Based in Naracoorte, South Australia, MiniJumbuk developed the first woollen blanket in Australia, and today continues the tradition with its emphasis on quality, innovation and craftsmanship, being committed to providing the best possible night’s sleep. MiniJumbuk quilts, underlays and pillows are available from all leading department stores and Manchester specialty shops.

Challenge

• Improve inventory and customer management
• Fully integrate enterprise accounting application with retail operations
• Create gift certificates from retail system
• Improve employee productivity and overall store performance

Solution: iVend Retail with SAP Business One

Benefits

• Increased visibility across all sales and purchasing transactions
• Intuitive solution scalable for future growth
• Improved customer management & retention through gift cards and layaways
• Comprehensive view of the company’s revenue, costs and inventory valuation in real-time

Congratulations to iVend Team on the successful completion of the eSELECTplus Card Present Integration certification performed on Thursday, May 12, 2011.

Solution Description
Solution Type	Value Added Reseller Solution
Solution Name	iVend Retail
Solution Version	5.X
eSELECTplus API Used	.NET DLL
Operating System and Platform	Windows
Transaction Supported for Credit	Purchase, Refund, Purchase Correction
Transaction Supported for Debit	Purchase, Refund, Purchase Correction
E-Commerce Indicator	E00 – Normal Presentment
POS Terminal	Moneris 7800 PIN pad (DT20 v6.27 & POSPAD v3.05)
Batch Close	eSELECTplus Initiated Batch Close
EMV Capability	Yes

Thousands of stores in over 15 countries run iVend Retail to manage their retail operations. iVend Retail, a PCI compliant and SAP Certified solution, is a complete Retail Management Software,seamlessly integrated with SAP suite of Business Management Applications.

iVend is a comprehensive Retail Management Solution to manage Head Office, Store and POS operations. The SAP certified fail safe integration with SAP keeps the head office always connected with the store operations across the complete retail chain.

Integrated Loyalty module, Gift Card features and integration with leading payment processors & gateways allows retailers to have a 360 degree visibility of their operations spanning from Store Operations on one hand to Financial and Supply Chain on the other. High levels of scalability are brought about by latest technology, simple & intuitive interface, with robust Head Office engine backed by SAP – and industry leading business management application.

Its unique replication and integration services completely take away the constraint of being always-connected to the Internet. iVend Retail allows retailers to continue doing business even if the Internet connection between the Head Office and the store is severed.

Moneris 7800 Pinpad is Ideal for use in a variety of merchant environments, including single-lane point-of-sale, multi-lane retail and stand-alone.

Features

• Compact hand-held PIN pad with CHIP card and magnetic stripe card readers.
• Large backlit graphic display offers clear presentation of data and commands.
• Long card swipe ensures optimal magnetic stripe card reading.
• Compatible with the Moneris HiSpeed 6200 terminal and eSELECTplus® card present virtual terminal.
• Multi-application functionality allows implementation as a basic or intelligent PIN pad.
• Integrates to ECR/ PC POS environments via RS232 or USB interface
• Backward-compatible to most Moneris POS PAD, PINSmart and SC550 environments.
• Compliant with the current card scheme association standards for physical and logical security (i.e. PCI PED certified).
• 32-bit processor supports powerful encryption to ensure confidential data is secure.

Food and candy will account for most of a consumer’s budget, bringing in $2.1 billion in candy sales and $4.5 billion in food sales alone. The average person will spend slightly more on each than they did last year – $18.55 on candy, compared to $17.29 last year, and $40.05 on food, up from $37.45 last year.

Many Americans will take advantage of retailers’ spring sales to buy new clothing for the entire family. The average celebrant will spend $21.51 on colorful new apparel, up from last year’s $19.03 and totaling $2.4 billion in sales. Additionally, consumers will spend an average of $9.02 on flowers, $8.00 on decorations and $6.79 on greeting cards. Children looking forward to a visit from the Easter bunny this year are in for a treat: spending on gifts will reach an average of $19.89, totaling $2.2 billion.

Department (36.6%) and discount stores (62.6%) will be the most popular shopping destinations for Easter gifts this year, though specialty stores carrying flowers, jewelry and electronic merchandise will also see their share of traffic (22.4%). Others will shop at specialty clothing stores (8.1%), online (14.8%) and through a catalog (3.5%).

“When out shopping for their Easter meals, many Americans will also be swayed by other items that remind them of warm weather celebrations, including apparel and home and garden accents,” said Phil Rist, Executive Vice President, Strategic Initiatives, BIGresearch. “While spending is expected to improve from the past two years, families are still sticking to a budget with an eagle eye on low prices.”

The survey also found that Easter’s biggest spenders will be 25-34 year-olds ($173.41 vs. $136.79 last year) and young adults 18-24 ($145.12 vs. $125.85). Thirty-five to 44 year olds will spend an average of $138.55, followed by 45-54 year olds ($122.15) and 55-64 year olds ($113.32).

About the Survey
The NRF 2011 Easter Consumer Intentions and Actions Survey, conducted for NRF by BIGresearch, was designed to gauge consumer behavior and shopping trends related to Easter spending. The poll of 8,491 consumers was conducted from March 1-8, 2011. The consumer poll has a margin of error of plus or minus 1.0 percent.

BIGresearch® consumer intelligence provides analysis of behavior in areas of products and services, retail, financial services, automotive and media. The BIGresearch Consumer Intentions and Actions® Survey (CIA™) of 8,000+ respondents is conducted monthly and the Simultaneous Media Usage® Survey (SIMM®) of 15,000+ respondents is conducted semi-annually.

As the world’s largest retail trade association and the voice of retail worldwide, the National Retail Federation’s global membership includes retailers of all sizes, formats and channels of distribution as well as chain restaurants and industry partners from the U.S. and more than 45 countries abroad. In the U.S., NRF represents the breadth and diversity of an industry with more than 1.6 million American companies that employ nearly 25 million workers and generated 2010 sales of $2.4 trillion. www.nrf.com

The certification confirms that the development of iVend Retail is as per the SDK development guidelines prescribed by SAP and comes just in time when the retailers are gearing up for the festive season. CitiXsys Technologies is one of the largest Software Solution Partner to SAP. With this certification, CitiXsys reiterates its commitment to SAP, its partners and customers to reap business benefits from robust and intuitive applications.

“The certification is an expression of our commitment to adhere to the stringent guidelines laid by SAP. This (certification) will allow partners to confidently position iVend in the market and will provide an assurance to the customers of licensing an SAP certified solution.” says Pankaj Mathur – Vice President, Solutions Delivery, CitiXsys Technologies.

“I’m very impressed with the overall functionality of iVend.  I’ve worked on “RetailPro” and “BeanStore” in the past and iVend is by far the most user friendly POS software I have used” says Marco Albrecht, Director Operations, In Add Minus, Los Angeles, CA

About iVend:

iVend is an end to end Retail Management Solution for Store Chain Retailers covering all aspects of Retailing Business ranging from Head Office functions to Back Office Store and POS operations. An iVend setup can range from a single store operation to a complex multi-store environment with hundreds of stores spread across geographies.

High levels of scalability are brought about by latest technology, simple & intuitive interface, with robust Head Office engine backed by SAP – and industry leading business management application.

About CitiXsys:

CitiXsys is a software products and services company which provides vertical and horizontal industry solutions in Retail, Warehousing & Distribution domain.

CitiXsys has its corporate headquarters in New York City, USA, an R&D center in New Delhi, India and offices in Toronto, London, Sydney, Melbourne and Perth. The Company has strategic alliances with SAP US, UK, Australia, India and a number of other Technology Partners

For more information about iVend and CitiXsys log on to www.ivend.com and www.citixsys.com

Here is what you need to know about the new PCI compliance standard when choosing a solution partner:
First, see below definitions to know what we’re talking about (like we need more acronyms in this business right?)
PCI = Payment Card Industry
PA = Payment Application
DSS = Data Security Standard

These standards were actually created by the various payment card providers like Visa, MasterCard and American Express. PCI casts a very broad net; it includes the card providers, gateways, merchants, banks and applications. PA is any software or hardware solution that passes or reads/stores sensitive data. DSS is the standard the hardware and software solution providers must write their code and encryption levels to.
For us selling and purchasing solutions that store or transmit sensitive data, when a customer asks if your solution have PCI Compliance, they mean is your solution PADSS Certified? Only a Payment Application (PA) that is Data Security Standard (DSS) certified can be compliant. This certification can only be earned after engaging a qualified firm and passing a stringent audit process. Many end users are not even considering a solution that is not certified.
The reason is that for a business to be PCI compliant – using PADSS certified solutions is only a piece of the compliance pie – but a very necessary piece. Network firewalls, database encryption, updated antivirus software and passing security scans (for eCommerce) are some other qualifications.
CitiXsys solutions; iCharge and iVend are PADSS certified and become a valuable part of the PCI compliant path for end users. So next time a customer asks if your solution is PCI compliant you can confidently say “yes we are a certified application”.
Happy Selling-

Recently I was talking to a few partners who created successful businesses selling CitiXsys products with SAP in their local geographies. I noticed that the most important aspect of their business success is also their biggest challenge – “User training”. A Retailer can have a world class ERP like SAP Business One, SAP Business All-in-One or similar products, with iVend Retail to streamline their Retail Operations. Customers with warehouses successfully implement Inventory Pro for their Inventory Management System with SAP Business One however the major challenge remains training the users who actually use the systems implemented for an agile function.

I have seen that every time a partner sells one of our products, he engages our consultant to train customer users. Larger partners have in-houses resources trained in CitiXsys products who in-turn impart training to the customer. This is not only expensive but also impractical at times. Getting all users in one room is a challenge. Not only this, but also the training resources need to block their calendar for individual training.

Considering all these aspects, we have developed e-learning lessons for all our products. These are very detailed training lessons hosted at http://learning.citixsys.com/. A partner can have their implementation & training consultants fully trained on our products. Customers can have their users undergo these online lessons at their own time and get fully acquainted with the system.

Business Growth Tool – E-learning is an essential tool for business growth. Employees need to be coached and their skill set must be upgraded on a continuous basis. If done correctly,this can produce great results by decreasing costs and improving performance. Unlike one time classroom session, online courses are available to every employee of the company.

Productivity Increase – Video based sessions are great tool to give the skills needed to enhance performance and productivity. Video based platforms are not bound by location or time; one can control training’s impact on production by training people at any time – whenever there is a need. By including online learning in your employee skill enhancement exercise, you’re asking people to do more with less.

Anytime Access - Classroom learning requires participants to align their schedules to the training calendar.  Online courses eliminates this because the courses can be accessed anytime, anywhere and from any location.  I have seen our own colleagues take lessons of product line to enhance their skill set.

Building interest – Interactive video based courses in combination of PowerPoint presentations and recorded demos can produce a very rich learning experience that is repeatable.  Some good practice sessions with feedback can make an environment help learners retain the course content that will produce positive results.

Reduced Training costs - With an effective learning schedule, each time the course is accessed by your colleagues, your ROI improves because you are not spending on classroom training.  You also have savings immensely by not hiring a consultant, reducing travel, and improving skill set.

Make it a part of your appraisal system – A well-trained employee is worth several times more than an unskilled employee. When you hire a new employee or you implement a new system, you need to train your existing employees; the biggest challenge is training them adequately to make them productive as soon as possible. E-learning bridges the gap between employee skill set and newly implemented system.  You get more from the software much more rapidly with a fully trained user.

Keeping the benefits of video based online interactive courses in mind, CitiXsys has developed e-learning lessons of all products. Some lessons are available in interactive mode with powerpoint slides and online demo combined whereas some are available in the good old youtube.com and other media. Idea is to make a lesson available in whatever form for the users so that learning remain continuous. There are new lessons uploaded on a weekly basis. Enjoy learning and happy holidays.

iView is a Business Intelligence (BI) platform that provides Dashboards and Analytics to users of SAP Business One. Business Intelligence (BI) is a kind of business software solution designed to use gathered data more effectively and transform it into beneficial information that can be employed to increase company’s competitiveness and visibility on a market.

With Business Intelligence software you can obtain an unambiguous view on corporate data and perform data analysis, helping your company uncover relationships and patterns present in data collected so far.

Business Intelligence is a process that works for any size company to support data-based managing, and fact-based decision making for successful performance on a crowded marketplace.

The BI approach works so well because it integrates business process perspective and customer perspective, and provides a way to quantify all the value drivers, not only the financial ones.

iView – Business Intelligence for Business One from CitiXsys Technologies utilizes cutting edge technology and offers intuitive dashboards across business functions of SAP Business One. iView converts data into meaningful and actionable information. It makes a business more competitive by enabling informed decision making well in time.

iView – Business Intelligence for Business One has been developed keeping in mind the business user. The application comes with ready to use dashboards for:

• Sales Analysis
• Purchase and Inventory Management
• Executive Dashboard
• Retail Sales Analysis

These ready to use dashboards integrate seamlessly with SAP Business One and iVend Retail, dramatically reducing the effort required to start using them.

These existing dashboards can be customized as per requirements and additional dashboards can be created for specific customer needs and scenarios.

iVend is an end to end Retail Management solution that covers processes encompassing Retail System, Back Office and Head Office operations. iVend setup can range from a Single Store with few POS to a complex multi-store environment with complete integration with your day to day retail management. The solution automates the entire operations, virtually eliminating paper work.

iVend allows the retail management team at the Head Office to have complete control over data at the stores. It extends flexibility at the Head Office to setup and configure the system from one place and therefore simplifies the management of data.

iVend delivers a configurable, flexible, and scalable solution that is easy to setup and implement and integrates seamlessly with SAP powered Management Applications.

iVend is ideal for both high-volume retailing operations and high-service specialty stores. High volume retailers will like its quick service interface.  High service retailers will appreciate the many complex special order fulfillment options, customer specific pricing, flexible kit combinations, and customized, ticket-building special messaging for the POS screen.