"The system allows us to have the information we need to make real-time decisions," said high-end optical retailer, Edward Beiner.
SANTA ROSA BEACH, Fla.—Ed Beiner, founder of The Edward Beiner Group, can check the day's sales from his 12 optical retail locations up to the second and compare them to last year's numbers to see how the company is doing, all on his smartphone. His director of operations, Omar Ruiz, can check the inventory for all of those 12 locations to determine how much is in stock and how much has been sold, also on his smartphone.
This, plus a host of other functions, are made possible using eye cloud PRO from Optical POS, Inc. "The system allows us to have the information we need to make real-time decisions," said Beiner.
Eyetique has also benefited from the software, crediting it with helping the company expand. Norman Childs, the founder of Eyetique, told dba, "We could not have grown like we're growing without this software. Our company has doubled in size in the past three years. That's pretty good metrics," he said about his company's growth since using eye cloud PRO. He switched from a system that he said was good for one location, but when transferring frames from one store to another, "they got lost in the shuffle," he said. Now, he can keep track of every frame across all of his 19 locations...and much more.
By Retailers, For Retailers
The eye cloud PRO software was created by Ivan Samuels, who himself operated The Eye Gallery, a 10-unit optical group with stores in Florida and Georgia, before selling the company in 2011.
Samuels developed the program around the year 2000. The system was launched in the cloud at a "time nobody knew about the cloud," Samuels told dba. With eye cloud PRO in use to some extent for 15 years, Samuels said, "If we had bugs, after 15 years of debugging, they're gone now." He estimates that the program has managed about $800 million worth of transactions to date.
"We went from nine stores to 19 stores in the past three years, and there's no doubt this was instrumental in helping us grow," said Norman Childs, Eyetique.
"You need to work in a store for a couple of years," said Samuels, eye cloud PRO's president and CEO, about developing the program that has grown from a point-of-sale inventory management program to one that now also encompasses patient outreach, lab integration, employee management, financial information, electronic medical records, and more.
Customized for Each User
"It's our day-to-day operating system for everything from the doctors to our opticians, from inventory to accounting. We have employee time cards on there," said Childs. "Anything you could possibly think of is in the software itself," he said, adding that if it's not in there, it can be added. "When there's a new development in the industry, they're very open to making those changes and updating the program," he said about eye cloud PRO's programmers.
Beiner also sites the ability to customize the program as one of its benefits. "What makes this unique is the fact that it can be tailored to our needs," he said. "What I like is not only all of the features developed because Ivan is in this industry, but he catered it to us to make it much easier. Ivan was a retailer, so he understands retailing, and since he set it up for his shop, it allows for advantages that retailers want."
"With two clicks you can see everything you sold this month," said Samuels, who is now focused on installing eye cloud PRO in optical locations throughout the country, and also in Canada, "all by referral," said Samuels.
Tracking Every Frame
The elaborate frame inventory system labels each individual frame so users of the program are able to check at any moment their entire stock and which stores have which frames.
"The system can track each frame and where it went, to what store, where it was sold," said Ruiz. "It can provide data from how long it sat on the shelf to how fast goods are moving." This has resulted in a reduction in the number of frame returns to vendors and a positive impact on the cost of goods sold. With improved inventory management, products can be automatically re-ordered daily, weekly or monthly...or not at all. Because the system monitors how long a particular frame sat on the shelf, any frame not sold after more than 45 days would not be re-ordered, Ruiz explained.
The system is not limited to retailing, however, having added other operational functions over the years. For Beiner, some features were customized to integrate with his company's accounting package and to transmit lab tickets to his optical group's centralized lab.
The system can also monitor how many hours each employee works and transmit that information to the accounting department. Other capabilities include recall functions that can automatically notify patients via phone, text or email with information regarding appointments and glasses-ready announcements.
This is another function in which the system's ability to be customized is beneficial. Samuels referred to a recording they added of Norman Childs' voice that is used when automatically notifying patients by telephone when their glasses are ready.
Another function offered by eye cloud PRO is the ability to directly connect with credit cards, enabling the office to not only go paperless but also to allow customers to sign for their purchases right on the screen. Patients "can sign on a staff member's phone and automatically transmit the payment to our service in the cloud," Samuels said.
"We went from nine stores to 19 stores in past three years, and there's no doubt this was instrumental in helping us grow," concluded Childs about his installation of eye cloud PRO in all of his locations over the past few years.