The Ahmedi Group recently undertook the challenge to change over their group point of sale system and shared with us the process they followed, overall experience working with the GaP Solutions team and the positive impact our integrated cloud-based retail software EM Cloud™ has had on their business and day-to-day management of the company.
The Ahmedi Group is an established family-owned and operated chain of supermarkets, leveraging decades of experience in the industry. Owned and managed by Shakeel Ahmedi and his two sons, Ghazanfar and Imran. The trio successfully operate various IGA award-winning medium to large format supermarkets throughout Regional NSW and recently added Molong’s Spar, soon to be IGA, to their portfolio of grocery stores.
When asked what the reason was for looking to change point of sale vendors, Ghazanfar said they felt the need to implement a system that’s more in line with the times, modern and up to date with retail technology trends. They had a great need for a design with inbuilt multi store functionality and access to their back office from any device via cloud.
The new system would need to give them clarity across all their sites, new technology to assist with stocktakes, inventory replenishment processes, real-time GP reporting, and up-to-date front-end hardware systems and payment methods.
Ghazanfar pointed out that they like many other retailers had concerns about the impact the changeover would have on their business. Would trade be interrupted while implementing the new system? Bringing across historical data, products, sales information, and product inventory without loss was on the top of their list. They also considered how quickly the team would be able to get up to speed with the new system and the time needed to train staff, whether on-site or off-site.
After considering many systems over the past two years, the group chose to implement GaP Solutions’ EM Cloud™ integrated point of sale system within all their stores. While minor issues did occur as expected, the team immediately resolved all problems without interrupting trade at their stores. In addition, they were pleasantly surprised with how intuitive the system was and how quickly the staff were able to train on the system with the help of the on-site trainers.
Ghazanfar said that he could not have asked for a better changeover and was pleased with the service, technical knowledge, and overall outcome of the changeover process.
Now that the system has been operating within the stores for the past few months, we needed to ask which areas of their business have experienced significant change. “The clarity we have as a multi-store owner has directly improved our profitability. One of our favourite functionalities is report scheduling and the variety of reporting options offered in the system. We have scheduled our reports to be sent through at the end of the day and in the mornings from all our stores, enabling us to pick up areas of improvement immediately, contact our store managers and bring it to their attention.” Ghazanfar said
When asked if he would recommend change over to anyone who was concerned about the process, his response was straight to the point.
“Anyone concerned to change systems, push through the pain; it is worth it in the end. We could not be happier with the change. This has been the biggest decision we have made in 25 years, and one which we carefully considered. We are truly satisfied with the software and impressed with the support side of the business” – Ghazanfar Ahmedi –Ahmedi Group