AKG

In 2016, our company won the tender by the Ministry of Culture and Tourism and started to operate the museum shops and cafeterias at 186 locations in museums and at archeological sites. After winning the tender, we went through an intense preparation period. During this time, we analyzed the subject matter and how we are positioned against other operations both in Turkey and around the world. With our stores at 186 museums and archeological sites, we are the biggest operator of museums and stores in the world. This is an important success and source of pride for Turkey because there is no other operation structure like that in the world.

Culture retail is also a relatively new concept in Turkey. For our operations within this concept, we thought that we needed software that is really suitable for retail. In this regard, we started talking to several software companies. One of the most important criteria for us was that the ERP had to be local software. In addition to that, the software must have the capacity to meet our needs for specific projects. The reason for that is that we are not your usual retailer. We have a shop at the Monastery of Sümele, we have a shop at Göbeklitepe, and an underground shop at Cappadocia. Therefore, we need differentiated projects for all these locations. We have selected Nebim as Nebim is the company to address these issues best.

When it comes to solutions, an experienced team has been on our side whenever we needed them since the very first day. The most important aspect for us is the swiftness of service. When one takes oneself as an example, when you are abroad, you are prepared to visit a museum or an archeological site, and you reserve a certain amount of time for that. You are not going there with the aim of shopping at the museum shop or the cafeteria. Therefore the time reserved for the shop or the cafeteria is limited. There are days when the volume intensifies abruptly and you must be fast at the cash register and you must provide very fast service. Your ERP must support this. Also, the analyses for all completed transactions must be done correctly so that the future steps can be planned correctly as well.

The retail side of our business was a specialty area of Nebim as well. The souvenir operations were easy to carry out, but we have cafeterias and ticketing operations as well. In addition to them, there will be other operations that we are planning to introduce in the future. For example, we are going to provide parking services at a certain location in a month. It is vital for us that the software matches the services that we provide.  There are more important issues as well. We sell tickets at the ancient pool of Cappadocia as we operate the cash registers. One of the important projects that we have implemented together with Nebim was to sell these tickets over Nebim software. These tickets function in an integrated manner with the turnstiles. We have achieved that recently. Another important project for us was the introduction of recipes in our cafeterias and to enter them into the inventory correctly so that they are removed from the inventory accurately. Offline solutions were another aspect we put emphasis on. As I have mentioned before, the GSM operators have different capacities in different parts of Turkey. In other words, we have stores under the ground as well and at times we cannot operate online.

In this context, the offline solutions offered by Nebim were useful for us to solve these issues. Another important category of ours is jewelry. When jewelry is sold, two different units need to be removed from the inventory. One of them is the workmanship, and the other one is the weight of gold or silver itself. All pieces of jewelry have their own unique unit cost and different unit workmanship cost. As the tax percentages are different, it is critical that they are subtracted from the system separately. Here, we wrote a different program with Nebim and so were able to make our system compatible with the requirements of the ERP for jewelry sales.

As of January 2017, our sales activities have started. Our vision is to become the biggest culture retailer in the world. As a matter of fact, there is no other such structure in the world that is active in culture retail. There is no other country that possesses such richness, either. Turkey is actually the biggest museum on Earth. With this knowledge, we would like to increase the awareness regarding our cultural values and we would like to add value to the locations where we are present with various projects.