The Irish Record Industry

The Irish Republic is a technologically advanced country with high educational standards. It also has a strong tradition of independent retailing which has resisted the incursion of supermarkets much more strongly than has been possible in the UK.

Because the country has a technically literate work-force, a number of attempts were made to computerise individual record shops before the arrival of Oscar in the Republic in 1999. While highly creditable in their own right, these early attempts all suffered from the difficulty that they were not sufficiently focused on the unique record retail environment and did not provide the benefits that retailers knew were possible.

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It was the failure of one of these early systems that led directly to Ranger being invited to install Oscar in the Republic. Oscar can now be found in more than 50 independent record retailers throughout the country, including virtually every major town from Cork to Dundalk and Dublin to Galway.

The Irish Record Charts

UK firm ChartTrack, under contract to the Irish chart organisation IRMA, compiles the Irish Record Charts. You can view the Irish charts at www.irma.ie/charts.htm.

Oscar systems in Ireland report sales data directly to ChartTrack every day and now form an important part of the Irish chart process. There is no cost to the retailer for the chart reporting process, which operates automatically in the small hours of the morning and is transparent to the user. Retailers can 'opt out' of the chart reporting process, of course.

The actual process of collecting chart data is operated by Ranger on behalf of ChartTrack, ensuring a smooth flow of information even during the most unsociable hours of the night!

The Music Catalogue

Overall, the music mix in the Republic is very similar to the UK and so Oscar users are able to benefit from the OCC/Millward Brown music catalogue, with vast savings in the labour formerly involved in typing release details into older computer systems.

Not surprisingly, the Irish Charts often feature domestic music not found (at least at the same positions) in the UK Charts. Irish shops also report sales earlier than their UK equivalents, because new release day is officially Sunday in the republic.

Oscar provides quick and easy facilities for entering this information, while Oscar's supplier index records the local source of product as well as the official distributor.

New Oscar 'Head Office' facilities allow staff in multiple outlets to distribute new product information automatically to retail outlets, greatly simplifying the process of setting up details of local releases across chains of stores.

Support in the Republic

Oscar is supplied along with an excellent technical support infrastructure. The vast majority of technical support queries are dealt with by remote control procedures, over the telephone or, increasingly, broadband ADSL. This means that a retailer on the west coast of Ireland benefits from exactly the same quality of service and response time as domestic UK user!

This remote access procedure has transformed the support situation for Irish retailers in recent years, but occasionally an engineer visit may still be required. In this unlikely event, Ranger have a team of engineers on standby to travel at immediate notice, all of this service being covered by Ranger's standard warranty and maintenance agreements.

Retailers know that the value of Epos systems is only as great as the quality of support behind them, and in this regard Ranger are able to provide outstanding results.