Efficient software design means many things. For me, it means: effort utilizing software which creates more value than the effort invested. I like to think my time has value, and when I use a software product; its output must have a higher value. I require a return for the investment I paid for the product, but more importantly, I need a return for my effort while utilizing the product. This is not the case with many software products. Have you ever felt that it requires more work to use a computer for a task? Not only is this an important issue of your time, but for an employee’s use of time as well. Our costs go up ever year, and if we don’t utilize our employee’s efforts wisely, every day it costs us more to operate. We wanted our stores effort to be utilized and in effect re-directed to activities that had a higher value contribution. We wanted our systems to do the lifting of mundane low proposition tasks.
Our tech team’s core competency was their ability to fully understand what Pawnbrokers were asking for. "We speak your language." We have developed software for the needs of a single store, or 2 stores, and all the way up to 50 stores. We also scoped an entire system project for a national chain of pawnshops with over 800 locations. The needs and requirements for each size store group are very different. Our experience is unparallel. Our expectation, with your help, will be to deliver a simple product driven by a significant engine. Your comments, experiences, and suggestions coupled with our experience will translate into efficient code, then a feature or product.
All of today's pawn software products are very much the same, and offer very little difference. In summary, current software products distribute data, print tickets, and create reports. This is the stuff that DOS operating system made possible. Have you seen many other changes since then?
I am going to share my philosophy of good practices in facilitating pawn and sales transactions. It is not necessary to agree with my philosophy. I warn you that I am a contrarian by nature. It is intended to stimulate your thinking and discover new ways in delivering better results.
Your costs to operate a Pawnshop are very similar to any retail storefront. There are two primary transactions: pawn and sales transactions. There are costs associated in selling an item and there are different costs associated with pawning or buying an item. The most important costs are our human capital. Employees and owners facilitate these transactions.
A requirement in operating stores is to facilitate these transactions in the best way possible. Delivering good customer service is an essential ingredient in facilitating successful transactions. Avoiding mishaps translates to higher customer satisfaction. We need to be able to focus on our customers’ needs. Our software should enable you to focus on your customers. So, how do we do this?
We start by dissecting transactions and look for direct paths in accomplishing a task. We leverage every transaction. How can we take a required effort and spread that effort over other tasks? We look for relationships between transactions. We must facilitate the collection of information and we should only be asked to perform such tasks once. Avoiding mishaps translates to a higher customer satisfaction and should save you aggravation. I would like to offer an example of how this process takes form with the challenge in eliminating missing loans because of operational error.
Redeeming an item. Pawnbrokers have pawn-isms. A redemption is when a customer picks up a loan or pawn. On a side note, what is your pawn-ism for this type of transaction? We experienced that every so often we would give out the wrong item. This was one of many reasons why a loan came up missing. When we introduced bar codes and scanners with tickets and labels we saw this operating error as an opportunity to eliminate this mistake. Our mandate requires simplicity. Simplicity is only examined on what effort is being required in facilitating the process and software in the store. Our solution was creating a process utilizing a hand held scanner at the loan counter. Our system required the item(s) barcode to be scanned, (entered by keypad if not legible), before the transaction could be completed. The final receipt would not be printed, the employee and workstation unable to move from the disposition screen if this process was not followed. The scan took less than 2 seconds per item. This process reduced missing loans by 25%.
Retrieving loans quickly was one of the top 5 customer service requirements. Customers want their stuff back quickly and store operators want to spend as little time delivering those items to the customer. Losing a loan was a rare occurrence and we attributed most of these occurrences historically to theft. We were surprised that scanning loans and eliminating this mistake was such a significant element in missing loans. Any time that you can save face time explaining to a customer that their loan is missing makes for a better day.
In conclusion, we created a low effort process for the stores to perform. Once our staff was familiar with the process we measured significant increase in redemption capacity. Simply, we believe that removing the manual check was a heavier process than scanning.
The engineering and process review was quite complex and created an extra staging queue, but the simplest executables for the store employees makes for happy change and quick adoption.
Comments or suggestions?
Our tech team’s core competency was their ability to fully understand what Pawnbrokers were asking for. "We speak your language." We have developed software for the needs of a single store, or 2 stores, and all the way up to 50 stores. We also scoped an entire system project for a national chain of pawnshops with over 800 locations. The needs and requirements for each size store group are very different. Our experience is unparallel. Our expectation, with your help, will be to deliver a simple product driven by a significant engine. Your comments, experiences, and suggestions coupled with our experience will translate into efficient code, then a feature or product.
All of today's pawn software products are very much the same, and offer very little difference. In summary, current software products distribute data, print tickets, and create reports. This is the stuff that DOS operating system made possible. Have you seen many other changes since then?
I am going to share my philosophy of good practices in facilitating pawn and sales transactions. It is not necessary to agree with my philosophy. I warn you that I am a contrarian by nature. It is intended to stimulate your thinking and discover new ways in delivering better results.
Your costs to operate a Pawnshop are very similar to any retail storefront. There are two primary transactions: pawn and sales transactions. There are costs associated in selling an item and there are different costs associated with pawning or buying an item. The most important costs are our human capital. Employees and owners facilitate these transactions.
A requirement in operating stores is to facilitate these transactions in the best way possible. Delivering good customer service is an essential ingredient in facilitating successful transactions. Avoiding mishaps translates to higher customer satisfaction. We need to be able to focus on our customers’ needs. Our software should enable you to focus on your customers. So, how do we do this?
We start by dissecting transactions and look for direct paths in accomplishing a task. We leverage every transaction. How can we take a required effort and spread that effort over other tasks? We look for relationships between transactions. We must facilitate the collection of information and we should only be asked to perform such tasks once. Avoiding mishaps translates to a higher customer satisfaction and should save you aggravation. I would like to offer an example of how this process takes form with the challenge in eliminating missing loans because of operational error.
Redeeming an item. Pawnbrokers have pawn-isms. A redemption is when a customer picks up a loan or pawn. On a side note, what is your pawn-ism for this type of transaction? We experienced that every so often we would give out the wrong item. This was one of many reasons why a loan came up missing. When we introduced bar codes and scanners with tickets and labels we saw this operating error as an opportunity to eliminate this mistake. Our mandate requires simplicity. Simplicity is only examined on what effort is being required in facilitating the process and software in the store. Our solution was creating a process utilizing a hand held scanner at the loan counter. Our system required the item(s) barcode to be scanned, (entered by keypad if not legible), before the transaction could be completed. The final receipt would not be printed, the employee and workstation unable to move from the disposition screen if this process was not followed. The scan took less than 2 seconds per item. This process reduced missing loans by 25%.
Retrieving loans quickly was one of the top 5 customer service requirements. Customers want their stuff back quickly and store operators want to spend as little time delivering those items to the customer. Losing a loan was a rare occurrence and we attributed most of these occurrences historically to theft. We were surprised that scanning loans and eliminating this mistake was such a significant element in missing loans. Any time that you can save face time explaining to a customer that their loan is missing makes for a better day.
In conclusion, we created a low effort process for the stores to perform. Once our staff was familiar with the process we measured significant increase in redemption capacity. Simply, we believe that removing the manual check was a heavier process than scanning.
The engineering and process review was quite complex and created an extra staging queue, but the simplest executables for the store employees makes for happy change and quick adoption.
Comments or suggestions?
