RecChat: Pool Prep and Supply Chains - 03/17/2022
Table of Contents
Episode Summary
In this episode our host Zach Malloch is joined by Director of Customer Services, Cullen Barber, and Director of Sales, Dave Wirtz to discuss getting ready for the upcoming pool season. The group touches on a check list of considerations before opening day, reminders to check supply levels, and raising awareness to the hardware supply issue.
Recording
Transcript
Zach Malloch 0:00
I always love that time of the week when we get to listen to that song. Today, we have a very special RecChat. Most of our RecChats are very special. But this one, we're joined by Cullen barber and Dave Wirtz, to talk about pool prep and the supply chain, both of them qualified to talk about both of those things.
We know that maybe it's a little bit earlier than we've done this in the past years. But there's a reason for that some of the hardware pieces or maybe something that we need to plan for planning in advance. So we're gonna have Colin and Dave kind of talked about what pool season for 2022 might look like, and some things to be aware of. How are you doing, guys?
Cullen Barber 0:44
Great. How about you?
Zach Malloch 0:46
Not too bad. Last thing I'll mention real quick before we get started is if you could use the q&a area down at the bottom, we have Julia, Brett and Mike here along with myself, we'll be keeping an eye on the questions. And if you use that q&a area, we can keep track of exactly which ones have been answered, which ones haven't and which ones we can bring up to the panelists and the like. So I'll go ahead and hand the reins over to Cullen and Dave, take it away, guys.
Cullen Barber 1:09
Great. Thanks, Zach. Yeah, thanks, everybody for joining us. Zach mentioned might be a couple of weeks earlier than normal. But we've we've noticed that many departments are moving up some of their summer registrations, and certainly the patrons and public are very anxious to get out there and start recreating again. So we wanted to kind of get out front of some things and, you know, kind of remind you that it's, it's always good to, you know, pull out any equipment that's you know, kind of seasonally used and, and make sure it's all working.
Particularly, you know, things like cash drawers, receipt printers, your credit card readers, you know, touchscreens and barcode scanners, those are all you know, popular things that many outdoor facilities such as pools, water, parks, golf courses and such. So better to take a look earlier than than later to make sure it's all working.
Dave Writz 2:04
You know, welcome everybody, I'll add to that real quick Cullen. And I think one of the things that I just thought of it, as you were saying it that you don't have on this bullet is even the supplies of the consumable, sometimes utilized by these things as well. So you might find that your receipt printer is in great working order, but your supply of paper could be very low, or the other one key fobs. Good idea to check how many key fobs you have in your stock. And is it time for you to do another round of ordering on the key fob, so sorry, column.
Cullen Barber 2:33
No, perfect, that's good.
Zach Malloch 2:36
If anybody does pre printed gift cards, that could also be something for this dealer
Dave Writz 2:40
right on point, Zack 100%.
Zach Malloch 2:42
Were pass cards, the blank stock for printing passes for pools.
Cullen Barber 2:46
And then we, we do have a checklist to kind of help you out with some of these things. If you haven't, you know, if you're new to your position, and you're in charge of getting things together, we've got what we call a pool prep checklist. Just some things to kind of quickly for you to go through and check out when you get the equipment plugged back in. You know, make sure the PC can boot up and you know, just something to to add. You know, most people know but you know Windows did retire windows seven back in 2020. So, hopefully, you've moved on to a Windows 10 era PC, we we no longer support Windows seven, I believe you'll most things will potentially run on it but we're not actively supporting it on our side. So just something to double check to make sure your boots up you know, check out your your touch screens, make sure your buttons are working.
Obviously make sure you can log in make sure things are printing and cutting in Dave's, you know highlighting with his mouse, we've got some customized links there to hit for, you know, if you're running 10 three or three, one, we still got some folks we know running 10 threes, we've got some helpful hints out there.
So drawers are a big one. Definitely make sure your credit card readers are working some some credit card readers, if they're inactive for a certain number of months,
they could basically going to stay on the back end. So you may have to talk to your provider to make sure that you can still use that reader or reactivate it and if you will.
Anything else the AppPool display is not as popular as it used to be years ago but good to check. Make sure your pass wipers and barcode readers are working in checkout your visits. You know, especially if you have some Type of seasonal passes where you have fixed expiration dates. Is everything set up to work the way you want it to and when people start coming in. And one of the bullets talks about those membership dates. Of course your fees Yep. Did you change fees to have you had to increase fees are they gone down? You have some new discounts out there. You know verify all your fees are what you expect when you go to check people in or service those customers.
So we'll provide this checklist as part of the doc right Zack at the end, we'll have it available for them.
Zach Malloch 5:11
Yeah, it's actually already in the RecChat, RecChat archives from the past couple of years. And we'll be posting it along with the video for this recording as well.
Cullen Barber 5:19
Perfect. Any, any questions? So far? We're doing okay.
Zach Malloch 5:26
You're clear at the moment.
Cullen Barber 5:28
All right, great.
Dave Writz 5:29
I would like to offer kind of for the bottom under that final thoughts that if you do think you need additional assistance, can get a lot of documentation, as Cullen said, right online directly through self service options. But as always, if you feel you need actual training time, it's something that can be quoted and scheduled, and we can get one of our Cullen's team members available and ready to, to jump in and give you some assistance. If it's something you do want to formally get some training or assistance time for.
Cullen Barber 6:00
Yeah, and it, you know, plan plan ahead, if you can, we, this is definitely a busy season for us to try to get people prepared. So we are, you know, about two and a half weeks out on some of our some of our trainings. So, once we know people are ready to go with a training session, it's usually scheduled out between two to three weeks. So we say about two and a half weeks out. So just kind of plan around that.
Zach Malloch 6:28
Actually, just something I was curious about, maybe people can put their answer in chat if they feel up to it. But I'm curious how, like, what your typical advance is from like, when do you first go into your outdoor facilities? When do you first start getting things ready, compared to the date when you're first going to welcome guests? Is it two weeks? Is it one week? Is it the day before? Is it two months before and just wondering because we might be able to time this better for the next year or get a better handle on things to? Back to you.
Dave Writz 6:59
Great, thanks. Yeah, so the next next couple of slides are informational. And we're not going to jump every one of the links but if you do, post this session, come back and want to pull up this document which will be also be attached. There are links provided on the document to some of our most popular hardware options that we do have out in the space. So cash drawers, the Star Micronics, cash drawers and most popular
Cullen and his support team loves the star receipt printers, the TS 140 threes because they're pretty easy to set up and reliable versus some of the previous models that we've had out in in the space for sure. There our E low touch touch screens are the main provider of touchscreens that we utilize. The Honeywell barcode scanners are some of the most popular scanners that we do have, there are other options for all of these out there. But these are by far and away the most popular ones and the most common ones that we're that we are providing to you all as clients. And then from the credit card side. These are the readers that PayTrac utilizes, and it's similar with other gateway partners.
So Ingenico models of credit card readers. And you can gather more information on these point to point encrypted EMV compliant PCI compliant devices from the links. But we can also provide more if it's something that you want more details on and can also provide numbers and pricing quotes for any of these. And the latest hardware device that I will spend a minute and give a little bit more details on that we now have available is the Unitec. It's called a wearable ring scanner. It's name as the MS 652 Plus. But the primary use case for this is for mobile RecTrac situations or situations where you may be running RecTrac on say a tablet or out in the Field. And you want to be able to scan members barcodes and a visit situation. So your cursor for the visit swiping is on a RecTrac visit processing checking Field. And this is a Bluetooth connected device that will scan the clients or the patrons key fob ID card and present it for validation instantly in that visit processing Field. So this is brand new in the last week or two that we've added this to the the options list under our hardware availability.
It's gone through a full set of certification by our QA team. I saw it work in person at a trade show we actually had it working in under a minute. Myself and the other Vermont systems rep that was at the trade show that we visited for hardware. So, so far, so good through all of our initial tests. So definitely want to let people know that it is a new option that is out there. So it's something you can wear right on your fingers and the little blue trigger on the right of that screenshot is where your thumb would touch to actually activate the read. Pause anything in the chat?
Zach Malloch 10:09
Nothing's Oh, actually, we did get some chat responses. So Sandy said that they're working on all of their summer camps pools in tennis right now. And Jamie's saying they're open aquatics tomorrow, I started checking setups about two weeks ago. So I'm curious. Sandy has that. So you're doing this work right now? I'm wondering when you're actually expecting to have your first customers coming in? Is this about two weeks in advance? Or is it three weeks or so? But yeah, Jamie says that they're about two weeks in advance. No questions at the moment. Although Oh, yeah, Sandy's gonna start in May. So Oh, actually, that's close to six weeks, early for them.
Dave Writz 10:46
Excellent. Well, let's move on to the next thing, which is the big part of why I'm in this meeting is I want to let everybody know that if you are not aware, there's a little thing out there around the world regarding supply shortages and shipping delays and things happening. And we and the hardware that we utilize in Vermont systems are not immune to this kind of worldwide situation. Historically, and personally, I've been doing this for 25 years. Now, Vermont systems, they used to be that you could order hardware and our kind of standard response was 10 to 14 days, you can expect your hardware to be at your doorstep. That is not the current situation, we are in pretty much every one of our hardware items, with a few exceptions, but pretty much all of them have a longer delivery time currently, longer can be anywhere from instead of 10 to 14 days, two to three weeks, so 15 to 21 days, or months from now. So again, some of our more popular items, such as we just found out in the last week or two that the E low touch 22 inch touchscreen monitor is now expecting a July delivery date for when the next available shipping will happen.
So why are we telling you all this just so you can be out front as much as you can be? With your ordering should you need devices, they are definitely things that are are out of our control. It's not just shipping, it has to do with supply of parts, Chip shortages, the consumables that many of our manufacturing vendors that are making devices, the Honeywell readers have been months out consistently. So ordered one now it could be anywhere from three to four months before you're going to see a Honeywell reader, the high demand units. So expect delays. We're doing our best to work with our various partner suppliers on making sure that we can get the devices to you as quickly as we can. But if you know there is a device that you will need, order it sooner rather than later. The days of ordering it and having it in eight to 10 or 14 days are over right now. So pause. Cullen anything to add or what the floor you open for question.
Cullen Barber 13:20
Makes Sense sounds about right.
Zach Malloch 13:23
Definitely a couple of real quick questions that came in. Robin was asking if the scanner or if the reader would automatically fill in customer information for a new customer. So it's not like a license scanner that is going to create a household for you. It's just for the past visit processing stuff. Is that correct?
Cullen Barber 13:40
Yeah, the the unit tech is not a like a driver's license scanner. It's it's a past key fob barcode Type scanner that would fill in. Yep. So it's it's not what we'd call a driver's license or license scanner that would try to take data off from that and create a new household.
Zach Malloch 13:58
All right. Yeah, I think that's basically all the questions that we had thus far.
Dave Writz 14:06
So in regards, then, to that hardware availability, we have some other options here. I'll let Colin go through some of the things that we've kind of ideated on on, what are my options if I need hardware today?
Cullen Barber 14:17
Exactly. Yeah. So kind of just to reinforce, definitely try to find out what you need. As soon as you can, you know, go through the checklist, make sure everything's working. You know, you may have to get creative if you've realized something is not working and you need need something, you know, could you potentially, you know, pivot or move some hardware from an area that's another seasonal location and where location can you move that to your summer location? Or you've got to front desks, you know, machines at a community center, for example, but typically, you're only really using the hardware at one can you move some of that real critical Point Of Sale Type stuff to the other summer location?
As Dave just metioned, You know, obviously, if you can get ahead of it, and things are in stock, or close to it, try to order from Vermont systems, knowing that there could be a delay. We do know that customers have found some hardware, you know, elsewhere besides from Vermont systems. And they think that could be the case this year, although it sounds like a lot of vendors are struggling to keep supplies in house. So just kind of a note on that, you know, we try to help out customers that have kind of the qualified models of equipment. But we don't typically do a lot of phone kind of support and training for those if they weren't purchased from from Vermont systems. But we do have documentation. For most of the models that we do sell, we have a knowledge base enteries, and can usually give people a pretty good point in the right direction to get them get them going with that stuff. Again, with three, one more and more of the hardware is not, you know, they're just pretty generic hardware for printers and things like that. But there are some devices that are pretty specific to Vermont's systems.
For example, some of the credit card readers pretty much all the credit card readers are very specific. So they're injected with a certain injection to meet our API requirements. So don't don't just buy those off the street kind of thing. The driver's license unit that that somebody mentioned, those are specific to there's certain setup that needs to be done on those driver's license scanners for them to work with, with RecTrac. So always good to check in with our sales team or support team to see see what what we've got out there.
But we know this year could be a little bit of a struggle of trying to find new equipment, you know, with all the supply chain issues that are out there. Do you want to add anything to that, or
Dave Writz 16:54
Yeah, the only thing I would add is from the credit card side that that same kind of stipulation would apply to really any of the gateway partners as well. So if you're not using PayTrac, if you're using one of the other gateway partners, which is fine, and you need to get new hardware for that partner, whichever partner it may be, you definitely want to talk to them not again, something where you can just go buy a credit card reader off the street, excuse me, and expect that credit card reader to work with that gateway partner or so that that rule of needs to come from the partner vendor applies to all possible payment processing partners.
Zach Malloch 17:36
Right, I think that people are just kind of taking in and accepting this information. No questions
Cullen Barber 17:42
Yes. You know, I could add this the whole thing with hardware, there's often VIC involved right for those who aren't a three one. And there is a newer version of VIC THAT IS OUT out there. Many of you may have bumped into an issue that's happened started sometime this first quarter, when Chrome and edge updated to their 98 versions. It impacted VIC. So the latest 3.1 point eight, VIC has the basically the fix or workaround for what Chrome and edge changed. So that is an Next Gen are the new Windows installer, VIC, it will automatically update if you're already running Next Gen. VIC, if you're running the old legacy VEC it won't. So again, that's something to check out. And make sure you know make sure you are running the newer VIC on these workstations as well.
Zach Malloch 18:50
Very good plan for sure. And I mean right now if there is any are any final thoughts? Mike, Julia or Brad, if you have anything that you wanted to add? We have a fairly content bunch of participants, that seems today. This is a good time to ask any questions or I don't know if anybody has questions about how other members or other people might do their prep. So I mean, you could potentially ask questions to the the whole gathered attendees right now if you wanted to. But if not, I'll just go ahead and keep talking for another moment or two to see if anybody does jump in. Otherwise, I can give everybody a couple minutes back and have this nice short and sweet session today. I know that seems like the direction we might be going and so yeah, I think that we're basically towards the end of this. We'll post this recording as soon as we can. And we'll have the checklist document that Cullen and Dave are talking about. posted with this. Once again, it's already out there if you look for we've done these in April, so I think it's like April 1 of last year, April 16 of the year before that or something. Along those lines, so if you need that checklist immediately it is there. And we'll be posting this afterwards as well as I believe Dave said, a copy of the PowerPoint, if that would be useful for people as a PDF. All right. Well, Brett, if you are there, I think that you can go ahead and take us out. So thanks for everybody for
Cullen Barber 20:20
Thanks, everybody.
Dave Writz 20:21
Thanks, everybody,
Zach Malloch 20:22
for sharing all the information and Brett and Julia and Mike for being there and ready to jump on all the questions that we didn't actually end up getting to today. All right,
Cullen Barber 20:32
thanks, everybody. Take care.
Julia Shefcheck 20:34
Bye.