i was contemplating self serve at work today (as you do
) and i remembered that i posted a review of WoWPOS SCO on here.
Ok, here it is: the long-awaited WoWPoS SCO review from me =]
In my opinion the software is really close to being fantastic -
if they can fix up the problems (and do it quickly)
then I think I will be able to safely say that WoWPoS SCO is a
step forwards from NCR - at the moment its not.
You all probably know these problems and have posted them here before but Ill
go over my main problems with it, now that i have used it:
1. the GUI - we all know how damn ugly it is, no debating that, i think the
start & use own bag buttons need to be in a contrasting colour (grey or something)
and perhaps lighten up the background - the dark green is not good! Put a big W/apple
logo or something on there! its so damn boring!
2. signatures - this has to be the most frustrating problem at the moment.
customers have no idea that their signature has worked, and when we eventually do approve it,
there is no processing screen or anything, so the customer thinks you havnt pushed the Yes
button, when in fact you have.
3. Weight issues, I know this will improve over time, but some of the weight issues i had
yesterday were rediculous.
4. the problem as discussed on here previously about produce being placed into the
bagging area in two lots, surely if the machine knows the exact weight from the scale, it
should wait till that exact weight is in the bagging area!
5. The instruction to 'insert coins, then insert notes' is not necessary i believe. some customers
think that they have to give the exact change now, if they cant figure out for themselves
how to minimise the change they get then thats their problem.
6. green bag support - i thought this was supposed to be the main improvement! i very rarely saw
a green bag that worked, even when the customer presses 'own bag' it still says unexpected item, and
exactly the same thing for 'New bag' - something is wrong here!!
7. the way reduced to clear items are displayed on the total - on normal registers when you scan a reduced item
it shows it something like this:
PRICE REDUCTION
2L WW Milk
Original Price - 3.00
________________ 1.50
But on SCO it puts the original price in the same column as the reduced price, so the customer thinks
that they are being charged both prices, it confused the hell out of me, and it got into such a mess that
I couldnt understand what was voided and what wasnt that i voided the transaction and started her again.
Ok the positives:
1. Seperate look up menus! Thank god for those - so much cleaner and easier to find things!
2. The ability to do all our supervisor stuff through the WoWPoS Screen - I really like this.
3. Everyday rewards card screen - no more complaining about forgetting to scan it
Wow, so 7 negatives and 3 positives... Hmm well my opinion is probably pretty biased at this stage, cause
it was only my first shift with it, and it was generally a really frustrating day.
But like I said, if they can fix the above problems, then WoWPoS is an improvement from NCR...
PS. I dont know why you guys thought the voice was too quiet - ours is so loud that someone has taped up one of the speakers on each machine to try and quieten it!
turns out that out of the 7 problems i had with the software during its launch only 2 still bug me. not bad considering there has only been 1 store release since then.
the rundown:
1. GUI - NO - still horrific, changes need to be made here
2. signatures - YES - significantly improved in 10.0
3. weight errors - YES - definitely noticed a reduction in the number of weight errors
4. produce - ?? - does this still happen? i can't even remember now...
5. coins - YES - ok so that wasn't such a big deal in the first place
6. green bags - SORT OF - theres an improvement, but i reckon the 'flow' of green bag use could be more logical (ie green lights,remove,new bag, place on - doesnt make sense to alot of people)
7. RTC - NO - no change, needs to be improved in a GUI fix.
1. our store's menus have become really messy - they need a good clean up. i mean watermelons on the popular menu but not on the alphabetical menu!?!? thats not confusing
2. still really like this, although there needs to be a 'LANE CLOSED' (like NCRSCO had) screen that you can bring up, rather than just logging off to make it really clear to customers the lane is closed.
3. EDR - i still think its important to have this screen with the big push to scan/ QFF etc. (while reading comments on my original post i noticed some disagreed with me - im sticking with my original thoughts
)
so yeah, upon reflection Woolies arent doing that bad with their attempt at SCO software.
i cant really think of anything that i would now like to see improve (except a general GUI change)
what you guys reckon? anything you reckon still needs to be fixed/should be implemented?
