Microsoft's Retail Management System? 1

[mjbosko]

Curious if anyone uses, or has clients that use, Microsoft's Retail Management System.

I've read the info at:

http://www.microsoft.com/BusinessSolutions/Retail Management/default.mspx

But would really like to hear some real life feedback from small- to mid-sized companies using the product.

Thanks,

Mike

 

[krshaikh]

Hi there,

My company has recently purchased MS Retail Management System. I have joined them as a Software Consultant. The job I have at the moment is to make the reports that come with RMS available on the WEB using ASP.net. RMS uses Active Reports and Cryatal reports both for reporting services. It will take me ages if I rebuild all the reports. The management wants the Filter that comes with RMS reports exactly the way it is. Offcourse its not possible to invoke the form on the web and certain modifictions or redesigning is required to make it happen.
But thats not the issue at the moment. Has anybody been involved in this kind of a project before. I really need some help here.

Thanks in advance,

- krshaikh -

 

[bbrendan]

Hiya,

With regards to the crystal reports, you could publish these reports via crystal enterprise web application.

Or am i not understanding your problem

cheers

 

[jcasetnl]

I'll guess I'll weigh in with our experiences with MS RMS. We use it at 7 retail locations currently and have a test store set up as well.

Our usage would be akin to Radio Shack. We do a lot of catalogue sales so we try to capture customer information at purchase time so we can send them our catalogue later. As a result, we have quite a large customer DB.

Our biggest problems are the following:

1. Customer lookup is too slow and not flexible. Type in a name, wait 15 - 20 seconds all while the customer is tapping foot. There's no option to search on cust name + street or cust name + city.

We did three things.

- We had a dev write an app that allows searches to be done on lastname + zipcode.
- We segmented our customer data to the store's local area, reducing the size of the DB by 75+% (from about 2 gigs to 300 - 500 megs).
- We upgraded all the sites to SQL Server personal, which made a huge difference in performance.

2. It runs on Windows. This is a blessing and a curse, as you might imagine. On the upside, much of the general support and maintenance can be done by your existing IT staff and you're not paying through the nose to a vendor. On the downside, it is always a battle with store staff and managers. During slow periods your store staff will try every way they can think of to surf the net on your POS machine, or customize the desktop, or do something. The end result is a failed PC in a remote location.

Obviously, the reliability of the POS machine is a priority for anyone experienced in this field but I mentioned it since I expect a lot of very small retail operations might jump on the bandwagon due to the relative familiarity of Windows.

3. General reliability. We get a constant stream of complaints from store managers that they have to reboot the PC a couple times a day because RMS totally locks up. We've spec'd out machines that are more than adequate for the RMS software and DB so we know that's not the problem. They also report slowness, hitching, etc. which may or may not be a real problem (some people will never be satisfied with the speed of a computer).

 

[RFEULINGatRITE]

Hi jcasetnl

We have customers who have ten stores on the system with over a million transactions in their database (total), over 16,000 items, and run with practically no RMS issues - no locking, no slowness, etc.

As far as XP is concerned, you can setup the group policies or your firewalls to allow only certain types of traffic to go over the internet, no customization of the desktop, etc - all you need is XP pro - no client/server situation required.

How many customer records do you have in your database? What are the specs on your database servers? Are you scheduling your DB servers to perform database maintenance? Does your RMS partner have experience with HQ deployments? They should be able to help you with a lot of the issues you’re having.

Rick

 

[jcasetnl]

Hi Rick,

Our customer db is quite substantial - probably in the neighborhood of a million distinct customers. Using SQL Server instead of MSDE made a major difference in performance.

Locking down the retail machines is one of my main priorities, believe me. The company I work for has a very different culture than most so it has been a tough battle. I'm working both on the technical front and the policy/education front to improve overall reliability and security.

As for slowness, hitching and crashing, I've seen it all. We've been able to resolve a couple items through patches and system rebuilds, but not all. Doing a mid-day synch brings everything to a screaching hault. We turned those off.

 

[RFEULINGatRITE]

When you say sync - do you mean HQ connections or the offline database syncs?

The good news for you j is that one of Microsoft’s big initiatives with HQ is making it more scalable. According to the road map they presented to us its the top priority for RMS development.

I'd bring any type of screeching halt type issues directly to Microsoft - they'd want to know and since it’s a bug type issue they probably won't even charge you for it. If you need help getting in touch with them let me know.

I hope that helps!

 

[MobileAppProvider]

We have developed a couple of mobile applications (batch) that perform inventory management tasks. All include the ability to transfer via a direct connection or over a wireless network. 2B-Inventory comes in a professional version for Microsoft RMS/POS (with direct database integration) and is sold through Microsoft RMS Partners authorized to sell 2B-Inventory. We also have a "Lite" version for all other POS systems which includes an import/export wizard. For more information on purchasing or reselling 2B-Inventory, visit

http://www.2Bsolutions.net/2B-Inventory.htm

or call 205-408-9991.

Barkley Busby
Vice President, 2B Solutions
32 Manning Place ? The Town of Mt Laurel
Birmingham, Al 35242
Office: 205-408-9991
Mobile: 205-612-3124
barkley@2Bsolutions.net

http://www.2Bsolutions.net

 

[horizon2000]

Hello,

I have a one problem with RMS. How do you deal with items that you want to return to the supplier. POs would not accept negative numbers.

Thanks a lot for your help.
Robert

 

[MobileAppProvider]

We have the handheld application that directly integrates with Microsoft RMS. We actually are adding the functionality to receive a negative quatity in 2B-Inventory that will allow for situations like returning an item to the supplier. If you are interested in learning more, please give me a call.

Barkley Busby
Vice President, 2B Solutions
Office: 205-408-9991
Mobile: 205-612-3124
barkley@2Bsolutions.net

http://www.2Bsolutions.net