Cashless Catering. Cunninghams vs BioStore vs Civica?

[LazyD]

Hi All,

 

Am trying to move away from awful and ancient AMI Infinity+ system with cash loaders asap. New solution and hardware needs to integrate with ParentPay, as is commonly the case. The new solution needs to support finger/thumb print reader and RFID card.

 

I have demo's booked with 2 of these companies for this week. I have read a lot about all 3 of these solutions/products. Cunningham's seem to be market leaders but almost everything I've read about their support says it's terrible. I've also read that they are considerably more expensive on initial outlay and very expensive when it comes to onsite visits and after sales support items. I've heard very little about Civica as, from what I can find, not that many schools are using it? What I have heard about it seems to be good though...? BioStore is probably my forerunner at the moment based on cost and after sales support. Most things I have read say BioStore's support is good but then again I have read a few saying it's not (although no where near the numbers of accounts of people saying Cunningham's is terrible). I have read that there are sometimes Sync issues between BioStore FasTrak and ParentPay.

 

I know people have asked similar things here before but I wanted to get a poll of people's opinions on this, and hopefully from some people that have had experience with more than one of these solutions.

 

What is your recommendation?

 

Thanks!

Edited July 8, 2020 by LazyD

[rad]

NRS. . . .

[eddyc]

I’m just curious as to why you’re looking to move away from Infinity+ - we have it here and it’s rock solid.

 

Just incase there’s something that could potentially crop up here at a later date

 

 

Hi All,

 

Am trying to move away from awful and ancient AMI Infinity+ system with cash loaders asap. New solution and hardware needs to integrate with ParentPay, as is commonly the case. The new solution needs to support finger/thumb print reader and RFID card.

 

I have demo's booked with 2 of these companies for this week. I have read a lot about all 3 of these solutions/products. Cunningham's seem to be market leaders but almost everything I've read about their support says it's terrible. I've also read that they are considerably more expensive on initial outlay and very expensive when it comes to onsite visits and after sales support items. I've heard very little about Civica as, from what I can find, not that many schools are using it? What I have heard about it seems to be good though...? BioStore is probably my forerunner at the moment based on cost and after sales support. Most things I have read say BioStore's support is good but then again I have read a few saying it's not (although no where near the numbers of accounts of people saying Cunningham's is terrible). I have read that there are sometimes Sync issues between BioStore FasTrak and ParentPay.

 

I know people have asked similar things here before but I wanted to get a poll of people's opinions on this, and hopefully from some people that have had experience with more than one of these solutions.

 

What is your recommendation?

 

Thanks!

[synaesthesia]

I'm only interested to see if anyone ever recommends Cunninghams....

[LazyD]

I’m just curious as to why you’re looking to move away from Infinity+ - we have it here and it’s rock solid.

 

Just incase there’s something that could potentially crop up here at a later date

 

Where do I begin..

 

Have it running in a number of schools and the amount of support it requires is ridiculous. There literally seems to be about 2 (maybe 3 max) technical people in the company who can help with fixing any issues. Any syncing issues (which are very frequent), they are remoted into the server for hours, most of the day on many occasions. Despite us always asking us for them to let us know when they are done and if the problem is resolved they never ever do that and literally leave SMS and their back end software wide open and their session logged in sitting there, every single time. We have to contact them, have you finished or not? Ok, would have been nice of you to tell us, again. We have been waiting literally weeks for support from them, particularly at busy times like end of summer, start of September, calling everyday 'yes someone will get back to you' while the school is breathing fire at us.

 

I take it AMI Infinity+ can be operated without cash loaders nowadays but they still seem to promote them and they are in use in the schools where we have Infinity+ currently in use. Don't get be started on them. If you've ever had to open one to troubleshoot issues you will know what kind of ramshackle pieces of nonsense they are. Of course they frequently break down and problems that can't be fixed by us are chargeable, and not cheap (despite paying the contract fee). They are extremely reluctant to send people to site.

 

I'm actually shocked that someone has defended Infinity+ and even used the words 'rock solid' about it, I need to go and lie down for a bit.

Edited July 9, 2020 by LazyD

[LazyD]

NRS. . . .

 

Civica is NRS right?

 

What's the support like?

[MicrodigitUK]

Civica is NRS right?

 

What's the support like?

 

Yes

 

OK Support, however after Civica took over NRS they have tried to milk the existing customers as a cash cow by charging large amounts for software upgrades that where previously free or included in the maintenance contract. Support is not as good as it was pre Civica. Find myself chasing them a lot more over issues than I ever did when it was just NRS.

[LazyD]

Yes

 

OK Support, however after Civica took over NRS they have tried to milk the existing customers as a cash cow by charging large amounts for software upgrades that where previously free or included in the maintenance contract. Support is not as good as it was pre Civica. Find myself chasing them a lot more over issues than I ever did when it was just NRS.

 

Thanks. This is one of the main things I am trying to avoid. I hear that BioStore is better in this, not-milking-customers, respect.

[gumbygaz]

hummm, interesting. We're with AMI older Transact software and looking at upgrading to Infinity this summer to give us Net2/Papercut intergration. Never really had that many issues with Ami/Gladstone support wise. Thanks for the information, will raise it and see what SLT think.

[eddyc]

We've had a completely different experience to you then!

 

We first went with AMI and the web based Transact product in 2011 and that was not without it's issues. Quite often the service which would reset the FSM quota would not run overnight so it would be carnage the next day.

 

Between 2013 and 2015 if I recall, support was poor and we did raise some issues then with them and their response was slow.

 

Since then though we have had no issues at all.

 

We did a re tender in 2017 and AMI won the contract (close with Live Register).

 

Since the retender in 2017, we have found the support to be excellent. We have no sync or payment issues. We use WisePay.

 

We also have three cash loaders (the big white ones with touch screens) as lots of our children do not have internet access or devices at home to use WisePay. We have never had any issues with those other than minor things (usually chewing gum pushed in the coin mech) and on those occasions we have managed to get them out ourselves.

 

eddyc

 

 

 

Where do I begin..

 

Have it running in a number of schools and the amount of support it requires is ridiculous. There literally seems to be about 2 (maybe 3 max) technical people in the company who can help with fixing any issues. Any syncing issues (which are very frequent), they are remoted into the server for hours, most of the day on many occasions. Despite us always asking us for them to let us know when they are done and if the problem is resolved they never ever do that and literally leave SMS and their back end software wide open and their session logged in sitting there, every single time. We have to contact them, have you finished or not? Ok, would have been nice of you to tell us, again. We have been waiting literally weeks for support from them, particularly at busy times like end of summer, start of September, calling everyday 'yes someone will get back to you' while the school is breathing fire at us.

 

I take it AMI Infinity+ can be operated without cash loaders nowadays but they still seem to promote them and they are in use in the schools where we have Infinity+ currently in use. Don't get be started on them. If you've ever had to open one to troubleshoot issues you will know what kind of ramshackle pieces of nonsense they are. Of course they frequently break down and problems that can't be fixed by us are chargeable, and not cheap (despite paying the contract fee). They are extremely reluctant to send people to site.

 

I'm actually shocked that someone has defended Infinity+ and even used the words 'rock solid' about it, I need to go and lie down for a bit.

[robyholmes]

We're with Civica / NRS here, as said above they charge you for everything they can and a little more besides that. The product itself works ok, never really have to contact support but then I tend to fix things myself anyway, normally via the on off method. The product seems to be very over complicated for what it does.

 

I can't understand why someone doesn't come up with a cloud based product, a simple web page for the tills and with ID card readers which type the number (Used on our library system) you don't need any local software installed. Maybe one of the MIS providers could add it. I just wish I could program.

[pete]

We deployed Live Register at one of our schools last summer and we (Finance/Catering/IT) are very happy with it - it's what we'd deploy at our other schools.

 

They won against NRS and Cunninghams (incumbent) in the shortlist

[DrBeaker]

We deployed Live Register at one of our schools last summer and we (Finance/Catering/IT) are very happy with it - it's what we'd deploy at our other schools.

 

They won against NRS and Cunninghams (incumbent) in the shortlist

Hi, to replicate the kitchen setup by Cunningham's - did they have to provide the kitchen PC, tills, reval units and MIS integration or did you have to supply any yourself e.g. the kitchen PC for the catering staff to use?

[synaesthesia]

2 people have recommended Cunninghams. I can only assume that's Mr Cunning and Mrs Hams!

[LeMarchand]

2 people have recommended Cunninghams. I can only assume that's Mr Cunning and Mrs Hams!

 

Fonzie thinks it's these two.

 

[pete]

Hi, to replicate the kitchen setup by Cunningham's - did they have to provide the kitchen PC, tills, reval units and MIS integration or did you have to supply any yourself e.g. the kitchen PC for the catering staff to use?

 

The LiveRegister backend was installed onto a VM (services running from desktop PC hardware is forbidden). The catering manager already had a laptop and the Live Register admin software (menus, reporting etc) was installed onto that.

 

Live Register supplied three tills, (2 normal, 1 tablet) and handled the migration from Cunninghams and MIS integration. We had to do a bit of sanity-checking of the data (visitor accounts, for example) before the migration. We re-registered ~600-700 people one morning with a Live Register person onsite for the registration and go-live.

 

The Cunninghams reval unit was removed and not replaced - balance top-ups come in via ParentPay for the most part. After nearly 12 months, no-one's suggested reinstating it.

[DrBeaker]

The LiveRegister backend was installed onto a VM (services running from desktop PC hardware is forbidden). The catering manager already had a laptop and the Live Register admin software (menus, reporting etc) was installed onto that.

 

Live Register supplied three tills, (2 normal, 1 tablet) and handled the migration from Cunninghams and MIS integration. We had to do a bit of sanity-checking of the data (visitor accounts, for example) before the migration. We re-registered ~600-700 people one morning with a Live Register person onsite for the registration and go-live.

 

The Cunninghams reval unit was removed and not replaced - balance top-ups come in via ParentPay for the most part. After nearly 12 months, no-one's suggested reinstating it.

Where does that put you in terms of responsibility for hardware etc? E.g. the VM if it has issues, does that cause issues with the payment processing etc and down to you to solve?

 

Our Trust seems to be wanting to go this way but the jist I'm getting says we've got to provide a PC for the kitchen office/server (not SIMs integration that's fine) but we have zero funds for stuff as Cunninghams provided all this as part of the service previously.

[pete]

Where does that put you in terms of responsibility for hardware etc? E.g. the VM if it has issues, does that cause issues with the payment processing etc and down to you to solve?

 

Our Trust seems to be wanting to go this way but the jist I'm getting says we've got to provide a PC for the kitchen office/server (not SIMs integration that's fine) but we have zero funds for stuff as Cunninghams provided all this as part of the service previously.

 

If the VM (let's say base OS / antivirus / backup agents etc) plays up, that's on us to solve. Like any other service we depend on we make sure it's reliable and has known-good tested backups, with alerting to any problems via network monitoring. Given no-one uses it from ~14:30 > 08:00, there's ample service windows for any necessary maintenance.

 

If the vendor software (say Parentpay sync software or LiveRegister software) plays up or their database has problems, that's on them to solve.

 

The (unacceptable IMO) alternative is a desktop PC with no redundancy (power supply/disks) sat in a kitchen environement.

[dapaulio]

I have always had good experiences with Vericool, used them at a school I worked at for years and know they still use them today.

Now working with multiple schools I have come across a number of competitors and can say hands down Vericool in my opinion are the best. Always had great support by comparison and the the whole system worked flawlessly.

 

The setup they had were a single VM with sufficient resources allocated, that Vericool had access to for support purposes, 5 Epos tills with finger scanners and manual lookup authentication, 1 cash reval also with finger scanner only. I assume other authentication option would be available side by side but the school only opted for biometric was enough. I do recommend definitely having two reval. We found on the rare occasion when the machine did breakdown this caused problems but that was a financial decision which I could not get them to budge on.

Linked in with parent pay, very rare we had sync issues but when we did support were very good resolving the issue in a timely manner.

We also had 3 assigned admin computers that all had biometric scanners and camera to deal with enrolment and one admin computer for the canteen manager to configure the till interface as she pleases

Integrated in to sims and does pull the photos from sims to display on the tills.

 

The only caveat to be mindful of in My experience with biometric (so nothing against Vericool) and students is you have to regularly keep refreshing the fingertips of all the students on an annual basis. I found over time the hit rate of biometric became less and less as time between refreshes got longer. I amounted this to the changes of the finger. kids they draw on their hands, they get cuts on them etc and found the canteen staff as time went on losing faith in the biometric and manually looking the student up which impacted on queue times. I proposed refreshes of all 1500 students on an annual basis and that seemed to work well and with encouraging canteen staff to advise the student who fingerprint didn’t work to go to admin office to have it refreshed at the time... but as times got tougher and more work was done by less people the workload of both admin and canteen staff meant that not every year the fingertips were refreshed and student weren’t advised to get them refreshed when they failed.

Fingertip are great when they are managed properly but become a waste of time if they are not managed properly.

Hope this helps

Edited July 9, 2020 by dapaulio