Labelling System Support: Rebuilding Redgate Bakery’s Price Data
Craig from Redgate Bakery rang with a problem that had appeared overnight. Their labels were printing, but the prices had vanished. Every one of them. They needed some labelling system support.
Redgate runs the PC-based Label Direct for SOLO system we set up for them, driven by a simple Excel database of their products. It produces two versions of each label: a priced version for their reseller’s counter, and an unpriced version for their direct products. The unpriced labels were fine. The priced ones were coming out blank where the figures should have been.
Where the Prices Went
With so much experience in labelling system support, it did not take long to find the cause. A member of staff had been in the database and, in the course of editing it, deleted the pricing data. Every single one. Then saved it, losing the old information.
This is worth saying plainly: that is an easy mistake to make, and it is not really a people problem. If a system allows someone to delete something critical while they are doing a routine job, the system is carrying some of the blame. Our view is that the fix is not to tell staff to be more careful. The fix is to make the important parts harder to touch by accident.
Why That Backup Earned Its Keep
Here is the part that turned a crisis into 10 minutes of remote desktop support work.
When we installed the system back in April, Pete Howells advised Redgate to keep a backup of their data, and then took one for them as part of the setup – a normal day at work for Pete providing labelling system support and best practices.
That backup was the foundation of the whole recovery. Without it, rebuilding hundreds of prices would have meant working through paperwork and price lists by hand, with plenty of scope for fresh errors. With it, the original data was there to be restored.
If you take one thing from this story, take that: always take a backup. It makes labelling system support far easier; even if you don’t know how to implement using the backup, we do.
Ask your supplier whether your labelling data is backed up, and when the last copy was taken. It costs nothing to have, and it is priceless on the day you need it. Not sure where you stand? Good labelling system support starts with that question, and we are happy to answer it on 01332 864895.
Rebuilding the Data, and the Names Behind It
Restoring the prices was not a straight copy and paste. The system had moved on since April, so the backup and the live database no longer lined up neatly. Pete used Excel to reconcile the two and rebuild the price data against the current product records.
Leveraging Pete’s years of knowledge of Excel, the backup spreadsheet was loaded into the live database, and then a simple “VLOOKUP” formula repopulated all the pricing data as required.
Then a second issue surfaced. The naming used for large and small items had been changed at some point, which meant parts of the system were no longer matching records correctly. That needed sorting before anything would print properly. It is a good example of why label system support is rarely just one fault. Pull on one thread, and you usually find another.
With the prices restored and the naming corrected, the labels printed as they should, priced and unpriced versions both. A successful labelling system support session concluded.
Making It Harder to Break Next Time
Fixing the fault was only half the job. We also made changes to the database itself, with some plain guidance built in. The tabs now make clear which areas are safe for staff to edit and which should be left alone.
That way, the next person who needs to update a product does not have to guess, and cannot wander into the parts that keep the whole thing running. A system that survives a busy Monday morning is worth more than a system that only works when an expert is using it.
That is a level of labelling system support that you will simply not find with other labelling suppliers.
Why We Support the Systems We Supply
Andrew, Craig’s father, summed up his experience of us better than we could:
“The thing about Positive ID is they are not like any other label printing company. Every other company just wants to sell you labels. They are not interested in making sure your system works.”
That is exactly the intention. Selling thermal labels is the easy part of this business. Making sure a customer’s labelling actually works, day in and day out, with someone at the end of the phone who understands how their particular setup is put together, is where the real value sits.
When something goes wrong, our customers are not explaining their system to a stranger. We already know it, because we built it and set it up for them
Commenting on the event, Pete Howells said:
I have hundreds of labelling customers doing food labels for bakeries, delis and all sorts of food outlets. Their labels need to be right to meet compliance and shutting down because of issues with their systems mean customers lose trade – not really an option.
That is why I am available during office hours (and sometimes outside of office hours) to help our customers keep running without falling foul of the law.
If you run a labelling system and something is not behaving, perhaps it is time to move your labelling solution to Positive ID Labels, call us on 01332 864895 – free ongoing technical support is available to all our label purchasing customers.
You can verify this story by contacting Craig or Andrew at Redgate Bakery. If they use their customer number to refer you to us, you get 10% off your first order and they get 10% off their next order through our customer referrals scheme.
