Providing a total turnkey store, including the Point of Sale, Inventory Control & Accounting software provides the franchises with consistency

by Andy Shaw

It's fitting that a computer store franchise business would use a computer to find an accounting package for their franchises. "We began looking on the Internet and found Vigilant Business Software," recalls Dale Bain, now president of Loginet, the distribution arm of Computer Doctor. "We were looking for a point of sale system with a solid inventory control measure to it."

He remembers that they did find other point of sale and inventory control systems out there on the Web but none matched Vigilant for its range of functions, flexibility, track record, and performance for price. Vigilant, since it was founded in 1983, has been installed in over 10,000 organizations throughout North America and Europe.

Computer Doctor stores, headquarted in their birthplace of Aberdeen, South Dakota and now spread coast-to-coast, offer consumers computers, printers, fax machines and over 300 different related products, services and repairs. The variety of these products calls for extensive inventory control.

As a franchiser what was important to us was that we could barcode and standardize all our products before shipping them to the individual franchise owners," reveals Bain. "And Vigilant was very helpful that way." "We sort of acted as their MIS department," explains Vigilant president Jon Mainwaring. "Because we've had experience of setting up similar systems for over 50 franchise operations, we were able to help them design their codes in a logical fashion."

The result is that every Computer Doctor store that opens in a shopping mall near you, its doors will open with a standard inventory database operating in its back office computer server. When the sales staff greets the customer out front, Vigilant will instantly authorize the client's credit card, record the sale, update the general ledger and adjust the inventory.

"Once a franchise comes on board with us, we help them first design a store to fit their budget," Bain clarifies. "Then we load everything they need up on trucks and deliver it to the store. They unload the palettes, assemble to displays, get out their point of sale equipment and back office server, turn them on and they are ready for business."

Founded in 1991, Computer Doctor franchise operation has been expanding rapidly ever since and has reached 35 franchise holders. Plans call for hundreds more. "It won't matter how many more, we'll be able to help them," Mainwaring asserts. "We're fairly unique in our focus on franchises and we have developed real expertise in that area. We know what franchising needs are and we have the experience and infrastructure to address those needs."

A store such as Computer Doctor has no greater need than to measure profitability-both its own and its individual franchises. To ease this process, Computer Doctor is using Vigilant's built-in reports module weekly to track gross sales, percentage made on gross sales, royalties paid and other data. They are then all filed in a standard Vigilant report format to the Aberdeen headquarters over the Internet.

"Vigilant's sales analysis reports are very, very useful to us," Bain attests. "We can look at each individual product throughout the week's activities and see what margins are on it. We've never been able to do that with any other software. With Vigilant, you can really dissect your profitability. It takes a lot of the guesswork out of what you are doing."

Andy Shaw is a freelance writer, broadcaster and international journalist with articles in many business and technical publications.