Superquinn Ballinteer Lost the (IT) plot this morning

Red Alert

Yesterday, the new "Fastlane" checkouts which they've installed broke down. A certain level of containable mayhem ensued - at least you could still use the Super Scan system if you had a superclub card. Evidently the offline mode (if it's there at all) doesn't work.

Today, they hadn't fixed the problem. The store manager was nowhere to be found, in fact I don't think he was in the building at all. People were backed up the aisles, babies were crying, irate customers etc. Super Scan broke down, and at least two other tills were non-functional.

Yesterday I filled a 20-item basket in 5 minutes and spent 20 mins at the tills. This morning I filled a 5-item basket and spent over half an hour queueing. A free bottle of wine was provided which was gratefully accepted!

On the whole a very bad mark for Superquinn Ballinteer - one store they need to do well in with all the new housing developments, and with the proximity of Tesco in Dundrum.

The group need to sort out it's IT, and look at removing all the NCR and Windows-based equipment which seems to be the root cause of the problem. It seems to be very fragile, and to people who don't know or care about computing, a bad IT system puts forward a very bad image of the company - just like this morning.

jimmycrackcorm

Red Alert wrote:

The group need to sort out it's IT, and look at removing all the NCR and Windows-based equipment which seems to be the root cause of the problem. It seems to be very fragile, and to people who don't know or care about computing, a bad IT system puts forward a very bad image of the company - just like this morning.

That's a very astute observation. Would you think perhaps that writing software in Linux makes it automatically better .

NCR do have a lot of experience in EPOS systems but anything can go wrong.

Red Alert

Nope, not at all. When I worked part-time we moved from an Omron RS6000 system which was firmware and DOS based to NSB ObjectPOS which runs on Windows 2000. Both systems talked to an Oracle-based backend running on AIX.

I'm sure the firmware based system was much more reliable than anything Windows or Linux could muster. The NSB system did seem very tight, and they'd done all the extras properly like automatic reinstallation of registers etc.

However, when I looked at one of these Superquinn self scanners starting up, the whole thing looked very flaky. It actually runs the ordinary till application minimized and the self scan screen full-screen, and appears to 'pretend' to press the buttons as on an ordinary register. There are better ways to do this methinks!

I don't care whether the system really runs Windows or Linux - in an ideal world I wouldn't know, because it wouldn't break down. It's clear to me that nobody in that company actually knows very much about Microsoft networks in the first place, because otherwise the would know how to take remote control of a machine for example.

NCR seemed to do the move from firmware-based to windows-based equipment badly. Their stuff is top notch in terms of physical build quality, but even the interface of AS@R looks cluttered compared to anything from NSB or IBM. (You've never seen a broken checkout in Dunnes have you? )

spank_inferno

Dont mean to go slightly off topic, but I think overall Super Quinn Ballinteer provide a great service.

The food is far better, especially the meat and it is Irish (unlike the "northern irish" meat sold by tesco. And they are keenly priced.

I moved to wicklow and am sorely missing them.

On another note, I heard that the whole SC, from the Ballinteer house down to Maxol has been sold for.... guess what.... appartments!!.

Tesco's only competition may soon be going.
Picture dublin 14/16/18 in 3-4 years time, tens of thousands of appartments, 1 shop (tesco) I shudder at the thought of it

Red Alert

service is good because unlike tesco most of the staff are quite friendly and know their stuff, but the management team are decidedly second rate. so basically you've got stock, IT problems etc - a very bad impression made.

homeOwner

spank_inferno wrote:

Tesco's only competition may soon be going.
Picture dublin 14/16/18 in 3-4 years time, tens of thousands of appartments, 1 shop (tesco) I shudder at the thought of it

Dont worry, Lidl is opening soon just up the road in the old Glaxo Smith Kline building opposite marley park.