The Rum Story
Welcoming up to 20,000 visitors a year The Rum Story - The Dark Spirit of Whitehaven is a three story wet weather visitor attraction based on the unique story of rum. With the support of a Millennium Commission grant the Whitehaven Development Company created this £3 million attraction in the Jefferson family's original Georgian buildings.
Visitors to The Rum Story can enjoy passing through the doors of the courtyard through to a tropical rainforest, an African village, a realistic slave ship, Cumbrian cottages, a Cooper's workshop and many other areas which help to tell the tale of Rum.
The Rum Story offers a shop, a charming and welcoming café, a corporate hospitality suite as well as an exhibition on the Jefferson family and the story of rum.
The Reason for Change
The system previously used by staff at The Rum Story was slow, difficult to use and month end reporting was becoming increasingly harder to manage.
In their gift shop, a number of small inexpensive items are sold which are very hard to barcode, which made processing them at the till very difficult. Visitors can also purchase tickets for various attractions in the gift shop; a number of different tickets are available for individual and group bookings and the previous system required them to manually enter all of the ticket sales into their accounts package at the end of each day, a process which was very time consuming and prone to error.
The Solution
Following a period of consultation, the Rum Story implemented IRIS Exchequer accounting software. This award winning back office solution provided the solution to their accounting and reporting requirements and was able to seamlessly and instantaneously bring in transactions from the various points of sale around the attraction.
The Rum Story also installed KCPOS on all of the tills in the visitor attraction. The installation of the new system needed to take place as soon as possible, and although it was a busy season for The Rum Story, KCPOS was installed without causing any inconvenience to the visitors or staff.
Staff at The Rum Story underwent short and simple training on the new system whilst they were open to visitors, however this did not cause any problems as it took them no more than twenty minutes of training to get used to processing sales quickly and efficiently! Staff have since found the search function within KCPOS invaluable and it is making processing transactions much faster and more simplified.
Summary
All of the staff think that the system is much easier to use than their previous system. Wendy, the Duty Manager, confesses to being completely computer phobic and she thinks that the new system is "completely brilliant” as “it only takes us half the time to calculate discounts for group bookings".
The Rum Story is delighted to be saving so much time at the end of every month. Elaine, who manages the accounts administration said, "There are some really useful reports, such as best sellers and worst sellers which makes us much more responsive to customer demand."
Elaine also reported that adding special deals to the KCPOS menu for the cafe is very quick and she is able to do it herself as a routine task instead of calling out a technical person or using "dump codes". When coping with coach parties or school parties the duty manager can respond to changing requirements by changing the menu buttons on all of the tills with the menu editor in a matter of seconds.
Next to the shop is the Jefferson's office, which has been left untouched for tens of years after the Jefferson business closed. Recently the location played host to a 60 strong film crew when filming the movie “Miss Potter” Starring Renee Zellweger and Ewan McGregor. When the film was released in January 2007, The Rum Story saw a huge rush of tourists from around the world that came to see the areas where Miss Potter lived, wrote about and farmed. The Rum Story are confident that they have put the right system in place to cope with the added influx of visitors.
Reference
Celia MacKenzie, chief executive of W3M, the organization that runs The Rum Story is delighted that her staff are so positive about the new system.
"They need to be able to concentrate on customer service:' she said, and not have to worry about whether the system is going to come between them and their job."
For more information about The Rum Story visit www.rumstory.co.uk