ARLINGTON, Texas -- The Pinnacle Corp. said that Whitehead Oil Co., a longtime Pinnacle client, has licensed Loyalink, Pinnacle's loyalty solution that links retailers and their locations to customers, defines spending habits and improves product and store performance. Whitehead also selected Symphony.auditor, Pinnacle's new browser-based retail accounting and transaction tracking manager.
We have used Pinnacle products for many years throughout our 22 salary and dealer/licensed locations, said Mark Whitehead, president of Whitehead Oil, Lincoln, Neb. [image-nocss] We have evolved our IT vertical integration and selected Symphony.auditor and Loyalink. Symphony.auditor will allow us to better work our service and communication processes from end to end.
Loyalink is a marketing tool that gives retailers the competitive edge by customizing the use of rules to validate data. It uses broadband communications to manage the real-time collection of customer and transaction data from Palm POS to deliver loyalty rewards right at the moment of checkout. The centralized promotion management and compiled transaction data provides retailers with the marketing and business analytics required to measure promotion, store, supplier and customer performance.
Symphony.auditor is the cornerstone of the Symphony solutions product line being developed by Pinnacle. With it, retailers can enjoy the flexibility of customizing sets of rules that validate data related to sales and cash accountability, fuel inventory categories, and cost and retail inventory. Data that does not pass user-defined exception rules will not be marked as audited. With this software product, exceptions are displayed and easily checked for accuracy. Once data is audited, retailers can use Symphony.auditor's browser-based reporting system to extract various types of reports.
Whitehead Oil is Lincoln's largest fuel supplier, distributing through 38 locations including 22 U-Stop Convenience stores. This company uses several Pinnacle applications including Oasis Manager Workstation, Journal Manager, Palm POS, Price Book, PCTrain and Dynamics GP.
In other Pinnacle news, the Arlington, Texas-based company last week announced a new partnership with National Payment Card LLC, Boca Raton, Fla., an electronic funds payment service bureau that interfaces with POS systems to add ACH payment options to nonpayment cards.
Pinnacle and National Payment Card are building technology into Pinnacle's Palm POS to allow retail consumers to use nonpayment cards such as a loyalty card as a form of payment. Other non-payment cards will also be supported, such as a driver's license, which National Payment Card holds patent pending rights to the use as a form of payment. Adding a payment capability to loyalty and other nonpayment cards extends the MyCard technology applications that Pinnacle has licensed from E-Micro Corp. under a unique software development arrangement for the petroleum convenience retail market. This new application is branded LoyalDebit.
LoyalDebit allows consumers to register their existing nonpayment cards and link those cards to their bank account via a secured website hosted by National Payment Card. A PIN is assigned to further ensure security. Payment at the time of purchase will be handled just as if it were made with a credit / bank debit card without requiring the consumer to present multiple cards to complete the transaction. The LoyalDebit functionality will be available with Palm POS early in 2007.
Pinnacle also announced that it is launching Symphony.mws during the October NACS Show in Las Vegas. It is the latest release of products within Pinnacle's Symphony suite of enterprise solutions, a collection of browser-based applications built on a common architecture and a consistent look and feel.
Covering a broad spectrum of functions, Symphony.mws is designed for convenience store and petroleum retailers looking to lower the total cost of ownership while delivering powerful store manager workstation functionality. It eliminates the need to distribute configuration information to stores as well as eliminating the lag time to receive store paperwork. It provides advanced security features while automating daily store reports.
Symphony.mws assists the store manager with daily report workflow and works in harmony with all other Symphony solutions such as Pinnacle's Symphony.auditor, a home office retail automation solution, and Symphony.information manager, a robust reporting module.
And Pinnacle Corp. has hired John Yarbrough as its new manager of retail solutions specializing in Microsoft Dynamics financial management suite. In this role, Yarbrough will be responsible for the concept, execution and delivery-to-market of new solutions relating to Dynamics GP and other Dynamics products as they fit within Pinnacle's solutions.
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