1. shopping
2. retail

Microsoft® Windows® Embedded for Point of Service
Customer Solution Case Study
How to cut implementation time by one-third
and help clients boost sales 25 percent
Overview
Country: Australia
Industry: Retail
Customer Profile
Formerly known as Solo Media, yeahpoint
is a digital media company that creates
interactive signage solutions for retailers.
Employing 10 people in Brisbane and
Sydney, turnover is about $1 million.
Business Situation
yeahpoint’s touch-screen display and
recipe printer, based on Linux technology,
could not integrate with clients’ back-end
systems. This limited yeahpoint’s ability to
provide integrated services.
Solution
yeahpoint deployed Microsoft Windows
Embedded for Point of Service (WEPOS) –
the operating system optimized for pointof-service systems.
Benefits
„ Expanded solutions for clients.
„ Lower development costs.
„ Simple maintenance.
„ Reduced time to market.
„ Better results for clients.
“We can implement one of our solutions in about onethird of the time it took us before we changed
platforms. For every unit we install, it saves us about
$300.”
John Anderson, CEO, yeahpoint
yeahpoint established its business developing products on a Linux
platform because it was cost effective. But, as the company grew
and attracted bigger clients with sophisticated demands, the
limitations of Linux hindered yeahpoint’s progress. When time
came time to develop an interactive touch-screen display and
recipe printer for Meat & Livestock Australia, yeahpoint needed a
development platform to create devices that would integrate with
existing systems and provide more services to clients at lower cost.
By deploying Microsoft® Windows® Embedded for Point of Service
(WEPOS), yeahpoint now develops a range of systems for clients
that integrate easily and lower the total cost of ownership.
yeahpoint saves money in development costs and earns more in
services; its clients save money and increase sales; and its clients’
customers enjoy a better buying experience.
Situation
Who would ever have thought that a local
butcher shop would use computers and
software to sell meat? Enter yeahpoint – an
Australian digital media specialist with about
15 PCs that provides technology, sales and
marketing services to companies in the retail
industry.
yeahpoint creates and manages interactive
content and installs audiovisual devices at
the point of product – as opposed to the cash
register point of sale – to influence consumer
buying decisions. It also tracks customer
interactions so clients can develop better
brand and sales strategies.
Since 75 percent of purchase decisions are
made at point of sale, retail shops seeking to
increase sales volumes have adopted LCD
displays and touch screens to promote
product and drive sales.
When yeahpoint received a brief from Meat &
Livestock Australia (MLA) to devise a way to
help butchers increase sales and get
customers to return to their stores, CEO John
Anderson thought he had just the solution.
yeahpoint supplies an interactive touchscreen display and recipe printer designed to
deliver recipes on demand to customers at
point of product and influence purchasing
behavior. It tracks the interaction between
customers and devices and provides this
information to retailers.
Anderson believed the touch-screen display
and recipe printer would be perfect for
butcher shops. But the device’s technology
base, Red Hat Linux, had its shortcomings.
yeahpoint faced the continual problem of
integrating the device with its clients’ backend systems. This made the total cost of
ownership of the recipe printer too high for
most retailers.
“We founded our company developing on a
Linux platform because it was cost effective
at the time,” says Anderson. “But, as our
business grew and we attracted the attention
of clients like MLA, we discovered that staying
with Linux would restrict us to creating
isolated units that would simply stand on a
counter. They would not be able to be
integrated with our clients’ other devices.
“As a result, customers and partners viewed
the product as an appliance, rather than as
part of an overall solution. This limited our
ability to provide other services to customers,
which is where the real value is for us.”
yeahpoint needed a solution that would help
it provide more services to clients at a
reduced cost.
Solution
yeahpoint deployed Microsoft® Windows®
Embedded for Point of Service (WEPOS) – the
operating system optimized for point-ofservice applications such as point-of-sale
terminals, information kiosks and selfcheckouts used in the retail and hospitality
industries.
WEPOS is the first point-of-service operating
platform to provide plug-and-play peripheral
support that enables retailers to install and
integrate current and legacy retail devices
quickly into a point-of-service system. This
helps lower device life cycle costs and reduce
time spent connecting devices.
“WEPOS is a reliable platform focused on
being consumer-driven and interactive,” says
Anderson. “It also allows for local store
customization by provider, retailer and
industry partners.”
As part of its new service for MLA, yeahpoint
supplies butchers with LCD or plasma
displays, touch screens, recipe printers and
“WEPOS supports our
efforts to deliver
exceptional customer
service and stable, easyto-deploy platforms for
point-of-service systems.
It allows yeahpoint to
deliver innovative
experiences for our
clients and their
customers.”
John Anderson, CEO, yeahpoint
installation. Every month, yeahpoint also
uploads new recipes and content into the
devices.
The technology helps consumers at a butcher
counter find a recipe using a touch screen,
print it and take it home. yeahpoint provides
this service to small business and corporate
clients cost effectively, underpinned by solid
investment returns.
“When the consumer stands at a butcher
counter thinking what they will have for
dinner, the device plays appropriate video
material for them,” says Anderson.
“It invites the consumer to touch the screen.
When they do, they are presented with
different categories of meal, such as
casseroles or barbecues. When the consumer
selects a category, they are presented with
meal alternatives such as goulash, osso
bucco or lamb shanks. They choose a dish
and the device prints a recipe with directions
on what cuts of meat to buy.”
One chain of seven butcher shops in Sydney
that uses the yeahpoint solution reports that
on a recent weekend there were 7,000
printouts for one lamb shank recipe alone.
Benefits
Addressing the challenges faced by retail
companies at the point of service, Microsoft
Windows Embedded for Point of Service
(WEPOS) simplifies setup, deployment and
management. It includes support for new
technologies designed to improve the
customer experience and offers low system
life cycle costs.
Expanded solutions for clients
WEPOS is popular with retail industry system
providers, peripheral suppliers and
application vendors because it helps them to
create a range of new retail applications,
devices and point-of-service systems for
clients.
“WEPOS supports our efforts to deliver
exceptional client service and stable, easy-todeploy platforms for point-of-service
systems,” says Anderson. “It allows yeahpoint
to deliver innovative experiences for our
clients and their customers.”
yeahpoint can create new and richer
interactive experiences at the point of service
by utilizing the advanced multimedia
technologies available in WEPOS. These
include Microsoft® Windows Media® and
wireless communications and emerging
technologies such as radio frequency
identification (RFID) and biometrics.
Retail-specific features such as remote boot,
multi-user logon and dual-display support
help to create a flexible point-of-sale
environment that retail and hospitality
companies can use to interact with, support
and provide additional value to customers.
“We want to help retailers overcome business
challenges while improving the customer
experience,” says Anderson. “We’ve found
that the most effective way to achieve this is
to partner with technology providers to take
advantage of new capabilities, such as
Microsoft WEPOS.
“WEPOS is optimized for the retail
environment. It is easy to use and saves time
for retailers so they can focus on their
number one priority: helping their
customers.”
Lower development costs
yeahpoint has had tremendous success with
WEPOS in lowering the total cost of
ownership of its solutions.
“With WEPOS, our clients can reduce service
and maintenance costs by using familiar
deployment and management technologies
such as Microsoft® Software Update Services
2.0 and Microsoft® Systems Management
Server,” says Anderson.
“We appreciate being able to deliver lower
deployment and maintenance costs to our
clients while creating solutions with excellent
interoperability features.”
Anderson says yeahpoint has been able to
save staff time and costs.
“We can implement one of our solutions in
about one-third of the time it took us before
we changed platforms,” says Anderson.
“By taking one-third of the effort away, we
save on staff costs. For every unit we install,
it saves us about $300.”
Simple maintenance
WEPOS is the only point-of-service software
platform on the market that supports
peripheral plug-and-play functionality – the
feature most requested by retailers. This
makes implementation and integration with
existing systems easier.
“WEPOS simplifies the setup, use and
management of retailers’ point-of-sale
systems and device peripherals,” says
Anderson. “This supports our goal of
delivering seamless, integrated solutions to
help retailers improve the in-store experience,
while driving profitability and efficiency.
“Also, it is highly likely that the back-end
systems of big retailers are on a Microsoft
platform. This is where we get the major
value from using a Microsoft platform
because WEPOS provides seamless
integration with Windows-powered desktops,
mobile devices, back office servers and
enterprise servers.
“Since point-of-sale applications invariably
have to talk fluently with desktop and
enterprise-level systems to deliver the kind of
integration customers want, we need a
development platform that makes it easy for
us to help our clients achieve integration.
WEPOS gives us that.”
The larger pool of Windows-based skills
means simpler support mechanisms for
yeahpoint clients. The company has hundreds
of its touch-screen display and recipe printers
in the field now and Microsoft provides offthe-shelf tools that allow yeahpoint to
manage them remotely.
Reduced time to market
The migration to WEPOS at yeahpoint, scoped
at five days, was completed in two hours.
“For us, the migration from Red Hat to
WEPOS was easier than moving to another
Linux solution,” says Anderson.
“WEPOS uses the same development
environment as other Windows-based
platforms. This means that just about every
software developer in the world has a head
start in writing applications for a WEPOSbased system.
“It also means there is a wealth of software
already available that you can use to further
accelerate your time to market.”
Better results for yeahpoint clients
The yeahpoint touch screen and recipe
printer compels consumers to buy additional
meat, drives their purchasing decision and
gives them something to take home so they
are more likely to come back to that butcher
to buy again.
Anderson says some butchers using the
yeahpoint system have boosted sales by 25
to 35 percent.
For More Information
For more information about Microsoft
products and services, call Microsoft
Australia on 13 20 58. To access
information using the World Wide Web, go
to: www.microsoft.com
For more information about yeahpoint
products and services, call 614 30235059
or visit the Web site at:
www.solomedia.com.au
“In a typical retail environment, retailers have
fewer than 10 seconds to get their message
to consumers,” says Anderson.
“We now have a working model that allows us
to develop interactive solutions for our clients
so they can deliver messages to consumers
with no erosion between the message and
the consumer’s buying decision.
“This boosts in-store sales and, for the first
time, allows our clients to accurately track
consumer behavior in the store. That in turn
allows our clients to build better sales and
branding plans for their products. And, of
course, this means we’re providing a better
service.”
Microsoft .NET
Microsoft .NET is software that connects
people, information, systems, and devices
through the use of Web services. Web
services are a combination of protocols that
enable computers to work together by
exchanging messages. Web services are
based on the standard protocols of XML,
SOAP, and WSDL, which allow them to
interoperate across platforms and programming languages.
.NET is integrated across Microsoft products
and services, providing the ability to quickly
build, deploy, manage, and use connected,
secure solutions with Web services. These
solutions provide agile business integration
and the promise of information anytime,
anywhere, on any device.
For more information about Microsoft .NET
and Web services, please visit these Web
sites:
www.microsoft.com/net
msdn.microsoft.com/webservices
Software and Services
„
© 2006 Microsoft Corporation. All rights reserved. This case
study is for informational purposes only. MICROSOFT MAKES NO
WARRANTIES, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, IN THIS SUMMARY.
Microsoft, the Microsoft logo, Windows, Windows Media and the
Windows logo are either registered trademarks or trademarks of
Microsoft Corporation in the United States and/or other
countries. The names of actual companies and products
mentioned herein may be the trademarks of their respective
owners.
Document published May 2006
Hardware
Technologies
„ Obvios PoS terminal
− Microsoft Windows Embedded for Point
of Service