Appleby Westward, the South West Spar distributor, has begun a £500,000 roll out of a progressive new epos system for its retailers.

Appleby has so far equipped four pilot stores with the new ‘Prosper’ system, and aims to have completed the roll out to all 300 regional Spar stores by the summer.

The new epos system includes an E-Gift facility to issue in-store gift cards, queue-busting options enabling a member of staff to walk around and pre-scan items with a handheld scanner to reduce transaction time at the till, as well as the majority of existing functionality.

Tommie Quick, Appleby Westward’s retail IT manager, said: “This is a major investment programme geared to improve ease of use and reporting in store. Prosper will represent a considerable advancement on our current system.”

Access to add-ons, including mobile applications for remote management from home or shop, will be available, in addition to a loyalty solution, a savings club functionality enabling customers to save the change and redeem later, and advanced reporting and analytics.

Peter Ewing, manager of one of the trial stores in North Hill, Plymouth store, said: “We were incredibly impressed with how easy Prosper is to use. The scheduled reports allow me to automatically print or email my key management reports on a daily and weekly basis. 

“We were really surprised with how well the staff took to the new system and how much easier it is to use. Simple improvements to processes such as not having to input the amount when tendering card transactions saves us so much time.”