In the retail sector, fast, simple and efficient service is all important. Companies all over the world enjoy the benefits that Centara‘s innovative solutions bring to their business. One of the most important design principles of Centara solutions is increased transaction speed and reduced customer waiting time.

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RETAIL VERTICALS factsheets

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Department Stores	Apparel & Fashion	Supermarkets
Convenience Stores	Rentals	Jewelry
Municipalities	Furniture

 

RETAIL HORIZONTALS factsheets

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Special Offers & Discounts	Loyalty & Gift Cards	Raincheck
Simple Inventory	POS Sales Intelligence

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Centara point-of-sale solutions trusted by customers around the world

Centara serves hundreds of customers operating businesses the world over. Centara has a proven track record in managing transactions for companies with international retail operations handling any tax situation, such as multiple taxes including stacked tax, and multi-currency situations.

Being a perfect fit for retail businesses of all sizes, it is deployed equally successfully by a shoe shop on the high street operating a single outlet, as by an international chain of department stores operating hundreds of outlets. Providing our demanding customer base with round the clock support and services every day of the year, we make sure we deliver on our promises.

Low risk of deployment

When choosing a mission critical system minimizing the risk of deployment is an important consideration. Centara is one of the safest systems in its field to deploy as it is:

• Delivered with professional services to ensure it is customized  configured and implemented to your specific requirements.
• It is quick to deploy following an agile methodology
• It is easy to use and the interface with tender keys is completely customizable to achieve quicker user adoption
• The system is designed to be independent of operating systems, retail hardware and accounting systems so there is no vendor lock-in.
• The system will keep transactions going even if the server goes down or connections to other systems are lost
• Centara offers seamless integration with other systems and peripherals. Flexible design based on the ARTS data model and open connectivity of OPOS peripheral drivers, extensive experience and a clear methodology contribute to making integration with external systems safe and expedient.

Proven return on investment

Centara has proven time and again to offer a great return on investment.

• When adopting Centara a leading groceries chain in Europe was able to install up to 20% fewer checkout lanes in each store due to the increased transaction speeds offered by Centara. This freed valuable store space for products
• An international group of department stores operating in most countries in Europe has their daily sales accounting information for all stores collated in one report and one currency sent to headquarters for data mining and analysis.This has lead to reduced operating cost as the data is flowing to and from the point of sale in a unified manner, regardless whether the till was in the cafeteria, the supermarket or the petrol station.

A unique retail system

Centara offers businesses great benefits in the way it covers so many sectors of retail and hospitality. It can handle supermarket checkout lanes, fashion stores, shoe stores, admission ticket sales, bars, fine dining, take-away, fast food, etc. just to name a few.

Company look and feel

Centara can be configured to suit each operation perfectly. The screen layout can be modified, menus are flexible, reports can be tailor made, and the system can be hooked seamlessly to external systems. This means that although you’re using a system that is used by thousands, it still has the company look and feel – it is unique to your operation. A part of what makes Centara flexible is that it is truly an international system. It has already been translated to a number of languages and adding more is a straightforward task. The adaptability also leads to reduced training costs as the till operation is intuitive and the cashier is immediately comfortable.

Enterprise ready

Centara can handle the most demanding of fiscal requirements where the environment requires. Enterprise ready, Centara is also extremely scalable. It functions just as well in a single store as in a chain of hundreds of stores. A store can have a single till or 30 (or more) without affecting the performance. These tills can all have different layouts dependent on function, time of day or even operator. This means that Centara will grow with your operation – it is “enterprise ready”. Another feature of Centara is the selective replication of data. This means total control of data distribution and collection for someone that operates a chain of retail or hospitality outlets. The data can be modified at headquarters and then distributed to the stores. The sales data can also flow back to HQ for data mining and analysis. These features lead to reduced operating cost as the data is flowing to and from the point of sale in a unified manner, regardless whether the till was in the cafeteria, the supermarket or the petrol station. So for the management the uniqueness comes from:

• Multi-sector
• One system covers all aspect of the operation
• Scalable
• Enterprise ready
• Reliable
• International
• Company look and feel of the till screen
• Flexible menus and reports
• Extendibility
• Unified data flow
• Reduced training cost
• Reduced operating cost
• A uniquely flexible and reliable design

So let us now look at Centara from a technical perspective. Centara is unique in the way it is designed. It is based on the ARTS (www.nrf-arts.org) data model and that in itself guarantees a system that is uniquely flexible and powerful. Centara has therefore built in not only the expertise found at HBI, but also the expertise of thousands of retail experts from around the world. We have already mentioned some of the unique features of Centara such as its configurability. The screen layout can be modified to give the optimal performance that is needed, and to give a company look. Menus are easily configurable and can change according to the time of day, location of the workstation, even the operators themselves. The list goes on. Similarly the report descriptions are not hard coded, but are saved in separate files, giving total flexibility of the reports that come out of the system. Reports can be generated interactively, but also scheduled at certain times of day. The output can be printed, displayed as a web page, sent as email or mobile text, etc. Reports can also be grouped so that only one action is needed to generate all the information that is required to operate the system.

A giant retail macro processor

Another unique feature of Centara is that it is essentially a giant retail macro processor. All actions are assigned to menus in this fashion, but that is not the only use of this feature. Centara has also the capability to allow external programs (Executables or DLLs) to return such macros and thereby affect the retail operation without worrying about the exact details of how it gets done. The DLL or external program gets full details of the current transaction and is able to become a part of the till function. An example of this is to add specific cost or discount calculation to the sale of an item, such as calculating the cost of cleaning draperies and curtains at a dry cleaning business. Another example could be a hotel reservation system that would add the room charge to all the items that come from the bar, restaurant, gift shop etc. Then Centara would handle the payment phase using all the latest payment features. These calls to external programs or DLLs are not restricted to the user pressing menu buttons, but they can also be tied to events in the till operation. There are a great number of events that can be used in this manner and you can normally request to be notified before or after an event happens (sale, total, payment, discount, print, …). An example of this would be a pharmacy application that is notified after an each item is sold and it uses the information to check the sale for local regulation regarding which medication can be sold together – possibly voiding the sale of the last item.

The External Authorization Socket Interface (EASI) is another unique feature of Centara.

It not only handles the standard EFT/EMV authorizations, but it can also handle all types of payment authorizations that are needed in a modern environment. It can query an accounting system to check whether a charge is allowed; It can accept payment through a phone; It can hook to a loyalty system and check the balance there; It can validate a gift card; …the possibilities are endless, and this feature has allowed Centara to meet the needs of all our customers when it comes to their need for how to finalize transactions. Centara also provides a hook to an information client, that can be used to query the till and even pass information back and forth as the till is operating. This we have already used to hook a gift card system into Centara providing unique features. We’ve also used this to create monitors for both service personnel and management giving indication of the status of each till in an enterprise. Yet another feature of Centara is its flexibility in interfacing to other systems within the organization. We have already mentioned how the workstation can be extended, but there are other ways of connecting to Centara. First of all you can hook directly to the database. It is a relational database so standard SQL statements is all that is needed along with a knowledge of the ARTS data model. Centara also supports text interfaces, both XML (IXRetail) and CSV files, and there is the industry standard TRLOG format that was introduced with our HB-GPoS product, but has been adopted by many other software providers. All of this means that Centara becomes a part of the organization, but with the flexibility that comes with well-defined interfaces. Each component in the whole system is easily interchangeable, so that the organization can adapt quickly to changes and progress without the pain of replacing all systems at once.

Selective data replication

The selective data replication offered by Centara allows you to have full control over how the information flows back and forth. For a multi-tier organization it means that it can be controlled at which level data is entered. Likewise the sales data can be aggregated as it is being passed to headquarters, minimizing the volume of data that is stored, except where it is needed. So for the technical team the uniqueness is found in:

• ARTS data model
• Connections to external programs and DLLs
• Retail macros
• Reporting to various media
• Event hooks
• EASI for external authorisations
• Information client hook
• Well defined interfaces (SQL, XML, CSV, TRLOG)
• Data replication control

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