Need Help? Call Us!

With any technology come the challenges of the various issues it can present.  When technology is mission critical, access to quick competent support is vital.  The STCR Technical Support Team answers your calls quickly and solves most issues within moments of the initial call.

Our Technical Support Center is staffed with a highly qualified, seasoned team of Retail Systems Analysts who get continual product education.  As a Premier Business Partner with over 45 years of experience, direct access to development support teams, fully functional physical and virtual machine labs, technical knowledge bases, etc., we have all the resources necessary to provide you the high level support needed to resolve any issue you have.  In addition, we have a first rate team Technical Account Managers and implementation specialists.  This network of resources allows us to dispatch key personnel directly to your store to provide emergency on site services and custom solutions. 

We use a state of the art call tracking system to monitor all our calls.  It supports process automation to escalate and ensure follow up.  We also offer a web portal to the help desk system to allow customers to open new calls and view history.  We have fully functional lab systems to enable us to test and determine recreate scenarios on reported issues.  STCR’s help desk team is available at any time of the day or night to help keep your store running smoothly. 

There is only one number you need to call – (607) 757-0181 - for any issue you have when you have the Help Desk coverage.  And in an effort to constantly improve our support services every customer has an opportunity to let us know how we are doing by participating in our ‘Satisfaction Call back’ process.  We understand the mission critical nature of the solutions we provide our customers and take pleasure in knowing we help them get the most out of their investment.  If you are interested in finding out how to get on our support plan, contact us right away.

PCI Requirement 9: Restrict Physical Access to Cardholder Data

This month’s topic is another of the 12 major requirements of PCI and may be easily overlooked as it does not necessarily involve the IT department or POS software.

This requirement relates to the physical access to areas that contain computers, printouts, hard drives, backups and other methods and objects that allow access to the cardholder data.  Some ways to meet the requirements of this section of PCI would include limiting access to the area with locked doors, and employee or visitor identification using passwords or secure badges. 

The use of video monitoring at entry and exit points will also help in identifying those entering or leaving the secure areas.  Another best practice is to destroy any media with cardholder data when it is no longer needed.  The idea is that if it no longer exists it cannot be compromised. 

The information supplement can be downloaded from the documents library on the PCI SSC website at https://www.pcisecuritystandards.org/security_standards/documents.php.

Three Tips to Make Your Small Business a Success

There are a variety of businesses but none of them are the same size.  In business, size does matter, especially if that size is small.  Believe it or not, according to the SBA’s office of Advocacy,
independent businesses with fewer than 500 employees represent 99.7% all employer firms.  Small business is often referred to as the “backbone” of the economy.  There are many reasons why but one of these is that between 1993 and 2009 small business accounted for 65% of the 15 million new jobs created.  Whether you are a current small business owner or whether you are thinking about starting a business here are some tips to help make it a success.

Take a risk:  You don’t want to spend the rest of your life wondering what if.  From the words of the famous novelist Mark Twain “Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things you didn’t do than the ones you did do.  Sail away from the safe harbor. Catch the trade wins in your sail. Explore, dream, discover.” 

Focus on What Matters:  In small business, one of the things that matters the most is the customers.  Understandably the real goal of any business is to make money but without any customers - that is a hard fish to fry.  Instead of focusing on the latest and the greatest try to aim your focus more on what would make the customers want to come back again.  All it takes is one satisfied customer to tell a family member or a friend about their shopping experience and that could turn into two or three more future customers.  

Keep on Trucking:  It takes a while to take off and start developing into a well-known business.  The process of opening and maintaining a business involves hard work and dedication.  The initial opening of a business is a lot like pouring a foundation of concrete.  It takes quite a bit of time and effort for it to become solid but once it is set up you are left with a firm base to stand on.  Thomas Edison once said, “Many of life’s failures are people who did not realize how close they were to success when they gave up.”