Simon Oke and Nick Bate talk to Ian Reynolds about ‘Eating at Warwick’, and the technological partnership that turned a rudimentary payment card into a trump card in the business of building sales

Sometimes to tell a story it’s a good idea to start at the end to fully appreciate the beginning…

The University of Warwick’s Simon Oke has been talking about ‘Eating at Warwick’, the  new purchasing card solution for campus catering and retail outlets. On his lap-top, connected by wi-fi to the Internet, from this off-the-beaten-track meeting room we’ve been able to observe, in real time, customers topping up their cards on line. There’s a lot of action – with more than 8,000 cardholders topping up on a regular basis, there’s bound to be – and it prompts the question: ‘what has been the rise in card holder numbers since the new Metro Symphony system was introduced?’

To which the answer is an apologetic, ‘er…’

‘One of the problems with our previous cashless solution was that it was difficult to get any useful information out of the system’, Simon reflects. The truth is, around 4,000 people had registered for the old card, but how many of those were currently users, and how many had moved on, heaven only knows. Simon reckons the number of actual users might have been as low as 2,500. Who knows? What’s for sure is that over 8,000 students and staff have signed up for the new system, and as new users ‘sign up’, we can see them, on line, in real time.

Information is meat and drink to all university catering departments, that’s taken as read. Without the low-down on what is selling, where, and to whom, the challenge of delivering targeted offers can be more ‘miss’ than ‘hit’. At the University of Warwick, the stakes are high. The award winning campus, at over 700 acres, lacks only a series of unfathomable traffic roundabouts to resemble a New Town. It is a self-contained home to over 17,000 students and staff. The social facilities in site are impressively modern and unmistakable retail and include a Costa outlet. It’s cost a fortune to create and the investment has been made so that there is no impediment to Warwick achieving ‘World Top 50’ status.

Following its nomination as a TUCO approved supplier MCR Systems implemented its Metro Symphony solution. Metro Symphony offers complete web enabled central EPoS management and real-time reporting software that allows customers to implement tighter controls and ease administrative tasks. Its availability as an internet-based service, via a web browser, makes it quicker, easier and cheaper to deploy than traditional software. Metro Symphony provides complete control over all aspects of the maintenance and management of an EPOS & Cashless Payment systems estate, built on Microsoft Server architecture, ensuring that Symphony has a solid foundation that inherently provides scalability, resilience, security and simplified administrative operations.

Feeding and watering the assembled multitudes is a catering conundrum of the highest order. Twenty percent of the student population comes from overseas and representatives of 125 countries are enrolled. The data that flows from it makes ‘Eating at Warwick’ a trump card in striving to get the right offers to the right people in the right place at the right time.

The card has advantages for users as well as operators. Because VMCs expertise means that its possible to interface with numerous otherwise independent till systems, card holders can flash the plastic in the University bookshop, The Student’s Union and even in the two Costcutter supermarkets that are on site, and plans are in hand to expand the offer even further.

All well and good: but the major advantage of ‘Eating at Warwick’ is the fact that the card can be topped-up online. Anxious parents in Birmingham or Brunei, Coventry or Cambodia can make payments into the system that are available for use on campus around three minutes after the transaction is completed. Compare that with bank transfer times… And parents have the comfort of knowing that their regular contributions – or their responses to the inevitable cries of ‘help’ – are ring-fenced for food, groceries and other sustenance, and can’t be used for a night out on the town. Card-holders, to boot, can count on a minimum 10% discount in all café’s, bars and restaurants.

The genius of VMCs solution, delivered in conjunction with MCR systems, is that, as MD Nick Bate explained, ‘it provides the glue that bonds the different elements of the University’s systems together. It gives the university options that wouldn’t otherwise be available.’

Simon Oke picks out one example of this: ‘Transactions costs’, he says. ‘With our previous system, we were locked into a banking deal that cost us 75p each time a card was used. Now, because ‘Eating at Warwick’ integrates with our administrative database, through which funds such as tuition fees flow, we’ve been able to negotiate a much better deal that has decimated our transaction costs, and that’s had a significant bearing on our margins.’

It’s a sign of things to come. Working in the Higher Education market is reshaping our business into a service provider able to provide software that is capable of being, to use Nick Bate’s term, ‘the glue.’ It means a switch from our traditional product development approach towards developing ‘core services’ to allow clients the flexibility to build highly integrated and flexible systems.

‘Universities can use our system to extract the information that’s relevant to them and to provide users with a bespoke interface with the system that enables in-house web development teams to deliver the service that their customers need’, Nick said. ‘It’s not about us saying ‘here’s our system, this is how it works?’ On the contrary, it’s about us adding our resources and expertise to the university’s to the benefit of all concerned.’

It’s new and it’s fresh, and it brings to mind that oft-quoted thought of George Bernard Shaw: ‘some people see things as they are and say why? I dream things that never were and say ‘why not?’’