“We have been supplying the AURES SANGO, as our clients love the look of the unit, as well as the solidity of the build. AURES are easy to work with and they always have stock available. For customers who want quality, they are to be recommended.”
Lyn Done, Managing Director
The location of MEDOC’s Nottingham head office could hardly be more apt. It shares its street address, Meadow Lane, with Notts County FC, the world’s oldest professional football club. Just across the River Trent is the City Ground, home of two-time European football champions Nottingham Forest. And just behind that is Trent Bridge, a world-famous Test cricket venue.
Being surrounded by so much sporting heritage is very appropriate for a company that has carved out a niche for itself supplying EPOS and retail management solutions to sports stadia. Its client list makes for impressive reading – Wembley, Twickenham and Principality Stadium, as well as Premier League big hitters Manchester City, Chelsea and Everton all have retail operations supplied by MEDOC.
Sporting arenas are not the only string to MEDOC’s bow. Founded in 1981, the company has been involved in the retail management software market since its earliest days, adapting to the many changes and developments in technology seen over four decades.
Nowadays, as well as high street and sports retail products, MEDOC also provides ecommerce solutions, including website development. It designs and builds custom apps from scratch, with particular expertise in payment processing.
MEDOC was the first UK software developer to be accredited with PCI-DSS Level 1 Compliance, the card payment protection standard mandated by issuers like Visa and Mastercard.
Bespoke software
According to Managing Director Lyn Done, roughly 60 per cent of MEDOC’s turnover comes from retail. Despite being a relatively small company, it has proven itself capable of serving plenty of sizeable clients. Away from sports stadia, where a location like Wembley has retail operations built to cater for up to 90,000 fans on match days, MEDOC also supplies high profile names such as Fortnum & Mason, the luxury food and gifts chain.
This track record of reaching out to sizeable clients has led the company to adopt the motto:
“Big enough to cope, small enough to care.” Lyn explained: “We’re small enough to care about every client, and yet big enough to cope with major implementations; we rolled out 150 EPOS units in just two days for the NFL at Wembley, and then moved them to Twickenham just two weeks later!”
One of the most obvious ways this focus on the needs of individual clients materialises is in developing custom software solutions. “Virtually every client wants something unique, which is why they choose us,” said Lynn.
“Our main retail product is zTSM, which is a full merchandising system that includes stock control, purchase ordering, goods receiving, warehousing, order fulfilment, ecommerce and point of sale. Most customers take the full package; certainly, nearly all want tills, merchandising and ecommerce. But then every client will have something different they want to do with the system, and that’s where we come into our own.”
Lyn says the ability to provide bespoke solutions has become more and more important in the face of stiff competition on the price of EPOS systems coming from abroad.
“The current challenge is the rapidly reducing cost of hardware and software from the Far East,” said Lyn. “Some of our competitors are offering ‘everything’ for around £400 a till point, including all the software. We cannot compete with that, so have to find unique selling points, such as our ability to create bespoke software for clients. This is possible because we own the software, whereas most of our competitors are simply resellers.”
Lyn also says the company has been proactive in embracing new trends in retail management systems, such as mobile and multi-channel point of sale. “The market is moving very rapidly to mobile EPOS, and we see this as the most exciting opportunity for us, as we have been offering this for several years!”
A good example of MEDOC’s expertise in flexible multi-channel solutions is a mobile ordering platform it has supplied to several Premier League football clubs. A combination of self-service kiosks, mobile tablets in club shops and even branded phone apps to download provide a wide range of options for ordering everything from club shirts to food and drink.
Customers can choose where they pick up their purchases, have them delivered at home or even to their seat during the game. Everything is fully integrated with in-store EPOS and ecommerce platforms on club websites, providing a consistent sales experience however fans choose to place an order.
Solid hardware
For the hardware element of its in-store systems, MEDOC supplies AURES tills. “Our first contact with AURES was at AFC Bournemouth,” said Lyn. “They had AURES units at their stadium and we were very impressed.
“I’d say we’ve installed upwards of 100 AURES terminals since we’ve been supplying them. We recently fitted eight at the Principality Stadium in Cardiff, the Welsh national rugby and football stadium. We’ve got a re-fit coming up at Manchester City’s Etihad Stadium. We’ve worked with the club for a number of years, this time we’ll be replacing their tills with AURES.
“We have been supplying the AURES SANGO, as our clients love the look of the unit, as well as the solidity of the build. It is certainly very nice-looking kit, and colour-coding them to match the Club is a huge advantage, it looks attractive in stores, and that is important to retailers who want to create the right environment.
“AURES are easy to work with and they always have stock available. We sometimes have customers who want tills delivering at a week’s notice, so for AURES to always be able to meet those kinds of demand is very good from our perspective.
“It also has to be said that AURES tills work very well, we’ve had no failures at all with them. For customers who want quality, they are to be recommended.”
About MEDOC
Founded in 1981, MEDOC has been supplying bespoke software solutions to the retail market and other sectors for close to four decades. From multi-branch retailers, to international banks, MEDOC specialises in providing custom-built platforms for big-name operators based around technology it develops in-house.
With the core of its business coming from high street and sports retail, MEDOC has carved a niche for itself supplying retail solutions to sports stadium operators. Offering packages that combine full merchandising capabilities with multi-channel PoS and ecommerce, MEDOC counts Wembley Stadium, Twickenham and Premier League football clubs Manchester City, Chelsea, Everton, Burnley and AFC Bournemouth among its customers. For more information, visit www.medoc.com.