Oser Communications Group

NACS17.Oct20

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Convenience Retailer Show Daily Friday, October 20, 2017 8 LaserWash 360Plus In-Bay Automatic Car Wash The LaserWash ® 360Plus in-bay auto- matic car wash has raised the standard for touchless car wash equipment with new revenue-enhancement features and total cost-of-ownership improvements that offer wash operators the opportunity to realize the industry's highest return on investment. The newly designed LaserWash 360Plus offers operators all the features and benefits of the original LaserWash 360, plus several improvements includ- ing standard aircraft grade anodized alu- minum rails, new pump station focusing on functionality and ease of maintenance, redesigned navigation system and an ulti- mate cover package. These features plus many more clearly put the LaserWash 360Plus in a class of its own. Every LaserWash 360Plus can bene- fit from the company's exclusive OverGlow High Gloss Application System. Not only will your customers love their shiny vehicle, you will love the extra revenue this product is capable of generating. Your customers will enjoy the look of a colorful, thick sheet of solu- tion draping their vehicle. In addition to OverGlow, every LaserWash 360Plus can also benefit from the exclusive LaserGlow Illumination Effect System. The LaserGlow system will assist in guid- ing your customers through the vehicle entry and exit process and it will illu- minate your bay whether your wash is in use or not. Not only will the LaserGlow system help improve your customer flow, it can also be config- ured to work for you 24/7/365 by illumi- nating your wash bay day and night whether there is a vehicle in your bay or not. The system can be programmed to display multiple color combinations of flashing patterns, or constant col- ored illumination that matches your brand image. A glow from your wash bay can be a highly effective marketing tool to draw more attention to your wash site, encouraging consumers to take notice and keep your existing cus- tomers coming back again and again. Overglow and LaserGlow are available on new equipment or as a retrofit kit for installed LaserWash 360s. A "keep it simple" design goal minimizes the need for sensors, grease fit- tings, swivels and valves, while the use of common electrical components throughout the system allows easier troubleshoot- ing, minimizes regular maintenance costs and delivers consis- tent high-quality cleaning. Additionally, the LaserWash 360Plus is completely built with non-corrosive materials, pro- viding operators a rugged machine that will deliver a long, reliable life of rev- enue generation. Feel comfortable in your decision to purchase PDQ Equipment. The company is proud to be part of Dover Corporation A Fortune 500 Company. For more information, visit booth #4120. WEH Technologies Focused on Customer Needs, Quality WEH Technologies Inc.'s core business continues to emphasize high-pressure gaseous applications like CNG or hydro- gen. Although it offers a wide range of standard products, it was always the cen- tral focus of the company to develop cus- tomer-specific solutions. As true innova- tors, WEH company culture dictates that its products provide the standard and cus- tomized solutions customers require. There may be no greater motivation for innovation than eliminating a wife's pain. At least that was the case for Erwin Weh, as he attempted to reduce his wife Karolina's pain from carpal tunnel syndrome. After toiling all day in a machining factory, both would come home, Karolina to care for her son and daughter, Edwin to work on a product that would ease his wife's pain caused by the repetitive motions on a factory assembly line. In his basement work- shop, he devised a tool based on jaws or collets with only push-on and off move- ments, instead of thread-type move- ments. In 1973, after demonstrating his new product to friends and neighbors throughout the nearby towns of Bavaria, Germany, word spread and the demand for an easy-to-use tool which was ergonomically friendly, safe, reliable and durable became sufficient enough for Weh to resign his job and to start WEH GmbH. Working from their basement, Karolina and Erwin began designing and manufacturing specialty tools, often beginning their day as early as 4:00 a.m. and working until 10:00 p.m. Erwin Weh believed, "With a quali- ty, effective machine, we can satisfy cus- tomer needs and our need to remain an industry-wide leader." His son Wolfgang, the company's current Chief Executive Officer, says, "During times when busi- ness slowed, my parents just worked harder. They believed that if they worked hard enough, they could over- come any challenge." The second genera- tion is continuing the hard work and vision of Erwin and Karolina. Son Wolfgang joined the com- pany in 1973; daughter Sabine, General Office Administrator, joined in 1974; son-in-law Reinhold Wiest, Managing Director, joined in 1976. In 1980, the Wehs developed their first line of connectors, and over the years, continued to make improvements to the product, customizing designs for various connection solutions. Today the ingenious solutions derived by the Wehs are illustrated by a combination of vari- ous patents and their customers' success stories. Over the next 30 years, the Wehs expanded their home-based factory, con- tinuing to add square footage and employees to meet customer demand. In 2003, a state-of-the-art manufacturing facility was built to house their current operations and their 200 manufacturing, engineering, sales and administrative employ- ees in support of more than 100 industry part- ners located all over the globe. In 2009, WEH Technologies was established by Andreas Willfort in Katy, Texas. In keeping with company tradi- tion, Willfort worked from his home office to establish a sales and service presence in North America. Also in keep- ing with company tradition, customer demand has now required the construc- tion of a new sales and service center, currently under construction. Willfort says, "Those original WEH connectors remain in use and are known for their unparalleled quality, durability and longevity. Our reputation for quality con- tinues to drive our growth." For more information, visit booth #3012 or go to www.weh.us. Delivering Promotions and Customer Loyalty across Disparate POS Platforms By Larry Schaffer, Chief Information Officer/Director of Information Technology, Niemann Foods Niemann Foods, Inc. (NFI) operates approximately 115 retail stores across eight different formats/brands, in Illinois, Missouri, Iowa and Indiana. Our formats include 50 traditional grocery stores (some with fuel on the lot) as well as 25 convenience stores with fuel. Our con- venience stores are comprised of a mix- ture of four different fuel brands as well as several unbranded locations. Our grocery stores have supported a customer loyalty program for nearly 20 years. Our grocery POS system was 20 years old and difficult to support and deploy updates and new versions. Our convenience stores were all running a traditional convenience store industry, petroleum-centric, 25-plus year old POS system with very limited capabilities. We wanted to be able to support loyalty and complex promotions, both within the convenience store group as well as across platforms to the grocery stores. In our ideal world, one POS vendor with solutions that would span both indus- tries to minimize cross-vendor interfac- ing and operational challenges as well as deliver a loyalty/promotions capabil- ity that would span across both groups of stores. In 2012, we shopped for and found what we believe was the only single-ven- dor solution on the market that delivered an experienced and broadly used grocery industry POS, a reasonable convenience store industry POS, and a loyalty/promo- tion engine that integrated across both platforms. In late 2014, one of our primary fuel brands announced they would not be sup- porting our new convenience store POS system choice beyond 2016. That com- bined with a horrible vendor experience with that POS project led us to choose an alternative, "current tech- nology" POS system solution from a known petroleum industry ven- dor. Now the problem was finding a loyalty/complex promo- tions engine that would work across the new convenience store POS and the new grocery POS. Enter Midax! My favorite reference for Midax is calling it my "Swiss Army Knife" solu- tion. I discovered that Jim Nevill and his band of merry men and women are veri- table "computer coding/interfacing Ninjas." They have spent the better part of the last 20 years making disparate sys- tems work together. Out of that work they have developed a portfolio of soft- ware solutions that they can adapt and tailor to my business needs. In our case, we are leveraging their loyalty/complex promotion engine along with their fuel fleet billing solution and in-house grocery charge system, inter- faced across our new grocery and con- venience store POS platforms to deliver the capabilities we need. Our projects are still in the rollout and refinement stages, but we are confi- dent that we will end up with good solid solutions customized to our distinctive operational needs and flexible enough to adapt to future requirements. In the interest of full disclosure, anyone who has had to deal with system challenges as broad and convoluted as these understands that these are highly complex and tedious solutions and proj- ects. There is no such thing as "off-the- shelf." You are dependent on the skills and responsiveness of the vendor you choose to work with. You also have to get in the trenches with your vendor partner to fine tune and tweak core func- tionality to adapt to your particular needs. The refreshing part of working with Midax has been that they are large enough and experienced enough to have a portfolio of solutions to work with but are nimble and responsive to be able to deliver custom changes and modifica- tions quickly. Visit Midax at booth #3573. For more information, go to www.midax.com.

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