“Customers find the AURES products well designed, stylish and reliable. In catering environments, high levels of ingress protection ensure that spills and splashes do not effect service or system operation, something which customers do comment on. Designed without bezels, the display is easy to clean, which lifts hygiene standards.”
Qamile Zejnullahi, Director of Marketing
BioStore is one of the UK’s leading suppliers of Identity Management solutions to businesses and public sector organisations. Founded in 2005, it specialises in working with schools and large enterprises, consolidating complex administrative tasks across different systems into single, secure IT platforms which are straightforward to use and save clients considerable time and resources.
Working with primary and secondary schools, as well as FE colleges, BioStore offers solutions which integrate Attendance Management, for both staff and pupils, with functions such as IT network access, printer credits and permissions, library cards, assessment and progress monitoring and so on. It combines many different databases controlling separate functions of school life into one, providing a single platform for managing all.
Similarly, working with large enterprises, BioStore develops systems which manage access control and entry card schemes, combined with digital network permissions. This consolidates things like card printing and biometric data management, providing greater security by reducing the need for duplication and therefore the risk of human error.
Summing up BioStore’s work, Director of Marketing Qamile Zejnullahi said: “BioStore’s Identity Management allows organisations to bring all their various software applications under one secure roof, simplifying all your day-to-day administrative tasks. Having complete oversight of your various systems, and the users within them, becomes manageable, easily understood, and flexible.”
Cashless catering
From these core services, BioStore has branched out into other areas. One is access control in its own right, from visitor registration systems to public library solutions. Another is cashless catering, for example in schools where the use of cash for lunch time catering and vending services has been phased out.
BioStore’s cashless catering solution, FasTrak, fully integrates with its Identity Management platform. At its core, it replaces the use of cash with pre-paid accounts which can be topped- up via an online portal, on-site kiosks, a mobile app or PayPoint. When a user goes to the canteen or a vending machine, they identify themselves in some way – using fingerprint scanning, for example, or an entry smartcard, or for school pupils simply by selecting their name on a touchscreen. Whatever they purchase is then charged back to their account.
Cashless Catering offers a number of benefits to catering services:
- It increases security by eliminating the use and storage of cash on premises.
- It speeds up service as staff do not have to handle payments.
- It means meals can be pre-ordered, for example in schools where lunch choices might be taken during morning registration. This again increases efficiency in the kitchen and reduces waste.
- In primary schools, it has helped administer Universal Free School Meals for under the sevens, while in secondary schools it helps to ensure students are eating in school and not spending their lunch money off site.
In terms of the clients BioStore has been working with to install cashless catering systems, Qamile said: “Our deployments range from health care, SME businesses and corporate to extensive deployments across primary, secondary and tertiary education.
“One recent project saw us install FasTrak across three sites for the NHS. The systems also included Ingenico unattended and attended chip and pin and contactless devices along with online payment options via web and app.”
New demands on POS
For all its benefits to end users, cashless catering creates a new set of demands for point of sale solutions. Tills and terminals are no longer simply sales ledgers and cash repositories, but must also be capable of operating as identification points, as well as integrating with the databases and software which manage the system.
Qamile described the key components of an effective cashless POS solution in a catering environment: “Good quality tills and peripherals, an effective and reliable network, an online payment portal, high server reliability and optional cash loaders for customer accessibility,” she said.
“Cashless catering tills must be able to handle multiple forms of identification for customers. Finger scanner, contactless card and pin are all common, and all require their own peripherals.
“High quality network connectivity is also essential to ensure customer balances are always accurate wherever a purchase takes place and to reduce the chances of unauthorised overdraft usage.
“Fast response times are also important. Many large education customers serve over one thousand students within a one hour window, processed through as few as four tills. This averages to four customers per till per minute with peaks of eight customers per minute. With only seven seconds to take an order, serve food and ring up the purchase on the till, any processing delays can have a major effect.”
AURES partnership
BioStore is careful about the POS equipment vendors it chooses to partner with. In order to deliver the promised benefits of its cashless systems to clients, it depends on installing hardware which can handle the unique demands of its solution.
BioStore has been supplying AURES terminals since 2016. “We first had contact with AURES in January 2016 when one of their business development team contacted us,” said Qamile. “We were aware of the company prior to this but had not spoken to them directly. We started supplying AURES products to our customers in May 2016.”
For BioStore, the key factors which give AURES the edge are the quality of the products, the range of peripherals and modular solutions available to suit the demands of different deployment, and also the quality of design.
In most cases, BioStore uses the AURES YUNO, a compact all-in-one EPoS terminal with a 15.1” inch touch screen and a powerful J1900 processor. The YUNO ships with Windows 10 IoT Core pre-installed for easy integration with readers, scanners and other equipment. Flexible enough to be used in a side range of scenarios, the YUNO can also include a cash draw for mixed cash / cashless deployments.
The YUNO can also be wall mounted, and Qamile explained how in a recent project for the NHS, the terminals were installed as unattended contactless payment endpoints, mounted in a secure wall enclosure.
“The small form factor and stylish design of the AURES tills help space utilisation and workspace efficiency, both essential in high throughput environments,” she said. “Customers find the AURES products well designed, stylish and performant. In catering environments, high levels of ingress protection ensure that spills and splashes do not effect service or system operation, something which customers do comment on. Designed without bezels, the display is easy to clean, which lifts hygiene standards.”
Kayvan Moinian, AURES business development manager, says working with BioStore over the past 18 months has been a big boost. “BioStore is a great customer and we have a very close and mutually beneficial relationship,” said Kayvan. “We support BioStore in a range of ways, such as helping them out at shows and exhibitions. In return, AURES has gained a fantastic opportunity in the cashless catering market, seeing our products deployed in innovative ways across education, healthcare and industry.”
About BioStore
Since 2005, BioStore has been amongst the leading suppliers of Identity Management solutions in the UK. Providing high quality, secure systems for schools and businesses. BioStore’s solutions make it easy to manage the various software applications in use through one secure central user database.
With over 3,000,000 users everyday, BioStore delivers secure authentication for a variety of applications, including E-Registration, Print & Copy, Password Manager, Computer Logon, Cashless Catering, Visitor Manager, Access Control, Library Management and Locker Systems. For more information, please visit www.biostore.co.uk.