Scottish Canals Case Study

Scotlands canals span over 137 miles from coast to coast, across country and into the cities of Edinburgh, Glasgow and Inverness, run the Forth & Clyde, Union and Monkland canals, the Crinan Canal in Argyll and the Caledonian Canal in the Highlands. Managing all of these is Scottish Canals, funded by the Scottish Government it cares for 251 bridges, 212 buildings, 256 locks, The Falkirk Wheel, The Kelpies and 19 water supply reservoirs in locations across Scotland.

By 2021 the previous EPoS and ticketing solution had been in place for over 10 years and Scottish Canals needed to refresh the software. The system was to be deployed across the organisation’s two major estate destinations, The Falkirk Wheel and Fort Augustus, processing over 3 million visitors each year with a turnover of over £2 million at these sites.

The client required a modern, flexible system that would complement the destination team, interface with the existing Finance system Sage 300 and the payment processor OPAYO.  In addition to the above Scottish Canals needed an online webstore for live ticket sales and bookings, as well as to enhance kiosk and ticket sales onsite and to improve restaurant and kitchen communication and planning.  Stock management was an essential requirement of the new system to cement the cost and time savings.

The system

ECR are delighted to provide the latest LeisurePoS solution, along with the mobile handheld all in one terminals. The cloud-based and platform-agnostic solution offered flexibility to run on a range of devices, if required either immediately or in the future.

The manages point of sale requirements for operation onsite. The system is designed to manage all end/start of day operations as well as the link to head office via an automated and manual data transfer for ordering, cash management and stock control and event management.

Central to the system is the Scottish Canals webstore and bookings. Customers can browse, purchase and pay for tickets, as well creating personal accounts, saving “favourite” items, previous bookings, previous purchases including “open” bookings, payment history etc. along with managing bookings and purchases through the site.