Don Capman, President of J.D. Associates, has been authoring a retail-focused monthly column for our monthly e-newsletters for the past 3 years. It’s time for a format change in how we communicate with you. Attempting to tap into in his untapped creative side, I suggested he retire from writing a column and venture into the world of recording. Enthusiastically, he agreed. Read on.

Starting in January, we have some exciting projects going on at J.D. Associates that will affect retailers in a positive way.

Here’s a preview: “Position Yourself for POS Success” will be a monthly podcast with your podcaster hosts, Don Capman and John Deery. As the Principals of J.D. Associates and former retailers, they’ve got lots of experience in both retail and POS software. Their stories are legend around the office and many have an interesting twist that will most certainly make you think and most likely, laugh. The podcast will be educational, insightful and engaging with the end goal of helping retailers become aware of how to use their POS software - to the hilt. That way you’ll squeeze more pennies from your POS investment. And we promise not to take too much of your time doing it. Our Q2 vision is to create a blog so you can post comments and let us know what you think and most importantly - make suggestions for future shows. To make this work, it must work for you, the audience. If you have some show suggestions, drop me an email at: Debran@jdapos.com .

There are a few ways you can get this monthly podcast once it’s posted in mid-January. And we’ll keep you up-to-date when it does go live.

• You’ll be able to click on the podcast (at the bottom of our home page www.jdapos.com) and listen to it because they’ll be a built-in player for streaming- audio.
• Or you can subscribe to it through an RSS feed. Put simply, an RSS feed most often means Really Simple Syndication. They’ll be lots more information about how to do this in a separate January email. I’ll do my best to make it simple.

Also starting in January we’ll offer a total of twenty-four, 30-minute webinars from January – December. These webinars will be offered for our Microsoft Dynamics Retail Management System (RMS) and Retail Pro customers. They are always educational, with a lineup of talented trainers at the helm ready to present to you, ending each webinar with a Q & A so you can cement your learning. We’ll have a new page on our web site in the next few weeks so you can check back often to see what’s coming up and register for the next webinar. To be eligible to attend them (only 15 seats available) you must have one of the following:

• Retail Pro users must have current Software Assurance (formally known as Membership). If you want to talk about your Software Assurance status or its cost for your retail business, call Stephanie Snow at 978-840-2096 x 222.

2009 Retail Pro Webinars	Date
Clean House – Dictates to remotes or subs, which items to remove	Jan 7, 2009
Ask the Trainer (ATT) – Open to all Retail Pro users just this one time in 2009, even those without Software Assurance	Feb 4, 2009
Easy Plan – An Open-to-Buy that helps you plan and forecast your buy	Mar 4, 2009
Data Verification System Audit Tool	Apr 1, 2009
Scheduler	May 6, 2009
ATT - A great way to submit a question and get it answered- LIVE!	June 3, 2009
Screen Design or Mobile POS - TBD	July 1, 2009
Top 10 Report Best/Worst Sellers	Aug 5, 2009
List Segmentation	Sept 2, 2009
ATT - A great way to submit a question and get it answered- LIVE!	Oct 7, 2009
Virtual Technician - A watchdog for your system even when you’re sleeping	Nov 4, 2009
Inventory Cost/Order Cost	Dec 2, 2009

Finally there’s the upcoming J.D. Associates E-store. Yes, soon there will be a way for you to order all your consumables online. But if you’re still holding onto the old way of doing it: phoning or faxing the order in, that’ll work as well. We’re hoping to go live with this project in Q1. There’s much to do to build the E-store but we have a great team in place that will deliver an easy-to-navigate interface that simplifies ordering into a two-step process: selecting the items and tendering the sale online.There will be a push after the holidays to let you know when it’s live and how to purchase online. Stay tuned.

When I have new news for you, you can find it in this column. I’ll be proactive about getting it to you so in the event, it requires budgeting, (introducing new hardware, or a software add-on for example) then you can budget.