A Value-Added Reseller, who values the VIGILIX partnership.

We sat down recently with one of our partners, AM/PM Service, to reminisce on our relationship and the incredible value they have been providing to their thousands of retail customers across the United States and Canada. This value is directly attributed to their dedication to superior customer service and partly due to amazing support brought to them through the VIGILIX platform.

Our conversations took us back to how service and support was rendered back in the day and how advancements in tech have really nearly perfected the profession.

We chuckled a bit when we discussed the early days, where service and support was just a phone call. But over the years, advancements in technology across all industries, including POS, has really had an impact on the way we all do business. “Our business [point-of-sale service and support] is historically very reactive, a fireman mentality. But now with the VIGILIX platform, we’re able to be more proactive, we have alert screens up all day,” Brent Krause, Director of Corporate Affairs explains.

Let’s Talk About the Competition

AM/PM Service had tried other service and support platforms for remote monitoring and management (RMM) prior to finding VIGILIX, but they always fell short. They always felt like, “just a customer” and the other solutions didn’t have the breadth of capabilities nor were they totally focused on POS. A lot of RMM companies in the market also tout PCI compliance, but to be PCI certified is an entirely different playing field – one that only VIGILIX can claim. VIGILIX is the only PCI certified RMM platform built specifically for point-of-sale.

How We Came to be Partners and Friends

We met at a tradeshow, and admittedly, it took a while for them to see the full potential. Brent recalls how they were always impressed with the product but hesitated on pulling the trigger, noting that sometimes you worry when you sign up for something. We can all relate to that. When you start a new partnership, the inner dialogue comes out in all of us with questions like… ‘Do they really care about us? Are they going to do what they say they will do? Is this more than a contract?’

Well, in the case of VIGILIX, Brent sums it up pretty quick.

“We finally agreed to a demonstration of the platform and saw the sheer power of it. At the time, one of our customers was undergoing a PCI audit. Ironically, VIGILIX had just finalized their PCI Certification process. The timing was great. We brought them into the call with our customer and they had all the right answers to their compliance needs. We quickly started with multifactor authentication right off the bat, so our technicians can remotely login to the site. Our customer was pleased with the advanced security features, and custom alerts. And now, we are able to notify the customer of issues before they even know. VIGILIX just blew it away, there was no competition. They have been as responsive from day one to now and very attentive to our needs.”

An Example of Extreme Efficiencies with VIGILIX

Together, we reflected on a really exciting example of just how efficient AM/PM Service was with one of their largest customers. Here’s some context. They are using the VIGILIX platform for code distribution, patching, and code updates to the software. These capabilities really showed their strength when AM/PM Service did a banking update for its customer’s 600 sites.

“This type of work would have normally taken us 300 hours previously. It was quite a manual process, we used to have to dial into each site, averaging about 30 minutes per site. Now, with the VIGILIX platform, it only takes us 6 hours. We do all that legwork once, and it pushes the update one time to all sites, overnight, afterhours so that it has zero impact on our customer. Honestly, we have been able to reassign staff to focus on other areas because of this extreme efficiency.”

“Our business [point-of-sale service and support] is historically very reactive, a fireman mentality – we’re able to be more proactive now, we have alert screens up all day.”

A Short Story on Custom Reporting

In another telling example of the power of the platform, Brent mentioned a short story on custom reporting. This type of work is pretty effortless for VIGILIX, and something we don’t really market for ourselves, but we encourage our partners to share with us the challenges they are facing and odds are, we have a way to do what you need or get you the information you are looking for. Here’s the gist of it, in the words of Brent:

“We were trying to identify what types of gas pumps our customers had because it affected the way they interacted with payment upgrades. Unfortunately, this information was not contained in our POS system. We took the challenge to VIGILIX and they were able to easily customize a report that would tell us what each pump was, because they were able to distinguish how the platform communicates with the different pumps. We wouldn’t have been able to provide this level of insight to our customer without physically sending a person to each site to collect the data. VIGILIX did it quickly, and we were able to show this data to the customer, who in return was amazed that we were able to get that info for them. We couldn’t have done that without VIGILIX.”

A Simple Description of VIGILIX

We asked Brent to describe the VIGILIX solution in his own words, and here is that simple statement:

“A best-of-breed for remote access. Actually, I hate to just call it remote access because there is so much to it. It’s more of a total solution. How about, ‘A complete toolset for maintaining and support your POS systems. And now that we have it, it’s pretty indispensable.”

About AM/PM Service

AM/PM Service is a full-service Point-of-Sale (POS) Solutions provider offering complete POS Systems in POS hardware, POS software, third party services, training, installation, help desk support, depot service and technical support. As one of North America’s largest independent POS Systems value-added reseller (VAR), AM/PM offers true coast to coast 24/7 service coverage, serving thousands of customers in the grocery, retail, restaurant, hospitality, convenience store and fuel industries.