The SNA Annual National Conference in Boston was the culmination to a busy year and we want to thank everyone who visited with us at the booth. We flew the sales team in from all over the country and many of the support team were able to drive up from the corporate office, making this a great opportunity for everyone to put a name to a face. Speaking of which, we kept our social media audience up to date each day on who was in the booth and the daily winners of the Coach bag drawings.

Don’t forget to check out more pictures from this year’s ANC!

Now onto the new school year! Our support staff is busy answering your calls and the conference room has been taken over by additional staff to handle parent’s “chat” requests online, in real-time.

As always, before you call or when the lines are busy, you have many options to get the information or support you need:

1. Email [email protected]
2. Open a ticket on the Support Portal
3. Visit the On Line Help Center

Have a great year start everyone and don’t forget to check out our new web site!

This Spring PCS conducted User Groups  in Florida, South Carolina, Georgia, Texas (Dallas & Houston), Minnesota, California, Delaware, and two webinars online. Based on customer feedback we will conduct a TrakNOW only user group on June 15 for customers in California. Thanks for the idea!

Conducting the user groups is a major operation for PCS and involved 7 people traveling and many others working behind the scenes at the office.The user groups provide an opportunity for districts to collaborate, discuss ideas, and provide feedback on current and new products.

New products discussed included options for upgrading to web based systems and online applications. Feedback regarding the online applications was extremely helpful to determine the direction we will develop this product. A few districts volunteered to be beta sites.

Feedback regarding enhancements to RIGHTrak, FASTrak, and NetPOS was also very helpful. Presenting new features always stirs up even more ideas for more new features, for example, accepting Credit Cards on the POS line or through a NetCash Machine.

Some observations regarding regulations:

• Not that many districts are moving to Community Eligibility. That being said, RIGHTrak reports can assist districts in analyzing their options.
• Customers in Minnesota reported that Breakfasts and meals for students that have a Reduced status will now be offered at no charge.
• Districts in California reported the state claim may change during the summer
• Eligibility rollback is not a hot topic (yet)

We posted User Group pictures on PCS’s Facebook page.

See you next year!

Betty Zimmerman,  Senior TrakNOW Implementation Specialist

Congratulations Betty on 8 successful and productive years with PCS!
Prior to joining us, Betty had extensive experience as a school cafeteria manger and supervisor in a district with both warehouse, central kitchen, and bakery facilities. Betty then provided food service IT training and support for PCS products in her district, which made joining PCS a natural next step when management changed at her district. As a Sr. Implementation Specialist, Betty has brought several large districts (and many smaller ones) online with fully integrated Nutrition, Production, Inventory, and Ordering, plus interfaces with US FOODS, Sysco, Gordon, Lawson, and many others. Betty has a great rapport with her customers and has shown continuing dedication to the reliability of the TrakNOW product line through her quality assurance activities, participating in extensive testing of every feature and function before it is released.

Here is what one of Betty’s customers had to say, …

“Betty, you are one of the persons I know who has the highest customer service skills. You are awesome. Thanks for all your help and for always being willing to support our district’s needs.”
Sebasthian Varas
Nutrition Services Director
Canyons School District

For those looking for something more than posting PDF’s of menu, recipes and nutrition on the web for parents and nurses, School Menu has a solution. School Menu does the set up and processing of your menus and posts your finished documents, with nutrition, for interactive display on the web. Changes and updates are processed quickly and efficiently for update to the web. Multiple languages are supported, as well.

TrakNOW customers can export menus or menu items, and other customers can submit their menus in any format from any software program.

Schoolmenu.com has a long search history that makes it easy for parents to search on the internet, as opposed to trying to find the information buried somewhere on the district’s web site.   

Schoolmenu.com includes easy access to wellness information for students and their families (including content from Fruits & Veggies — More Matters) and an opportunity for parents to opt-in for email reminders to check the upcoming week’s menu, plus an optimized mobile site that “right sizes” the display for any phone. And they can help with and/or integrate with digital signage solutions as well.

SchoolMenu can be your media and communications platform to make your menu listings and nutritional information more available to your families at a very reasonable cost.   

Contact Gabe Aiello, Director of Product and Business Development, for more information [email protected]  

As the 2013-14 school years comes to a close your PCS team is busy delivering the latest program releases with new features and functions, plus program updates for regulation changes (please see TrakNOW – New Release and POS Hardware – Technical Update, below).  Most of this was covered in PCS User Groups directed by Dov Abramson and Tony Diers, who crisscrossed the country in April and May, joined by regional account managers and product specialists. They brought back tremendous energy and plenty of ideas from the meetings and Dov’s report is included in this newsletter. Support webinars are coming soon, see dates and content below.

We look forward to seeing those of you attending the Kentucky, Utah, Texas, Washington, and Minnesota SNA shows and the upcoming SNA ANC in Boston. Please contact your account manager to set up a meeting time during the exhibits,or just drop by.

A new PCS Solutions Partner is featured in this issue, see School Menu, below, along with Support Person of the Month, Betty Zimmerman.

Enjoy your summer! See you next school year.

Starting in late April, PCS staff members will be heading to User Group meetings hosted by Customers in various regions. As always, the agenda will include important information about new software releases, new features, new products, and plenty of time for Questions and Answers. A webinar is available for those who are not able to attend. Emails with date, time, local agenda and location are on their way. Please give us your valuable feedback when we send a survey of the questions you would like answered at the User Group.

Some Topics will include: RighTrak/FasTrak & Net POS Changes, TrakNOW Updates, POSNOW-new web browser and cloud versions, New PayPAMS Features, Online FR Options and Support Training.

User Groups are currently being planned for: Florida, South Carolina/Georgia, Dallas, TX, Houston, TX, Minnesota/Iowa/Wisconsin, and California/Alaska.

See the Events page for date, time and location details.

Eric Garcia

Eric is a Support Supervisor with eight years of experience implementing and troubleshooting PCS free and reduced, meal accountability and POS systems.

“I don’t know where to begin to express the amount of respect I have for Eric Garcia and his skill set. I’m always comfortable and confident that each issue with PCS will be resolved to complete satisfaction whenever he is involved. I’ve worked with countless support personnel from PCS, as well as, other vendors; his dedication to ensuring the job is performed adequately and with compassion is without a doubt an extreme asset to your organization.”

“I believe that customer service is the foundation of the IT industry: simple return calls, a polite email, answering the phone in a calm tone or even a listening ear are all traits that are needed for exceptional customer interaction. Eric has consistently demonstrated all of these qualities on each call, and this is why I believe he goes beyond the call of duty, and I appreciate each opportunity I get to work with him. “

Kevan Hinchen – Arlington ISD, TX