It sounds obvious, but it's often overlooked. The internet is overflowing with review sites, and although most of them are about either hotels or online shops, I'm noticing more and more 'bricks and mortar' businesses are getting reviews. The wide spread adoption of Google places will certainly be contributing to this, and with its prominence in google searches, online reviews by your customers are only going to become more widespread.

This can work for and against you. Clearly you need to be aware of the possibility, in order to respond where appropriate to any negative reviews. One of the best ways to do this is to setup Google alerts. This allows you to be emailed, either immediately, or daily when your search phrase (for example, your company name) appears in a new google search.

This morning Google+ finally launched their branded pages, which allows businesses and brands to create their own google+ identity pages. I've just created VME's page here. Facebook has had this concept for a while, so google are finally catching up, but being google, this has potential to be a lot more important.

When customers search for your company on the internet (and they will - even if they are only looking up your address or opening hours) then a google+ page is going to appear at the front. It gives you a tremendous opportunity to reach out to your customers, both present and potential. That's just the beginning though - as more and more people use social media tools such as google+ and facebook, encouraging them to connect to your 'page' gives you a route to immediately communicate with them.

25th October 2011; Edinburgh - Scotmid are pleased to announce the successful implementation of the IntelliStore fuel solution into Scotmid's first petrol station.

As part of the acquisition of Botterills at the end of 2010, Scotmid inherited 2 petrol stations. With no prior experience of running forecourts, Scotmid turned to VME to install their fuel solution, an optional bolt on module to IntelliStore.

4th October 2011; Peasmarsh - Jempsons are pleased to announce that they have committed to rolling out IntelliStore into their Budgens stores.

These stores will be implemented in 2012, at the same time as each store is refitted. This implementation will give them complete control over their entire estate of NISA supermarkets, Budgens stores, coffee shops and petrol forecourts from their Head Office in Peasmarsh.

1st September 2011; Edinburgh – Razzo Coffee, a startup coffee shop chain with an impressive prime city centre location in the middle of St Andrews Square, Edinburgh, is pleased to announce they have signed a deal with VME Retail to implement IntelliStore into their coffee shops.

IntelliStore will be installed in all their locations, including their newest site in "the Centre" in Livingston. It will give them full control over their product file and allow them to implement the latest technologies, such as targeted promotions via their facebook page, and using IntelliStore's loyalty system for their regular customers - including bluetooth mobile phone adverts for passing customers, and the acceptance of QR codes.

A marketing dream is to get your message to your target audience at the lowest cost and highest return. Targeted mailing lists, or leaflet drops through the neighbourhood doors often are typically read by only 3% of those that receive them - and the conversion rate of those 3% into customers is even lower. A leaflet drop of 10,000 might be read by 300 potential customers, but a good return would be for 10% of those 300 to become customers - 30 people out of 10,000 - 0.003% return on investment.

Then you must look at the cost of producing the direct mail or leaflet drop, and compare against the profit you've made on the sale to those 30 people. Was it worth it? Would you have been more profitable had you not done anything?

That's why we believe customers receipts are a tremendous opportunity. You'll already know how many receipts you issue, but if you're going to print a message to encourage the customer to do something that will make you money, you need to get them to read it first. 3 lines of text in the same font as the till receipt is not going to be noticed by the customer, or it will be forgotten about quickly.

30th May 2011; Edinburgh - Semi-Chem have announced they are to install IntelliStore's branch charging and invoice matching modules, after the successful implementation by their parent company, Scotmid Co-op.

The implementation will greatly assist in reducing workload for the head office staff, who have been used to the automation provided by IntelliStore in the Scotmid side of the business.

22nd February 2011; Spalding - Red Lion quarter is an area in Spalding that had lay derelict for more than 10 years and was earmarked for regeneration by South Holland Council. As part of this project, a new food store was being installed and IntelliStore was chosen to run the business.

The system was managed and installed by VME partner Azurri, using Toshiba Tec tills as requested by the customer.

28th December 2010; Edinburgh - Scotmid have announced the acquisition of Botterills stores, giving them over 50 new stores, which takes Scotmid to over 330 stores running IntelliStore.

The implementation of IntelliStore will be carried out over the next 12 months, at the same time as the stores are rebranded to Scotmid.

6th September 2010; Edinburgh – VME Retail are proud to announce that we have achieved Microsoft Gold Certified Partner status. Having been an Microsoft Certified Partner for many years, as VME expanded it seemed natural to progress to becoming a Gold Partner.

As Microsoft explains on their website, Microsoft Gold Certified Partners are their elite business partners. They have the knowledge, skills and commitment to help customers implement technology solutions that match their exact business needs.

19th May 2010; Penrith - Penrith Co-operative Society operates a Department Store and Supermarket from its Burrowgate Head Office with 9 food stores and 1 non food store located throughout Cumbria and The Weardale Valley.

After going through an intensive selection process, VME Retail were chosen to provide a complete refresh of Penrith Co-operative Society’s out-dated Epos systems. The decision to select VME Retail was heavily influenced by its record of successfully implementing IntelliStore in other independent Co-operative Society’s.

VME Retail will be providing Penrith Co-operative Society with it’s IntelliStore suite of systems which include Head Office, Back Office and Point of Sale. The Epos software will be installed on new IBM touchscreen tills and will be rolled out by the end of 2010.

28th April 2010; Seaton Deleval – Seaton Valley Co-operative society operates a food hall, non-food store, off-licence and pharmacy from its Seaton Deleval Headquarters near Whitley Bay, and 2 seperate pharmacies in the surrounding area.

VME Retail has been awarded the contract to replace the existing Head Office, Back Office and Point of Sale Software with its IntelliStore suite of software running on new IBM touchscreen tills.

Implementation is due to be completed by November 2010.

30th March 2010; Nuneaton - The Heart of England Co-operative Society, an independent Society based in Nuneaton, Warwickshire, has awarded VME retail the contract for the replacement of its ageing EPOS estate in it’s 33 Food Stores.

Following a detailed tender process, Heart of England decided to choose VME’s IntelliStore Solution which will provide them with a vastly improved range of reporting functions and a significantly enhanced stock control. Heart of England will be implementing IntelliStore Head Office, IntelliStore Back Office and Intellistore Point of Sale running on New IBM tills with the rollout to be commence late 2010 and be completed by early 2011.

2nd March 2010; Oxford - Nielsen is a global leader in providing consumer-focused marketing data to manufacturers of FMCG products.

Sales information is gathered at the point of sale and provides clients with essential facts on how their products are performing, market trends and sales results. It also provides critical information on distribution and the effectiveness of in-store promotions.

Whilst the majority of this data is collected ‘electronically’, there are a number of CTN stores that are currently audited manually. Nielsen realised that if an Epos system could be installed in these sites, the data could be provided electronically thus helping to increase the integrity of the data and supply it within stricter timescales.

The initial contract is to provide VME Retail’s IntelliStore Back Office and Point of Sale systems installed on new touchsceen tills to 35 shops with the possibility of more in the future. VME Retail will ‘poll’ the sales data from these shops and provide it to Nielsen on a weekly basis.

Installations will be taking place during quarters 3 and 4 2010, and quarter 1 2011.

12th February 2010; Draperstown – O’Kane’s pharmacy has selected the IntelliStore suite to implement into their chain of pharmacies in Draperstown, Northern Ireland.

Their manual systems were causing significant problems with stock control and availability so they realised that they needed to install a full epos system in their sites. A system was needed that could fulfil all their current and future requirements and also be easy to use, and after a comprehensive proposal from VME Retail, IntelliStore was chosen as it met all their criteria and offered significant additional benefits.

5th February 2010; Portglenone – McCann’s Filling Station has chosen IntelliStore to implement into their combined petrol station and supermarket in Portglenone Northern Ireland.

A member of the NISA group, they wanted an epos solution that would integrate to their petrol forecourt and provide full reporting functionality in their back office. The ability to manage stock, control prices, run promotions and link to NISA’s ordering system were influencing factors in their decision. However, joining a community of similar users thanks to VME Retail’s community forum was the deciding factor, so that no longer would they feel isolated as they did with their previous system.

22nd January 2010; Ashurstwood – Ashurstwood Village Stores has implemented IntelliStore Back Office and POS into their community store in the heart of Sussex.

They had been using a system that was installed several years ago and they needed to upgrade to a more functional and ‘feature-rich’ system, in particular a touch screen EPOS system to replace their ageing hardware.

VME Retail was selected primarily because of its enviable customer retention track record, and because VME Retail use state of the art technology in their solutions. IntelliStore’s ability to interface to the NISA ordering system was also a deciding factor.

2nd December 2009; Crook of Devon – VME Retail are pleased to announce the completion of an interface between IntelliStore and Minster Logistics warehousing systems.

VME customers using Minster as their warehouse system can now continue to use IntelliStore as their prime data store whilst ensuring data integrity with their warehouse system, as a direct result improving availability. Semi-Chem are the first customers of VME Retail to implement this interface.

7th November 2009; Maydown – Longs Supermarkets are very pleased to announce they have commited to the next generation version of VME Retail’s software suite, IntelliStore. Longs Supermarkets have been very happy customers using IntelliStore since 2003, and it was an easy choice to commit to the next generation version, IntelliStore v3, whilst upgrading their ageing estate of Fujitsu Tills.

IBM tills and new back office and head office hardware will be installed, utilising the existing IntelliStore v2. As part of the deal Longs Supermarkets will be one of the pilot customers for IntelliStore v3.

8th September 2009; Clydebank – Clydebank Co-operative Society have implemented IntelliStore into their Sylvannia Way department store. Having been impressed with IntelliStore’s features and functionality in their food stores, it was an easy choice to implement it when the decision was made to upgrade the manual systems they had been using.

Clydebank Co-op are looking forward to working together with VME over the next few years, upgrading and improving upon existing functionality to further address the requirements of their department store business.

24th April 2009; Maydown – Long Supermarkets are pleased to announce the successful implementation of integrated CCTV throughout their business. VME Retail supplied the interface to the 3rd party CCTV system which now allows Longs to monitor their entire business from their head office.

16th February 2009; Crook of Devon – VME Retail and IBM are extremely proud to announce the launch of redtill.com, which is bringing the benefits of IntelliStore to the tier 3 marketplace.

Redtill.com utilises the benefits of IntelliStore in a pre-packaged solution combining IBM hardware with VME Retail’s software and services expertise. Finally, the smaller independent retailers can become part of a community of like minded retailers, for the first time using a tier 1 retailing system to further their businesses.

For further details please visit http://www.redtill.com/.

14th January 2009; Crook of Devon – VME Retail are pleased to announce the availability of an interface to the market research company, Litmus. This now allows VME Retail’s customers to resell their EPOS sales data to Litmus.

14th November 2008; Peasmarsh – Jempsons of Peasmarsh have selected IntelliStore to replace manual tills in their coffee shop chain.

Already a very satisfied IntelliStore user, Jempsons decided to implement IntelliStore into their Coffee Shops due to the lack of control they had over the business, which was only getting worse as they opened more and more stores. Being an existing satisfied customer for over 10 years in the supermarkets chain business, Jempsons didn’t even need to look elsewhere at alternative systems.

The coffee shop chain was the first to implement IntelliStore in its “coffee shop” mode, which has been that successful that they are now implementing it into the small coffee shops within their supermarkets.

5th November 2008; Peasmarsh – Jempsons have implemented the IntelliStore epos solution into their popular fuel station within the grounds of their flagship supermarket in Peasmarsh.

By implementing IntelliStore POS with the Fuel module, they now have complete control over all pumps, combined with full stock control of both dry and wet stock.

24th October 2008; Edinburgh – VME Retail’s queue busting solution, part of the IntelliStore HHT optional module, has been rolled out to Semi-Chem branches.

This now enables Semi-Chem staff to scan goods in a basket with any of the VME Retail approved handheld devices (HHTs) which produces a barcoded ‘voucher’ receipt. When the customer reaches the epos till, the receipt is scanned and the transaction is processed without the goods having to be rescanned. Despite initial concerns to the contrary, this had proven to be a tremendous success, and has significantly improved the throughflow of customers during peak trading times.

1st September 2008; Edinburgh – Scotmid Co-op have implemented the IntelliStore CRTG interface, automating the entry of product and price changes from their main supplier, the Co-operative Retail Trading Group (CRTG).

This has resulted in massive time savings as previously these changes were entered manually, and has allowed head office staff to be re-allocated to other parts of the business. The interface still allows Scotmid to create their own business rules, to decide what information is automatically loaded, what is rejected and what is left for the trading managers to decide on.

4th October 2008; Peasmarsh – Jempsons were pleased to pilot the new OCS web interface made available from NISA, replacing their ageing Spedi interface and now fully web enabled.

VME were able to convert their existing Spedi NISA interface, and add enhancements at the same time. Products and promotions are now interfaced from NISA, allowing Jempsons full control over what they accept yet still retaining a background PLOF from which they can add products extremely quickly.

3rd March 2008; Galashiels – Lothian, Borders & Angus Co-operative Society have rolled out the Intellistore automatic order generation module to all of their branches, with great success.

Despite trepidation from branch managers who were highly suspicious of technology, the pilot stores proved the success of the system, reducing overstocks and increasing turnover due to stock availability. Lothian, Borders & Angus Co-op are now looking forward to using more of the functionality to further improve sales, by optimising which products are stocked instore.

26th February 2008; Maydown – Longs Supermarkets are pleased to announce that in conjunction with VME Retail, they have successfully completed an interface allowing them to join the Supervalu brand supplied by Musgrave Retail Partners NI.

Due to the commercial sensitivities of the deal, VME Retail had to work very quickly to produce the interfaces required to meet commercial deadlines set by both Longs Supermarkets and Musgrave Retail Partners NI. VME were pleased to deliver the solution both early, and within budget.

3rd August 2007; Galashiels – A radio frequency HHT rollout using Nordic ID RF601 terminals has been completed at all Lothian, Borders and Angus Co-op food stores. The Radio Frequency (RF) provides a live link between the Back Office PC and the hand-held terminal used in the store. The HHT has a variety of useful functions, including ordering, stock control, wastage, price-checking and labelling.

20th July 2007; Galashiels – IntelliStore Head Office Branch Charging module has been installed and is currently being trialled at Lothian, Borders and Angus Co-op’s Head Office in Galashiels. The Branch Charging module provides a pivotal link between IntelliStore Back Office used in the stores, and the external financial software used at Head Office.

25th June 2007; Peasmarsh – VME Retail has recently completed installation of 15 new v2 tills at Jempson’s award-winning store in Peasmarsh. The upgrade, from Fujitsu’s ISS300 POS, allows Jempsons to take advantage of the enhancements offered by IntelliStore v2 POS over their existing legacy system.

IntelliStore v2 Back Office, which already interfaced to ISS300, will remain.

18th June 2007 – Lothian Borders and Angus Co-op have started using VME Retail’s new managed polling service to send banking and order information from its stores to the Head Office in Galashiels.

22nd February 2007; Galashiels – After undergoing a successful trial period at their Gala Park store, Lothian Borders and Angus Co-op have given the go-ahead to roll out the IntelliStore automatic order generation module (also known as SBO) into their 52 remaining food stores.

6 October 2006; Peasmarsh – Jempsons Superstore, the award winning independent retailer of Peasmarsh, England, has commenced operation of their new Nisa OCS Link from VME Retail. The new software module works in conjunction with the IntelliStore Back-Office system to enable the transmission of all Nisa orders and deliveries, as well as product updates.

26th September 2006; Clydebank – Clydebank Co-operative Society has announced their decision to upgrade to IntelliStore v2. Clydebank being a long standing customer of VME Retail for almost 10 years, saw the upgrade to IntelliStore v2 as the natural path for them to follow.

Implementing the latest version of IntelliStore allows Clydebank Co-op to implement the automatic order generation module, which is something they strongly believe will make a massive improvement to the business’s performance.

18th July 2006; Ipswich – East Anglia Federal Co-operative Society has selected IntelliStore from VME Retail to help improve the quality of their product information from the Co-operative Retail Trading Group (CRTG). The IntelliStore CRTG module will be implemented in two phases with the first phase due to commence in early August 2006. Automation of East Anglia Federal Co-op’s data import process will lead to significant time savings for the organisation, as well as improving the accuracy of the product information.

27th February 2006; Galashiels – Lothian, Borders & Angus Co-operative Society (LBACS) has announced completion of a major roll out of 220 point of sale terminals at 48 stores throughout Scotland. For their new point of sale solution LBACS chose IntelliStore software from VME Retail, running at head-office, back-office and point of sale. LBACS has been a client of VME Retail’s for almost twenty years and looks forward to continued success using IntelliStore.

31 October 2005; Lichfield – VME Retail, in association with Midlands Co-operative Society, has completed the roll-out of their Chip & Pin solution across 614 epos terminals at 164 retail stores. The solution consists of EFT software from Comms XL, with Hypercom pin pads connected to Fujitsu TeamPOS 5000 epos terminals. The project also involved an upgrade of ISS300 epos software. VME Retail worked closely with members of Midlands Co-op’s own systems team for a successful implementation.

7 October 2005; Edinburgh – Scotmid Co-operative Society has announced completion of a major roll out of a 716 pin entry devices for Chip & Pin acceptance, at 266 stores throughout Scotland and Northern Ireland. The installation was performed by VME Retail in cooperation with Scotmid’s internal technical team. As part of the project VME Retail also implemented their IntelliStore touch screen epos software.

13th June 2005; Lichfield – Midlands Co-operative Society has recently commenced trials of IntelliStore from VME Retail, at eight of their Metro Stores in the Birmingham area. The Metro stores will use IntelliStore software to manage stock, control prices and run promotions. This trial complements the range of other products and services that VME Retail has provided to Midlands Co-op including support and maintenance of their epos systems.