Summary of the story

Casio SuperBoard, A Perfect Fit for Arctic Ventures

Arctic Ventures is located in Iqaluit, a small native Canadian community of about 3,000 people found just outside the Arctic Circle on Baffin Island. When Mr. Sam Nasief, Manager of Arctic Ventures began looking for a new point of sale system, the remote location of his store made reliability a major factor in his decision making process. And this is why he called Casio.

Mr. Nasief 's first call to Casio Canada put him in touch with Mr. Horst Wilk, National Sales Manager of the System Products Division. Mr. Wilk quickly realised that it was not just the location of Arctic Ventures that made this a unique prospect, but also a diverse inventory of grocery, clothing and electronic goods that the store carried meant scanning was a must and solid back office control would also be very important. Arctic Ventures is kind of a super department store of the far north and Mr. Wilk felt that the product best suited to the task was the CE-4700 equipped with a SuperBoard.

About 2,000 kilometres south of Iqaluit in Montreal is Casio Canada's dealer, Service Informatique LOC. Service LOC was selected by Mr. Wilk to secure an order from this customer. Service LOC was chosen because 'with over 100 SuperBoards installed to date, they were the nearest dealer to Iqaluit with the expertise required to handle the logistics of such an install.' Mr. Daniel Richard is the Service LOC sales representative that was given this lead. Due to the great distance involved Mr. Richard was never able to meet face to face with Mr. Nasief but they spoke 'many times by phone' and also corresponded via email. Eventually they agreed that a 6 machine SuperBoard system, some machines with scale/scanners and other's with hand scanners, would be a perfect fit for Arctic Ventures. Also included was Service LOC's back office polling and reporting software.

		Two of our guys took a one week trip to do the installation, training and on site follow-up' says Mr. Richard. The installers spent a couple of days doing the wiring and general preparations. The remainder of the stay was dedicated to operator training for the cash registers and manager training for the back office software. Before departing they spent a day overseeing the store in a 'live' environment. In general it was a routine installation not unlike any of the dozens that were done in the local Montreal area.
		Due to the fact that the nearest technician is a four and half hour jet flight away, Arctic Ventures also purchased a seventh back up machine to cover any service issues. In the event hardware service is required, the machine would be shipped via courier to Service LOC in Montreal and the store would use the spare machine in the interim. Mr. Richard says 'they are completely self-sufficient with regards to recovering the SuperBoard system should any problems occur. The SuperBoard has always been so reliable that we were very comfortable installing this product at a location so far from our offices.' In addition to having a spare machine for back up, Service LOC's technicians can also dial up the store using remote access software. This enables them to see real time exactly what is going on with the back office software and allows them to make any changes across the system as needed. 'About six months after the initial trip we sent a technician back for a few days to install the latest Windows release of our software. A technician was needed on-site only due to the complexity of this upgrade, otherwise we have had no need send anyone back to the site. The store has been running trouble free since the installation in mid-January,' said Mr. Richard.
		This is another great example of a feature rich and reliable Casio product that gives resellers the peace of mind to sell to accounts that are not just across town but in this case 2,000 kilometres across the country. Submitted by Scott Cichuttek Casio Canada Ltd., System Products Division