Benefits

Why Benefits Are Important

You need software that does more than act like a cash register. You need a system that can deliever benefits that have a real value to your business and you.

You have already put a lot into your business; it is about time your software gave back. Many retailers, just like you, have reported these benefits they enjoyed:

• Increased customer traffic to your front door
• Increased customer satisfaction
• Reduced costs
• Better inventory control
• Better rental product management
• Additional opportunities to increase revenue
• Increased productivity
• Time saving
• Better information for vital business decisions
• Improved employee tracking
• A feeling of security and peace of mind
• Reduced internal theft
• Reduced customer theft

You might be asking, how can a software program provide these types of benefits. It's through the features.

Benefits In Detail

Increased Customer Traffic To Your Front Door

• Customer Targeting - Direct market (mail or email) or contact customers based on rental and/or purchasing behaviors.
  
• Customer Drop Off Reporting - Get those revenue generating customers that have stopped coming in back into the habit of visiting your store. This feature compares a base line period with a current period to identify a drop in rentals, purchasing and/or visits.
  
• Customizable form letters let you generate any type of direct mailer or email; birthdays, promotions, announcements and so on.
  
• Get your inventory on the Web with Web-Link and interface for Phoenix that posts your rental and merchandise on the web.
  
• A gift card program is a great way to get people coming back. It's built right into the system.
  
• Subscription plans help keep customers when a competitor is offering a sub plan.

Increased Customer Satisfaction

• Setup the whole family on a common account with the authorized renter section. Photo ID's can be stored for each renter and each transaction is tracked by individual renter. Now you will always know which renter charged that late fee.
  
• Your parent customers will love you for implementing the Rating Check feature that checks the age of the renter with each title that is being rented. A warning message will prompt your clerk if an under aged renter attempts to rent a title beyond their limit.
  
• Do what the big guys can't, offer reservations to your customers and they will beat down your door. Getting that latest hot new title on a Friday night goes a long way to satisfying customers.
  
• Offer your customers a discount using the prepaid rental system. You get your money up front, your customer gets a small discount, and the system handles all the work of tracking for you.
  
• Save your customer the dread of getting home only to find out that his wife has already seen that title. Phoenix checks the rented history of each customer and will prompt the clerk when a customer attempts to rent a title he has already seen.

Reduced Costs

• Payroll is a big portion of your budget and staffing the right number of people each day is vital to serving customers and keeping payroll down during slow times. Phoenix takes the guess work out of scheduling by showing you when your volume by hour. You will save tons of time and lower your payroll expense without hurting customer service.
  
• Identifying what marketing efforts are working can greatly reduce your cost. Tracking coupons through the system will tell you if something is not working and you can change it or discontinue that form of marketing saving you hundreds of dollars a month.
  
• Credit card processing can take a bite out of profits. Now you can get a processing discount as low as 1.75%. This can save the average retailer $700-$1,200 a year.

Better Inventory Control

• Now we can help you identify slow moving and fast moving inventory with a new inventory turnover report. You will be able to keep those fast paced items in stock and clear up valuable space by dumping those items that collect dust.
  
• Now you can automatically generate purchase orders for merchandise items that need to be replenished. A PO for each vendor is generated based on your on-hand quantity, restocking level, and reorder point.
  
• Phoenix will departmentalize your merchandise items so that you can identify areas that are profitable.
  
• Create pricing groups (super groups) to make managing your package deals easy.

Better Rental Product Management

• Have you ever put off going through your catalog stock to find dead titles? Now we can identify your slow renting inventory with a simple mouse click. Save hours a week and clear room for those new arrivals.
  
• Tracking title performance has never been easier and you can view a titles performance by any week of its life span.
  
• Identifying what genres are hot is vital to satisfying customers and Phoenix will show you what categories are the most profitable for each season of the year.
  
• Utilize the Internet title look up system to import title information: proper spelling of the title, actors, synopsis, run time, and rating.
  
• Throw away your late reports and have your staff work from our Over Due Interactive System. It's on-line and you take notes about your contact with the customer.
  
• You will know exactly how well you bought on a title using the purchase targeting system. You setup your target profit margin for a specific number of weeks out (from street date), then Phoenix will accumulates the information and show shows you how may copies should have been purchased compared to how many were actually purchased.

Additional Opportunities To Increase Revenue

• Selling off excess titles can be as easy as asking your customer to purchase them. Your clerks can be prompted whenever a copy is for sale (during a rental). You will be able to tell the customer instantly how much more to purchase the product and the total cost of the purchase.
  
• Get in front of your customers more often with an automated email system.
  
• Collecting late fees has just gotten easier. A pop-up window alerts your clerks with late fee information and shows them when it was due and when it was returned.
  
• Customer statements are a great way to collect those outstanding late fees. You can utilize windowed envelopes or print mailing labels along with the statements.
  
• You can increase your potential for rental revenue by identifying and recovering overdue inventory. The overdue inventory report will list product by customer and provide telephone numbers for easy contact.
  
• You can increase profitability by utilizing product trading (game, music, movies). The system allows you to purchase used inventory right from the transaction window.
  
• Transferring inventory from one location to another can boost sales by getting the product where you need it most.

Increased Productivity

• Customize the transaction tool bar to show the functions you use in your business.
  
• Processing transactions is simple and easy with this Windows product. Simple point, click and rent.
  
• On-line help gives you a quick reference for any question.
  
• Easy-to-read screens and understandable text provide for increased efficiency.
  
• Cloning rental product information is a snap with one command button. You can add as many copies of a title you want with a simple click of the mouse.

Time Saving

• We cut your setup time down to a fraction of the time with an easy-to-follow users guide. Written by non-programmers, easy to follow along, and you will quickly learn the product.
  
• Cut your time by 77% with batch check-ins for that morning drop box.
  
• Receive full purchase orders with one mouse click, saving your hours a month.
  
• Automatically reconcile your inventory with one mouse click. Once the inventory is complete, the system will automatically adjust the inventory levels.
  
• Utilize the Internet title look up to import title information into Phoenix. This feature will download the basic title information (including synopsis and actors).
  
• Getting new customers signed up quickly is faster with the Phoenix generated customer form. The customer's information is automatically inserted on the form and is printed when you save the customer-record.

Better Information For Vital Business Decisions

• You will have a wealth of information at your fingertips with predefined static reports categorized by customer, inventory, financial, rental product, and auditing.
  
• Report generators are an easy way to custom design a report to fit your needs.
  
• Customer demographics break down your revenue stream by age bracket and gender. Information is provided on titles (rental product), formats, genres, pricing categories, merchandise, departments, and storewide revenue.
  
• The customer ranking system shows you who your best customers are at the time of transaction. A five-star system can be customized to your parameters.
  
• Slow renting inventory reports give you a sure-fire way of identifying product that you can sell off or transfer out. You will save 4-9 hours a week by using this report.
  
• Never walk through the isles again wondering what is moving and what is collecting dust. Inventory turnover reports identify each products movement or turnover based on any given period.
  
• Financial information is available for merchandise, rental product, store performance, and customers for any given period.

Improved Employee Tracking

• Phoenix gives you eyes on your store when you are not there through the use of the internal auditing system. All unusual activities are logged for later review.
  
• The employee time clock eliminates the pain in calculating worked hours from manual time cards.
  
• Creating employee schedules are easy and can be printed for posting on your employee board.
  
• Employee commissions on selected merchandise and late fees are a great incentive to sell more or collect more.
  
• The employee performance monitoring system gives you a way to easily identify your stars and those that need additional instruction. This system gathers a range of information from within Phoenix to rate your employees. Information like: times late, late fees passed up, average ticket sales, missed shifts, tardiness, rental revenue, and merchandise revenue. 

A Feeling Of Security And Peace Of Mind

• You will rest easy knowing the system is working for you while you are away. Vital business information will be there when you are ready to make those important business decisions. For now though, take that vacation.
  
• Utilize the customer required fields features insure your clerks fill out new signup records properly.
  
• The signature capture system stores the customer signature on each invoice.
  
• The late fee cap system lets you compute the maximum late fee you can assess.

Reduced Internal Theft

• A full cash drawer reconciliation system helps keep the money where it belongs, in your pocket not your employees.
  
• Phoenix comes with customizable access and can be uniquely assigned to each employee. You can protect sensitive areas of the product and grant access to areas to those you trust.
  
• Each transaction is tagged with the employee's name and you can identify which employee did what activites.
  
• A manager override feature puts the responsibility of decision making on the manager rather than your clerk.

Reduced Customer Theft

• Phoenix will check existing customers when a new customer signs up at your location. The system will alert you if it finds a match and will help eliminate customers with multiple accounts.
  
• A camera ID system is available and will display the customer's photo each time s/he rents at your store.
  
• A customer PIN pad is available to protect against unauthorized use. The customer would enter a PIN before each transaction.
  
• You can limit the number of rental items a customer may have out at one time and you can customize this value for each customer.
  
• A duplicate customer checking reduces the chances of existing customers signing up for a new account. The system will perform a "like matching" on several key fields and produce a list of possible matches before adding a new customer.

Learn about the Features in Phoenix for Windows