August 26, 2019

Retail Management Hero (RMH) resellers, distributors and partners from every corner of the globe descended on San Antonio, Texas as RMH held their First Annual Partner Conference July 31st through August 2nd. The event, which immediately followed the RSPA RetailNOW gathering and was held at the historic (and glamorous) St. Anthony's Luxury Hotel, showcased the Independence & Innovation of RMH which was founded in 2014. CEO Jeff Riley led the RMH team in the conference where the themes of Independence, Community & Communication were heard over and over. The following is a recap of the three day event.

Awards Banquet -- Wednesday July 31st

The First Annual RMH Partner Conference kicked off the evening of July 31st with a cocktail hour sponsored by HP followed by the Awards Banquet sponsored by Shift4 Payments. As the full crowd finished up their final bites of dinner & dessert, RMH CEO Jeff Riley & Channel Development Manager Israel Morrison took the stage to present the 2019 RMH Award. This year's awards honored RMH partners who contributed to the RMH community in a variety of ways.Without further ado here are the 2019 winners....

The Central Trailblazer Award

Awarded to the RMH Partner who had the guts to implement the very first live customer of RMH Central.

Winner: POSUnlimited  (Peachtree Corners, GA, USA)

The Developer Hero Award

Awarded to the partner who epitomizes what it means to be an ISV, developing an industry focused integration and providing valuable feedback about the RMH SDK.

Winner: Foresight Automation  (Irvine, CA, USA)

Contributing Partner Award

Awarded to the RMH partner who provided the extensive feedback around RMH Central which was key in helping further the development of the entire RMH product.

Winner: Express Retail  (Stockholm, Sweden)

Honorable Mention: Falcon's Nest Solutions (Roswell, GA)

Partner Commitment Award

Awarded to the RMH partner who devoted the most resources in making RMH a central part of their business.

Winner: BCPOS (San Juan, Puerto Rico)

Honorable Mention: Multi-Computer Solutions  (Manchester, NH, USA)

Distributor of the Year

Awarded to the top International RMH Distributor of 2019

Winner: Emporio UK (Bournemouth, England)

Honorable Mention: Louis Piedra, BiiT

Reseller of the Year (top partner of 2019)

Awarded to the top reseller in North America.

Winner: New West Technologies (Portland, OR, USA)Thursday August 1st -- General Session

An early morning breakfast kicked off a marathon day which included business & product updates about all things RMH related. The audience got to hear directly from the RMH team as well as top resellers, distributors, ISVs and payment processing partners on 3 separate panels.

State of The Union

You could sense the anticipation and curiosity as Jeff Riley took the stage for the State of the Union address, first thanking the sponsors which made the entire event possible for a young and growing RMH company; then bringing each of the six RMH team members in attendance up to introduce themselves and tell the audience a little about their work and themselves, adding a nice personal touch to start the day.

The audience was captivated as Riley laid out the current state and affairs and where the RMH business was headed in the near- and long-term future. "YOU (the RMH team) impressed me, motivated me, and brought back a vision of growth" said one RMH reseller, "If you haven't yet been on board with RMH, now is the time" said another. The themes of Independence, Community, Communication and Growth were echoed throughout the State of the Union as well as the entire conference. A raucous ovation was heard as Riley wrapped up his first SOTU speech with RMH being a fully independent company, leaving the audience with a few simple words "We want to build something special."

Road Map

The energy in the room was electric as the day continued. Next up Anastas Daskalov, RMH Director of Development, took stage to lay out the RMH Product Roadmap, starting with an overview of the past year with an emphasis on quality & stability.

The rest of the roadmap included enhancements to many of the core features that retailers rely on today such as reporting & security to improve the overall customer experience. Many of the feature enhancements presented by Anastas were based exclusively on feedback from RMH partners and customers. Another major roadmap emphasis was energizing the RMH ISV community which gets to the heart of what makes RMH a unique product in the industry. Offering an open platform and including the SDK with every install, the ability to add seemingly endless integrations, customizations, extensions and add-ons to RMH is a major part of RMH's long term success and a core reason that partners utilize RMH to add value to their customer base. From Accounting & ERP to E-Commerce, Payment Processing and customized workflows such as 'Round It Up' donations, there are hundreds of customized solutions for the RMH product.

Mobility

Later in the day RMH Director of Training, Colin Urquhart, joined on stage by RMH Distributor Richard Maurer  Advantage Solutions (Australia) took the audience on a deep dive into an exciting part of the RMH roadmap with what is coming from a mobility perspective. The highlight of the mobility presentation was the sleek demo of the StockTake on an Android app (Expected release Q4 2019) which seamlessly interfaces with the RMH database allowing retailers to easily manage physical inventory. To say the audience was excited to see this would be an understatement with partners continuously asking "When can I get my hands on this to test it out?!?".Panels

The second half of the day was dominated by panels including Sales Victories, Integrations & Customizations and the latest in the ever-changing payment processing space with the Payments Panel. Jim Roddy, VP of Marketing for RSPA, added an outstanding energy and industry expertise to each panel throwing in a few jokes along the way.

RMH Central

Anastas came on stage one more time for the last session of the day -- to give a transparent view of the status of RMH Central. This is what many in the audience had been waiting for. While some were hoping that RMH would announce the official General Release of Central, RMH Partners and Distributors were encourage by the methodical approach the development team was taking in order to ensure RMH Central is a stable product built for growth once it's available to the marketplace. "This is the right way to do it" said one RMH partner.

Anastas detailed progress that has been made during the beta and early adopter releases of RMH Central including the number and size of customers who are participating, key learnings we've gained from the process, and experiences from Dan King of New West Technologies and Peter Larsson of Express Retail as they worked with some of their customers throughout the deployment process. As it stands today RMH Central is in the Early Adopter stage of release and is open to partners who have been through the certification class. (If you would like to learn more about RMH Central or join the Early Adopter program, please submit a web inquiry.)

Although the General Session had wrapped up, there was still some fun to be had at the closing cocktail reception sponsored by TSYS. Attendees sipped on TSYS-a-Rita's as they shook a few more hands and said one last farewell to all of the sponsors.Distributor & Reseller Meetings & Educational Sessions -- August 2nd

Before the RMH partners took off back to their corners of the globe, there was one last day of roundtable discussions and educational sessions.

The day kicked off with a meeting between all of the RMH staff and all the RMH Distributors in attendance, the themes were collaboration & momentum. The highlight of the meeting was a presentation and discussion with Louis Piedra, exclusive RMH distributor in Latin America, about what it means to be a distributor and the strategies to best accomplish that. Louis' presentation perfectly encapsulated the RMH strategy in building a worldwide distribution network.

Next up, the reseller meeting again produced the theme of collaboration with 10 partners from all over the world volunteering to take part in a crowd source project to enhance RMH. The highlight of the meeting (and a comment heard throughout) was from Shawn Collins of MCS when he unequivocally stated, "This is the best conference I've ever been to".

Amazingly, there was nary an open seat in the room for the next three educational sessions. First up, Colin Urquhart gave a detailed look into some of the utilities that help RMH partners streamline their implementations and add value to their customers business. Next, Israel Morrison detailed the self-service licensing portal including many of the updates coming in Q4 such as direct customer subscription billing which will help RMH partner build their subscription portfolio. And last but not least, Anthony Ludmilin presented a high-level workshop of the RMH SDK to give the audience a perspective of what can be accomplished utilizing RMH's open platform -- all you need is a bit of development talent. Anthony's session was a perfect segue for those sticking around for the first ever RMH Advanced Development training.As I'm sure you can tell, the First Annual RMH Partner Conference was an exciting jam packed three days. I hope this gives you a glimpse into what happened, but really this is only scratching the surface of all the amazing interactions, networking, information shared and fun that took place this year in San Antonio.

The RMH team is so grateful to all the sponsors of the First Annual RMH Partner Conference, we could not have done it without you! We would like to extend a special thank to Dominique Urquhart for coordinating the first of many conferences.

For those of you who attended, we hope you enjoyed your time and got incredible value from the conference; for those of you who didn't make it this year -- where were you? We'll see you next year!