Matt Kramer – President DCRS Solutions

Reader Spotlight: DCRS Solutions
For over 40 years, our goal is to be the best point of sale team in the Midwest. We strive to retain our customers by exceeding their expectations with superior service and meaningful retail tools, allowing us to grow and be successful for the well-being of customers and employees.
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MATT KRAMER
President

DCRS Solutions
St. Louis, MO
Verticals
Hospitality, restaurant, and specialty retail
Vendor Partners
Oracle Hospitality, Toast, MobileBytes, and Osprey Retail Systems
Technologies
Point of sale, security, and merchant services
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What changes in customer demands/expectations have you seen in the past one to two years?
Most expectations or demands that we see today relate to cloud. Easy access to real-time data, the ability to manage an application from anywhere, an all-inclusive feature set (vs. third party), from online ordering to mobile payments.
What is the biggest threat or opportunity for your business?
For us, our largest opportunity is in Merchant Services, a new endeavor for DCRS in 2016. By adding this service to our offerings, we can ultimately drive our customers’ POS costs down. We do this by sharing in the residuals with our customers, in the form of rebates on their monthly SaaS or annual support contracts.
What is the top metric you use to measure success? How do you ensure your team is achieving this metric?
We recently created four core values to measure ourselves on a consistent basis. If we commit to our values, success will follow. Be curious: we seek first to understand by learning and listening. The more we know about our customers, vendors, products, and each other, the better we can help. When we are curious, we are always prepared, humble, and can never assume. Be accountable: we are proactive in everything we do. We take responsibility, focus on finding a solution, and commit to the success and wellbeing of each other and our customers. Be excellent: we offer the best-of-breed solutions; we are prompt in our response, consistent in our communication, deliver quality, are open to change, and seek to exceed customers’ expectations. Deliver results: we develop strategies that help us overcome obstacles to achieve positive results. We maintain a flexible and positive attitude. We know that our success will be defined by the results we deliver to our customers.
What technology/solution has too much hype? What technology/solution deserves more hype?
EMV has too much hype. While there are many benefits in potentially taking POS out of scope, it doesn’t absolve the business from its PCI responsibilities. Chip and Pin (vs. Chip and Signature) needs greater adoption for there to be a significant increase in security, and the upfront and ongoing costs of many EMV solutions today do not provide the merchant much room for an ROI.
Loyalty does not get enough hype. As long as it’s been around, it needs greater adoption. Too many small businesses are not taking advantage of rewarding customers for frequenting their businesses.
What is your best marketing secret?
Create personal relationships; taking a vested interest in your clients will always produce more referrals than most marketing strategies.
What are the three most important questions you ask in every interview? What is your hiring philosophy?
There are not a specific three that stick out. But I do start every interview with the same question: take me through the highlights of your life from school until today. I find that by listening to someone give me their highlights, I learn exactly what’s important to them, what they’ve learned through the years, if they’ve been accountable in their actions, if they have passion in their life, and if they get results in their efforts.
What is the best business book on your shelf?
My lessons learned haven’t come from a book; I learn from experiences. I try to understand what makes others successful in their business in order to incorporate as many of those attributes into my life.

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