As part of a full overhaul of the facilities JMR was on site to give the restaurant’s Aloha Point Of Sale system a boost. The very location of the RDR presents a challenge. With a more than 500 foot span from the central computers at the bottom of the tower to the terminals at the top, fibre optic connections are necessary to bridge the gap. In the dining room stations are located on both the revolving floor and the stationary centre, making wireless connectivity for the system a must. Radio signals are blocked by the tower’s concrete core, so a series of access points strategically placed in the ceiling blanket the moving floor with signal.

Our focus this February was security, ensuring that those wireless connections both met and exceeded the new rules for credit card transactions set by the PCI Security Standards Council. To this goal WPA2-AES standard encryption was put into place. The new Revolving Dining Room has been open and wowing visitors all summer and the network has never been more secure.

Bird Kingdom in Niagara Falls, Ontario soars to new heights with JMR’s innovative group booking software

Bird Kingdom in Niagara Falls, Ontario brings visitors face to face with over 500 rare and exotic birds in an immersive natural setting. The world’s largest indoor aviary promotes their vision of conservation through a myriad of unique programs. The four-time Attraction of the Year winner has gone the extra mile to offer truly one-of-a-kind experiences for students, corporate groups, and tours from around the world. With so many exciting opportunities, Bird Kingdom couldn’t afford to be grounded by an ordinary group booking system.

JMR SoftwareSystems has a long history in the Niagara region. Since 1989 their custom booking and reservation solutions have played an important role at tourism and hospitality heavyweights such as the Skylon Tower, the Niagara Falls IMAX Theatre and the Niagara Parks Commission. With their next generation EasyBook system, JMR’s developers have ushered in a new era of group booking freedom for Bird Kingdom.

Bird Kingdom books such a wide variety of diverse groups and programs that flexibility is essential. With their main atrium as the centerpiece, the attraction has created an innovative set of guided tours, interactive wildlife encounters and behind the scenes adventures. The aviary’s been a boon to educators with curriculum based classroom programs and seminars. For corporate guests, workshops and unique team building opportunities are offered. Refreshments are served at a one of a kind, century old, hand carved teak Javanese Nobleman’s house and the newly renovated Riverview Room overlooking the Niagara Gorge. Bird Kingdom has even become a favourite venue for couples to exchange vows, with intimate and unique weddings hosted on site.

Bookings can be made anywhere, from the sales office to the trade show floor

With so much going on, JMR EasyBook had to easily adapt to each new idea. Built to be flexible from the ground up, the system can handle whatever the Bird Kingdom imagines. With JMR EasyBook it’s simple to schedule multiple simultaneous events of different types. Whether it’s a class, a wedding or a luncheon, the system’s friendly and intuitive interface makes scheduling a snap. It’s no surprise that the group sales staff fearlessly invites custom itineraries from their groups.

Taking full advantage of the internet, JMR EasyBook goes where Bird Kingdom’s sales staff goes. Securely accessible anywhere, new bookings can be made directly from the trade show floor. With a client’s full booking history at their finger tips, decision makers have access to up-to-the-second information. Through an expandable set of reports it’s easy to pull up intelligent, industry wide comparisons on the fly.

Back at Bird Kingdom that same web-focus gives staff the freedom to pull up JMR EasyBook from any computer’s web browser. No complex software installations or costly hardware is required. When new bookings arrive or past confirmations are changed, the people who need to know are emailed automatically. JMR EasyBook keeps the Bird Kingdom staff connected and gives them the freedom to soar to ever loftier heights.

Ripley’s Aquarium gets millions of visitors up close and personal with terrors of the deep. The back office may keep dry, but they have no shortage of challenges.

Ripley’s Aquarium is the most visited attraction in South Carolina. Located on Myrtle Beach’s red hot Broadway at the Beach district, the attraction boasts a $40 million, state-of-the-art, 87,000 square foot aquarium. Once visitors have encountered the world’s most deadly and stunning aquatic life there’s no shortage of entertainment offerings. The facility boasts one of Ripley’s world famous Believe It Or Not museums, the Haunted Adventure tour and the hydraulic powered Moving Theatre. That’s a lot of entertainment in one place, and for the back office that’s a lot of numbers to crunch.

Ripleys sells tickets via Gateway Ticketing Systems‘ Galaxy Point of Sale, packaging combos that allow guests to visit multiple attractions over the course of their stay. It’s not enough to know where tickets were sold, but also where and when they were redeemed. Revenue is split and sorted into a daily revenue report that’s sent up to the corporate head office. With each new attraction and each new promotional initiative, that process becomes more complex and time consuming. Help was needed.

JMR’s innovative solution took some very complex technology and created a simple, time-saving process. By analyzing how accounting staff manually found their numbers, JMR’s software engineers were able to reproduce the daily data gathering process electronically. With the clever application of a tool used to analyze language, a simplified “business rules” calculator was created.

Ripley’s staff are now able to define their business rules in easily understandable statements. These statements are broken down by the language analyzer, which then calculates the attendance and revenue numbers needed and places the results on an Excel spreadsheet. Staff need not worry about complex or time consuming number gathering.

“This has saved us not only time, but our reports are much more accurate”

Senior staff accountant Carrie Spencer reported some startling results, “JMR was not only able to understand what we needed, but was able to set up an automatic retrieval process that cut our reporting time from 3-4 hours to within 15-20 minutes.” This process frees up Carrie and her staff time to analyze those numbers, checking for accuracy and completeness. Time spent compiling information is now spent understanding it. That’s smart.

The process was also easy for Ripley’s staff, as JMR’s consultants strived to bridge the gap between the often obscure IT concepts and real life business rules. With years of experience servicing the hospitality sector, JMR was able to understood the unique concerns and challenges presented.

With the benefits seen in Myrtle Beach, JMR technology has begun to roll out to other Ripley Entertainment properties. Daily reporting at Ripley’s Aquarium of the Smokies in Gatlinburg, Tennessee is now assisted by the JMR software.

With experience maintaining point of sale and reservation systems in high volume restaurants, JMR knew what was needed. While making use of existing network hardware, JMR brought in the rock solid Aloha Point-Of-Sale system. Racing against the clock as the season opened, new systems were configured, menus were set up and staff retrained.

It may not be apparent how much technology powers a world class restaurant, but the Café makes use of everything from digital promotional displays, to wireless debit and credit terminals, to satellite radios for dinner music. JMR met the deadline, and Pucks is cooking once again.

With their existing network on the ropes, JMR technicians had to act fast to unlock the potential in their office. Like many businesses the Help Centre uses a Microsoft Exchange Server as their office email system, but without the proper configuration and training the more powerful features were going unused. JMR helped to properly configure the much desired web-based Exchange client, providing company email access from any computer on the internet.

The changes didn’t stop there. Without disrupting the business the company saw new office desktops, new preventative power supplies, a software lockdown on public terminals, a web-proxy to monitor internet usage and powerful new Cisco network hardware to solve long standing connection issues.

Destination Cinema, the leader in giant screen film experiences, saves time, money and gains a clearer picture of their business with JMR Dashboard.

Every company has this story. The Point Of Sale systems are collecting information vital to your business. You need to use this knowledge to plan and strategize, to truly understand your customers and shore up any weaknesses. Unfortunately you’re often cut off from the whole picture. You know it’s in there, but the canned reports the Point Of Sale gives you just aren’t up to the task. They were written by computer programmers, not someone who truly who knows your business. How many hours a week are wasted manually creating the reports you actually need? Wouldn’t that time be better spent understanding them?

Destination Cinema had these challenges and more, with an international scope. The leader in giant screen film experiences maintains theatres in such destinations as the Grand Canyon, Myrtle Beach, Victoria, British Columbia, San Simeon, California and both sides of the border at Niagara Falls. With each site showing multiple films daily the ticketing and group reservation systems generate a massive amount of information. While each theatre strives to use consistent indicators, decision makers wanted something more to help capture the big picture.

The JMR SoftwareSystems Dashboard provided a solution. Sales information from the theatres is collected throughout the day, summarized, cleaned up and pulled to a central repository at the DCI corporate headquarters in Ogden, Utah. This information is made accessible through the web browser on any computer in the company’s network. Decision makers have access to a set of detailed reports along with a number of animated graphs and charts that measure each key indicator. These reports were designed by DCI’s managers and sales staff, with the finished results reflecting the way they want to see their business. No compromises.

Pulling together data collected all over North America? No problem for JMR Dashboard

Destination Cinema knew what they needed, but the repetitive task of running daily reports from the ticketing system, then massaging the numbers into a spreadsheet was a draw on resources. With JMR Dashboard, reports built with the powerful industry leading Crystal Reports suite take the effort out. When DCI wanted two years of historical data charted against the current numbers, it was no problem for JMR’s experienced report designers. With the canned Point Of Sale system reports there was simply no suitable option.

Marketing has benefitted as well, with a set of reports providing answers to questions that matter to sales. What are the top customers at every site? The up to the minute answer is on the Dashboard. What clients have done less business this year than last? That report’s on the Dashboard.

With plans to integrate their retail and restaurant systems, Destination Cinema will soon see a wealth of new strategic reporting opportunities. JMR Dashboard unlocks the intelligence in their daily numbers.