Magento inventory management and NCR Counterpoint plays critical role in the success of Half Time Beverage. POS/eCommerce integration is critical for any business, but especially a family owned business like Half Time Beverage. Retail Dimensions helped unify their physical and online sales channels while uniquely solving their specific needs.
Half Time Beverage is a family owned business, founded in 2002 by Alan Daniels. Their first store opened in Poughkeepsie, New York and their second store in Mamaroneck, New York in 2013 (Just 35 minutes from New York City). Craft beer enthusiasts come from the surrounding six states not only for the selection of craft beers and cider, but their exceptional staff as well. Each staff member participates in an extensive training program as well as private brewery tastings and industry seminars.
They feature over 4,000 craft beer and cider selections from over 800 breweries located in over 50 countries. For those who don’t have a Half Time Beverage beer store around the corner, their beer and ciders are also available online at Half Time Beverage for home delivery!
CHALLENGES: NCR Counterpoint & Magento integration, adapts to fast changing product offerings
Half Time had an online presence prior to 2019. Their e-platform had been set up but needed additional work to facilitate online sales. They raced to get it inventory and sales-ready around early 2020. With Covid on the horizon, they quickly realized boosting their online presence was key to making in-store pickup, curbside purchases and mail order possible.
Since Half Time Beverage uses NCR Counterpoint and Magento, they were in need of a group with specialized POS familiarity and expertise to customize their unique inventory management issues. They have many custom field requirements and needs for ongoing product image uploads. Given the complexities of 2 physical stores and website sales, they required full inventory integration so that once a product was purchased, it got pulled system-wide from inventory.
At the time, they considered their website akin to being in startup form so keeping costs economical and affordable for their integration solutions was critical.
“RDi has been pretty invaluable helping us do the upgrades we needed.”
Chris Weiss, Director of Technology, Half Time Beverage
PROJECT OBJECTIVES
- Simplify ecommerce Integration – Special customization was required. Custom fields on items and attributes unique to specialty beer and cider is key as well as uploading product photos. RDi moves e-commerce data; orders, customers and returns integration between Half Time Beverage, NCR CounterPoint POS system and Magento 2 Inventory Management. Half Time can upload stock unit pricing and inventory, meaning they can sell 1 beer or a six pack or a case to allow for different pricing per unit sold.
- Synced Orders and Inventory – RD-Ice bridges CounterPoint’s basic features to build and maintain their catalog navigation structure, product assignments to categories including detailed product descriptions, images, merchandising, pricing and inventory with Magento customizations.
- BOPIS/Curbside Pickup – Customization for BOPIS/Curbside pickup feature on website.
- Seamless Shipping – Orders and customers are brought into NCR CounterPoint where they are shipped. Once shipped. the site is updated with a shipping confirmation updating the Magento 2 order status and notifying the customer the order has been shipped.
- Gift cards – integration for loyalty-program and gift cards.
- Competitive Edge – sophisticated customization enhances flexibility for fulfilling customer orders.
“Having integration gives us a competitive advantage because it allows us to have sophisticated customization that perhaps competitors without a relationship with [someone like] RDi cannot do.”
Chris Weiss, Director of Technology, Half Time Beverage
SOLUTION
RDice ensures things run seamlessly for Half Time. This matters because whether they are adding new products online daily or building a new brand line to their site or ensuring their gift cards are operating properly, each moving part needs to work to guarantee their customers’ experience is first-rate!
RESULTS
Half Time can now better monitor their ongoing upgrade customizations needed for Counterpoint POS.
For example, they recently had an issue where there were concerns about double entry of inventory in the system which RDi was able to help effectively remedy to ensure there was no duplication to avoid staff at Half Time committing hours of their time for manual corrections.
“RDi has been invaluable in helping us manage ongoing upgrade customizations we’ve needed for Counterpoint POS.”
Chris Weiss, Director of Technology, Half Time Beverage
LOOKING TO THE FUTURE: As Half Time Beverage continues to provide unique selections of craft beer, ciders and more, they look to solidify and expand their customer base selling in-store and online; shipping orders to your door!