Blog
Oct
Beautiful menus, easy to create
Imagine how your customers would react if your menus included pictures, helpful descriptions, and understandable nutritionals.
Nutrislice Menus are simple and easy to use for districts, and present school foods in a beautiful, intuitive interface. They are the only school menu publishing tool that lets you enter menu information once, and then publishes that menu into multiple communication channels so that parents and students can easily access your menus wherever they are.
Give your patrons a modern, professionally designed experience – regardless of whether they prefer to print your menu and put it on the fridge, use an app on their mobile phone while on the go, dig through details on a website, or subscribe to receive an email with their school’s menu.
Oct
Now that year start is well under way, we hope that all of our customers have had a chance to take a step back and evaluate how things are going. As always, we appreciate any feedback that you may have. RightNOW, PayPAMS and TrakNOW support teams put out the maximum effort for school start. In addition, based on customer suggestions, we provided more webinars and video instruction at the PCS-NOW Online Help Center. We hope that you have found these efforts effective.
An increased focus on Quality Assurance and Support Staff training has paid off. We found lower call volumes in general, about 10% less than last year. An increased number of customer questions and problems were quickly resolved during the initial call and fewer calls were waiting for call backs at the end of each day. Therefore, we are nominating as “Support Person of the Month” our whole PCS Support Team as thanks for a great job.
Oct
Winston County spurs creation of pre-coded inventory database for new Alabama Customers using TrakNOW Nutrition and Inventory components. Winston County was one of 6 districts in Alabama that came to us at the same time in anticipation of the new regulations.
They had been using our point of sale for quite a while, along with over 80 other districts in Alabama. For back of the house they were still doing everything with pencil and paper. All six of the districts were purchasing from the Alabama state grocery and supply bid through regional distributors. In an effort to expedite training and database set up our TrakNOW Nutrition and Inventory staff created a “template” database using a download of the Alabama State bid items and hand linking the items with the Child Nutrition database, which is included in TrakNOW. The items’ nutrition and measures were defined using CN data, Commodity Fact Sheets, Alabama Ingredient List or manufacturer’s product sheets by the PCS staff. Many standard food based contributions were defined as well. After each district’s review and approval of the database, the template database was used to create their unique TrakNOW database. After training, the districts were able to immediately begin creating recipes and menus. TrakNOW was implemented in these districts in record time, not typically seen in the child nutrition industry, and they were quickly able to comply with the added food based requirements and 6 cents certification compliance.
Jun
The PayPAMS Mobile App for parents is now available for Android smart phones and will be available soon for iPhone. This convenient app allows parents to make payments, view meal account balances, cafeteria purchases and the last three payments on account. They can also personalize the app by adding their children’s pictures.
Parents can download the app by searching for “PayPAMS” under Google Play and logging in with the same user name and password as they do on PayPAMS.
May
Flagler Schools, Food and Nutrition Services PCS takes pride in the number of long standing customer relationships, as well as those we add to our family each year. We want every PCS customers to be a PCS customer for life. Flagler Schools, in Bunnell, FL, midway between Jacksonville and Cape Canaveral, has been a PCS customer since 1993. Flagler is a nine school district and has implemented almost all of the PCS-NOW modules, RightNOW FASTrak and RIGHTrak, TrakNOW, and PayPAMS and most of the hardware options we have to offer, like POS-05’s, Alanas, touch screens, and wireless tablets.
The TrakNOW Inventory and Ordering components have been a welcome addition and long time TrakNOW user Annette Russell, a Flagler Food Service Specialist, is just crazy about the program.
“TrakNOW has made us totally paperless. Anyone can go back and look up any of the reports done at any one of our school sites and see what a school site has ordered, transferred, or used on any given day since we started using the program in 2008. When manufacturers come and visit us, I can easily tell them what items and how much is being used at our sites, cutting down on phone calls and interruptions.”
“New or subbed items can be easily added to the district master list, and sites get the information right away – no waiting for a download or until the next day. Tracking items is made easier since you can put each item in a location such as a freezer, a cooler, or a storage rooms, and reports can be run so several people can split up and take inventory counts more efficiently.”
“Managers can also look up how much they ordered or used – a great help in forecasting orders! Perhaps the best part is that, whether during setup or even after installation, the PCS TrackNOW support staff are with you the whole way, guiding you with any and all questions. And they answer right away, no need to wait days for a response. I frankly don’t know how any district is managing without TrakNOW and would highly advise any district to get it.”
May
ANC 2013
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“ANC in the Heart of the Nation” is the theme of this year’s SNA Annual National Conference and PCS will be there to present new products and technology partners that get to the “heart” of your program’s needs.
Our Booth number is 1138 and as always our account managers, implementation technicians, marketing and management staff will put our heart into it for you.
Please come by and say ‘hi’ to Gabe Aiello, Chris Gustavsen, David Yaniv, David Dittlinger, Tony Diers, Becki Rogers, and Ava Wojcik.
May
Who do you call when you need to add a school to your system, or when you want to add online F&R applications, or just to find out if PCS has a solution to a problem you want to solve in your cafeteria?
PCS prides itself on the fact that our account managers try very hard to stay in touch with all of our customers. However, there are times when the name and contact information of your account manager may slip your mind, or perhaps you are out of the office and you need to have another district employee contact PCS. Or, perhaps, while contacting our technical department is the best option, sometimes you just want to talk to an account manager. In those instances, you can find your account manager on our website. Just click HERE. and enter your zip code, and you’ll know the contact information for your PCS account manager.
May
A New Line of Keypads
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Look out NED6 and FRED6! NED7 and FRED7 are here! If you’ve been using PCS hardware for a while, you know NED and FRED and remember their cartoon counterparts. Well, NED and FRED have new little brothers now – NED7 and FRED7.
Some of the benefits of the new keypads are:
- Masked “****” or displayed numbers
- Optional duplicate entry blocking
- Reset factory settings
- Choose long or short audible beep
- Configurable bar code setup
These spill-proof keypads feature flat key construction and are easier to configure than their older brothers. We’ve got nearly 1000 of these new keypads in customer’s hands now and they are being VERY well received. Let us know if you’d like a trial!
May
Thanks to all of our customers who attended regional User Groups. It’s always great to meet with everyone and get the lowdown on how PCS can best meet the challenges ahead. Tony Diers and Dov Abramson attended all of the groups, and were accompanied by Becki Rogers(GA and both TX groups), David Dittlinger(CA), Judi Dugan(CA and MN) Betty Zimmerman(both TX groups), and Ava Wojcik(GA). In all, some 50-60 districts were represented at the user groups. Thanks to Brianna Gold for preparing the great documentation that was provided and David Smith for the great online documentation and help guide. If you could not attend, please let us know and we can send you a copy. Also, if you couldn’t attend a regional meeting, please take advantage of the online User Group Webinars coming up soon. Keep an eye on your inbox.
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