Alexandria POS vs. RetailEdge

For any school district I would highly recommend it.

Incentivized

Many of our competitors were franchised base or a "factory store" meaning they HAD to use a specific software. This could be nice, but also very intrusive, in that they saw everything you were doing and could dictate what/when/how you ordered merchandise. So this is good for the independent retailer who does not need or have access to something created at a large corporate level.

Incentivized

• Cloud hosting. Only has gone down once and was back up in a matter of hours. Updates are applied automatically.
• Easy to use from the librarian side. Little help or training is needed.
• Support is very helpful and approachable when issues arrive.

Incentivized

• The front end register was ideal for new, young sales and customer service reps. Detailed reports and cutomer management worked really well.
• Gift card issuing and redeeming was very easy and simple to track
• Individual user id's meant we could track sales for contests and customer service issues as well

Incentivized

• Cost is pretty high.
• Some settings are difficult to locate, had to call tech support to find them.

Incentivized

• Like any complex program there were bells and whistles that were bundled and only available if you paid for a better package.
• Tech Support was paid for on an annual plan and even though we rarely needed it, the few occasions I did have to call (never during regular working hours of course) I wan't a "gold" member and therefore had to pay or wait or both

Incentivized

Only system for POS I ever used. I looked at others, but couldn't stomach the idea of migrating all that info to another system.

Incentivized

• Cloud hosting has enabled an offsite backup of our library inventory.

Incentivized

• I could not have done daily business without it
• It knew a lot more about the retail process than I did. For instance, I knew I should look at sell through reports, but did not know how to run them or read them. Their tutorials were very helpful
• Even though I complained about the tech support, their user base forums were great for knowledge and trouble shooting and seemed to be well proctored by the comapny as well.

Incentivized