MLB All-Star Host 2021, Colorado Rockies, Elevate Omnichannel Experience For Fans

MLB All-Star Host 2021, Colorado Rockies, Elevate Omnichannel Experience For Fans

The Colorado Rockies, Major League Baseball team based in Denver, Colorado, implemented Teamwork in 2020 and went live in April during the baseball season. The Rockies have around 50
mobile point of sale (POS) stations, most of them at Coors Field and the rest in their five stores in the surrounding Denver area.

Teamwork Commerce provides efficient omnichannel experiences to Rockies’ fans across their stores. Fans can return a purchased item at any location throughout to stadium or greater Denver area. Teamwork’s strong cloud backend enables the Colorado Rockies to connect a variety of integrations to drive more engaging experiences.

The integration with Givex is a powerful integration for them as well. It was a must-have feature when they were looking for their mobile point of sale partner. With Coors Field now cashless, fans can take their cash and convert it into a gift card, giving them the ability to come back and use it in Rockies stores. The Givex integration also supports the Rockies’ season ticket loyalty program.

One of the biggest game-changers for the Rockies is Apple iOS technology and native Teamwork apps that are running on the iPads in store. The Rockies have taken full advantage of the mobility and flexibility that the iPads provide. If a game has higher attendance than expected, it is easy to take an iPad, download the apps and grab a printer and scanner to quickly set up a register.

This year, the Rockies faced a unique challenge when the MLB All Star Week was relocated to them 13 weeks before the events were to begin. Typically, teams have around two years to prepare for this game which presented some unique challenges for the Rockies retail operation.

Teamwork’s flexibility gave us the ability to quickly take an iPad, download the apps, and you have a point of sale,” said Aaron Heinrich, Senior Director of Retail Operations for the Colorado Rockies. “We were able to easily go from 12 to 25 point of sales in our main store.”

The Rockies use Teamwork’s Dashboard app which enables them to see a live view of sales and other analytics of their choosing.

“I’m a little addicted to dashboard. To have that feature on my phone, be able to see the live sales and what trends are in the ballpark has really stepped up our game. We can spot problems that we’ve missed in the past and that’s a huge opportunity for us to get better.” said Heinrich. “That’s what we were looking for and that’s what Teamwork offers to us.

– Aaron Heinrich, Senior Director of Retail Operations for the Colorado Rockies.

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Royal Pets Simplifies Their Store Operations

Royal Pets Simplifies Their Store Operations

Royal Pets Market & Resort is a chain of dog and cat supply stores that offers full veterinary hospital and surgical centers as well as a doggy daycare, play facilities, and pet hotels. When they needed a system that was capable of running everything across the expansive operations in each of their 8,000 square-foot locations, they turned to Teamwork Commerce.

“We chose Teamwork because it’s iOS-based and more intuitive,” says Jason Chase, Operations Manager at Royal Pets. “In addition, it’s a multi-app and multi-store platform that can manage several different aspects of our business.”

Royal Pets finds that setup is quick and easy because iPads can be configured at the central office and then brought to the location and quickly synced up with the whole system. Royal Pets makes good use of the entire suite of Teamwork apps and Cloud HQ, which controls each app and tracks orders and inventory.

The POS app is used to access customer data make sales, while Drawer Memo tracks cash and other transactions. In addition to sales of retail stock, POS supports payments for services in the veterinary hospital and boarding and daycare facilities while the Scheduler provides real-time scheduling for appointments and boarding.

When a customer goes to check out, he or she can provide a name, phone number or email address to access Royal Pets’ rewards program. Customers see the Shopper Display app facing them on a second iPad. This app shows not only their current transactions, but in-store advertisements for specials of the veterinary and boarding services.

“It’s a great opportunity to shout out our services, which is something not every customer who comes in to buy a bag of food would hear about without Shopper Display,” Chase says. The centralized nature of the system saves time training employees.

“Since everything is managed in the store through Teamwork, if you learn to use one app you can easily learn all the other apps,” Chase says. “These are apps that work well together and as we add more stores and as we grow and become more innovative, Teamwork is something that can grow with us.”

Royal Pets is beginning to set up the automatic order management and replenishment features in CHQ as well as the Stock Count app, which allows counting and managing of stock by section. “It’s really going to take us to the next level in terms of reducing costs of goods sold and making sure our inventory levels are where they need to be for our customers,” Chase says.

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World Series Champions, Washington Nationals, Elevate their Fan Experience

World Series Champions, Washington Nationals, Elevate their Fan Experience

Before the start of the Washington Nationals 2019 season, their retail division implemented Teamwork Commerce POS in 90 days. With an integration to Fortress, Teamwork provides a solution that is unparalleled in the stadium space.

In mid-October, the Washington Nationals clinched their first pennant, setting the stage for D.C.’s first World Series in 86 years. How do the Nats serve up championship merchandise to a fanbase that hasn’t seen a World Series game since 1933? With Teamwork Commerce.

Immediately following the last out of the World Series, Teamwork Commerce, a cloud-based point-of-sale system easily handled the flood of fans who wanted the first chance a World Series championship merchandise.

Teamwork supports not just standard purchases from casual fans, but integrates with Fortress’s season-ticket-holder loyalty program. The program links with each fan’s account to provide special discounts, loyalty points and even on-the-spot specials and sales. This made it easy to deploy new championship merchandise for sale.

We had a very short timeline for implementation. Teamwork came in, they had a team on the ground within a week and really came through. After testing, everything was ready for a smooth Opening Day.”

– Mike Carney, Nationals VP of Business Strategy

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Teamwork Retail: using Microsoft Azure and AppScale to provide the next-gen retail experience

Teamwork Retail: using Microsoft Azure and AppScale to provide the next-gen retail experience

As consumer demands and expectations change, the retail sales environment is also changing, and Teamwork Retail is at the forefront of that transformation. The company provides businesses of all sizes with cloud-based retail point-of-sale (POS) and business management solutions that change the way retailers interact with their customers and manage their businesses.

Using Teamwork Retail, businesses can perform mobile and integrated POS transactions while also managing back-of-the-house activities such as inventory levels, sales analytics, and human resource functions like employee timecards and scheduling. In addition, Teamwork Retail offers its clients omnichannel servicing for their customers, seamlessly providing customer data and information regardless of how customers interact with the retailers. Teamwork Retail’s clients have come to rely on its technological solutions.

How Microsoft Azure and AppScale helped Teamwork Retail open the door to China

With a population of nearly 1.5 billion and a swiftly expanding consumer base, China is irresistible to retailers. In fact, A.T. Kearney again ranked China number one in its 2016 Global Retail Development Index, which rates developing countries by retail attractiveness, risk, and other parameters. In today’s retail environment, global organizations seek opportunities in China. Many of Teamwork Retail’s clients were either already operating in or planning to expand to China.

The challenge Teamwork Retail faced was that its solution is cloud-based and was built on Google App Engine. Google App Engine can only be used on Google Cloud Platform, which cannot be used in China because of government regulatory controls. Teamwork Retail tried connecting through Taiwan, but the arrangement did not work well.

“We need to meet this extremely high online performance across any channel, and this technology just really lends itself to that. So, that’s the secret sauce, and AppScale made that possible by migrating to Azure.” —Michael Mauerer, CEO, Teamwork Retail

To better serve its clients and offer its services to retailers operating in China, Teamwork Retail engaged AppScale, a Microsoft ISV, to help. AppScale is the only software that allows for the portability from Google App Engine to Microsoft Azure without any code modifications. It is also the world’s leading open-source, rapid development model for building scalable web and mobile applications. Teaming with AppScale, Teamwork Retail seamlessly moved its applications from Google App Engine to Microsoft Azure, running them on AppScale and operating in Azure’s datacenter.

When the cloud solutions were evaluated, Microsoft Azure was chosen for deployment to ensure optimal application performance and the required ability to scale as needed. Latency needed to be extremely low, and performance and reliability levels needed to be high—and Azure’s Beijing datacenter satisfied those requirements. In addition to its global capability, Azure provided the local support and service model that Teamwork Retail needed and the ability to create a hybrid environment to integrate with its current infrastructure.

“Microsoft provides a white-glove level of service with Azure that enabled Teamwork Retail to make the most efficient use of cloud services,” AppScale CEO Woody Rollins said about the migration.

After the migration, Teamwork Retail was better able to offer its products and services to Chinese retailers and other global retailers operating in China. It has also gained new business and, as a result, significantly expanded its client base.

Taking full advantage of AppScale’s and Azure’s benefits expands business

Now that Teamwork Retail is operating in China through AppScale in Azure, the company is taking full advantage of the expanded services and capabilities. Teamwork Retail now offers its clients functionality they didn’t have before the migration. This includes the ability to offer loyalty programs or notifications to customers about retail events to engage with and build their customer base—while at the same time giving them that omnichannel view of their customer base.

“The whole value is built around the performance,” said Michael Mauerer, CEO of Teamwork Retail. “We need to meet this extremely high online performance across any channel, and this technology just really lends itself to that. So, that’s the secret sauce, and AppScale made that possible by migrating to Azure.”

Prior to the migration to Azure, Teamwork Retail’s offering was strictly POS and did not have the real-time interactive component that now distinguishes the company as a leader in the retail technology space.

Challenge

Move applications from Google App Engine to a cloud provider (Azure) in China with minimal impact on solution engineering and customers.

Results

Teamwork Commerce successfully and easily migrated its apps from Google App Engine to Microsoft Azure by partnering with AppScale and is now able to offer its products and services better in China.

The cloud-based technology products and services that Teamwork Commerce offers now have extremely high performance and reliability levels with extremely low latency.

Taking advantage of the AppScale-Azure relationship, Teamwork Commerce expanded its business solutions and now offers more products and services to its clients.

Snapshot

Organization: Teamwork Commerce

Industry: Technology/ Retail Services

Location: Florida HQ, global sales presence

Website: twfrance.wpengine.com

Customer since: 2015

AppScale gives you the freedom to run your App Engine application across all public and private clouds or on your own virtual or physical infrastructure. Find out more at AppScale.com

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The New Stand Improves Days and Mobility

The New Stand Improves Days and Mobility

The New Stand is in the business of improving your day. A newsstand for the social media age, it calls itself part bodega, part blog. Originating in the New York City subway in 2015, the small locations are now all over New York streets, office buildings and even ferries. New Stand also has a location at Los Angeles International Airport and plans to keep expanding.

“Being a day-improvement company means being in service of people and helping to make their days just that little bit better,” says New Stand founder and COO Lex Kendall. “New Stand is here to solve modern pain points. Everything from charging or basic grab-and-go products to really inspiring and uplifting content that we push through our mobile app.”

Powering the sales of snacks, drinks, interesting items, cool new gadgets, phone chargers (and very few newspapers) at these small stands is Teamwork Commerce, which provides point-of-sale devices and a cloud-based backend system to support The New Stand’s ever-changing product line. New Stand employees run Teamwork on iPads that provide full-featured customer checkout capabilities.

Teamwork also works with The New Stand’s app, which allows customers to receive loyalty points and special discounts alongside a daily digest of interesting news articles.

“Teamwork has enabled us to build a business in multiple formats from Day 1,” Kendall says of the various configurations of New Stand locations.

Kendall also credits Teamwork with supporting some of their more innovative ideas. “Things like self-checkout built into our member app were only possible with Teamwork,” he says. “We had to figure out how to make the wallet in our app sync with our stores and Teamwork enabled that. There’s a whole host of things going on in the background that you don’t see, but that you obviously need a really strong tech partner to be able to execute.” The New Stand also offers an innovative “swap charge” device that provides a phone charger that customers can borrow like a library book for 72 hours for free.

“We had to figure out how to be able checkout a swap charge and have that payment integration. Teamwork allowed for that,” Kendall says. “Teamwork’s been an amazing partner to keep up with us and allow us extensibility inside our platform. It allows us to add features, other partners and to evolve constantly.” Kendall credits the flexibility of the system — which uses off-the-shelf iOS hardware — as a key component of current and future expansion plans.

“One of the great things about Teamwork is that we can start up a new location so easily. It’s really plug-and-play for us, which is essential for a company that’s expanding as fast as ours is.” Kendall says. “For us it’s as simple as setting up a mobile hotspot, turning on the iPad, configuring the system, and Teamwork is live and ready across the entire stack of our service.”

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