 Bingo! We're back on Kamehameha Day. We're doing Computant Part 2. Technically, this is continuing the conversation on Computant. And we have two representatives of the company. One the founder, who is Francis Tulu, founder 30 years ago. You look remarkably young, Francis. Thank you for coming down to our show. Thank you for having us. Appreciate it. Michael Chun, a technical guy, business development manager, are you there right? Of Computant. Yeah, thank you for having us again. So I want to drill down a little more today. But the first thing we didn't really get to finish last time is the organizational chart of companies, Francis. Can we put that on the screen and then you can tell us at least the horizontal view of the company with that chart? Sure, sure. So we have several divisions. So 30 plus years ago, we started as Computant. We started as a accounting software company. From there, we have gotten into point of sale business in 1995. Since then, we have gotten into other areas. For example, data net Pacific is the IT services wing of our business, where we do cloud hosting, managed services, network securities, so on and so forth for Hawaii businesses. And over the years, we have grown our point of sale business beyond Hawaii. We expanded. That's your favorite thing, isn't it? I love taking, starting a small business and push it to the limit as far as I could take it without getting myself into trouble. So POS Highway six, seven years ago, we expanded in the mainland and fortunately it worked to our benefit. We sell retail point of sale systems nationwide and we have customers all over the country. Hardware and software, just software? Both. Both hardware, software and cloud hosting. A lot of the larger retail chain, the light. All this from Hawaii? All from Hawaii. It's wonderful to hear that because there's always the question about why are you able to generate software that is exportable, that is useful, saleable on the mainland and Asia and so forth. And you're doing it. I like that. I think if you put your mind to it, and sometimes you're desperate and say, okay, I've sold to everybody in Hawaii, what else is next, right? And then you push your limit. To recover them all on that chart, I just want to be sure we covered all your one, two, three, four, five, five things. And the last one is point of sale. So my question for you, Francis, is how do you go from one to the other? Do you wake up at three o'clock in the morning and say, oh, we're not doing security. We have to do security. And you call up Michael in the morning and say, Michael, it's time to do a pivot here. We need to do security, get working. Is that what happens? Sometimes, sometimes, but I think it is the customer, it is the market, it is the technology that drives what is out there, what is needed, right? I think it would be foolish for me to come up with a product either I'm behind or I'm ahead of time, right? So we have to be acute to what's happening in the business world, what technology is out there doing well, what is going away. So as an example. That's a good point. What is going away? Because we live in a world where everything moves and changes and some things go away. Exactly, exactly. So you know the millennial, they want beautiful design, they want mobile solution, they want apps and they want cloud solutions so they can be connected no matter where they are, right? So because of it, we had to come to realization that we need also solution, not just for big businesses, small businesses who could have a very small cost of entry point. So we came up with ITEP, POS. Primarily we started with the restaurant industry and we are making modification. The restaurant industry needs help. Absolutely. There are a lot of amateurs in the restaurant industry and they need computer assistance, no? Absolutely, yes. Well, let's talk about the technology side, Michael. Sure. We got some more slides. Can you go through them? All right, so the first one, so that was the, did you want to talk more about this? Or we can move on. All right, the next slide after that. So we are a, not just a technology company, we are a solutions company, you know, meaning there has to be issues and problems that needs to exist and for us to appropriately adjust that is, you know, what we do, you know, we can't just, we have to have a direction of where to take our technology, otherwise it's just blindness, right? Just going, shooting out in the dark. So in the POS industry so far, we came to realize that there are some issues that we are facing because it's not, it's nothing to do with the business owners. You know, people come into the restaurant industry because most of the time they're passionate about food. They want to cook, they want to, you know, make a new business. The old story, right? Right? And then they pour the money and it's a hole in the water like a yacht into which you pour your money. And then they fail. Right. And that's why I say they need help. Exactly. And it's because nobody taught, people taught them how to cook, but no one taught them how to manage a business, right? So that's where we kind of come in and address these issues. I know one of the issues that we see in a lot of POS companies is that they sign you up for a very long-term contract, you know, when you sign up for they come up with a really good-looking ice point, but then they lock you in for three, three, ten years, you know, into their. So you can really compete with that if you don't have a loan contract. Right. And we're very confident in what we have. So, you know, we give them the freedom of choice. Hey, if it's not working out for us, because this is a partnership. We're not just client. And, you know, we have to form a partnership. And if... So they called you at three o'clock in the morning, you'll take the call? Not me. The smarter people will take the call. Okay, somebody will take the call. And so we make sure that, you know, we don't lock anybody into a long-term contract. And other... That's like Spectrum, you know. Spectrum, obviously, has competition in the way of Hawaii Intel in this market. Spectrum is advertising heavily, you know, to say that we don't have contracts. You can come, you can go. It's okay. It's a very appealing argument. Right. And I guess nobody really takes that, understands that, until they get locked into a contract first. And then they realize, I'm like, oh, man, these long-term things aren't working out. And then the second issue we saw is most POS companies are huge, right? They start from the mainland, and then they try to branch out in other areas. And which is good for them, but the restaurants here are left with no local support, you know? How many times have we tried to call tech or call something about warranty or anything? And we're on that phone for a very, very long time, longer than we wanted, right? And time is money. No one wants to really... If they're in trouble, they need help. Now no one wants to be tossed around the country. Sure. They're full of customers. What have you? And things aren't working right. They're losing money in real time. Exactly. And credit card fees. So most of these very appealing, nice-looking POS systems, ultimately, they don't start off as a POS company. They're created by banks that sell their main objective and their main market is payment processing, their credit card business, you know? And because of that, they can sell their POS for very low affordable price, but they lock you in again to their payment processing. And throughout that contract, they have the right to change the rates. So you might enter a contract with someone, they have really good credit card rate, but maybe a year later, they can change their mind and, you know, up it and you don't have a way out, right? Is there a competition on that, on the type of sensors that are used? I mean, for example, a few years ago, I went to Europe and in Europe, they come to your table with a little gizmo about yay big, right? And they swipe your card. The card never leaves your site. So you don't worry about somebody copying it in the back room or losing it. And I said to myself, this is great. This is great. Why don't I see this in the US? Well, a little while later, you do see it in the US. And then there were watches. I don't know if you've seen this with a watch, you know, a Samsung watch, for example, Apple II. You can charge things with your watch. Oh, yeah, yeah. So, you know, and then, I mean, I suppose it's like the octopus metropolitan transit system in Hong Kong. You don't have to even touch the system. You don't have to be near it. It reads like an RFID reader kind of thing at some distance. And so all I can do is flash the card and presto digital. Now, when I'm a customer and I see that these more sophisticated ways of reading my card are available, I'm saying, hmm, that's pretty good. And so it's always changing. And it seems to me, if you're in POS, you always have to know what what's going on. You may have to do a kind of a kind of quick shift to catch up with whatever the the new the new reader technology is. Right, right. I'll give you a very, very practical example. A local restaurant, very small, about 1200 square foot, but very successful, very, very busy restaurant. So Michael had a meeting with them several times. And in the approach we take is we are not a cash register company. We don't view point of sale as a cash register system. A business has many challenges. One of the challenge is how do I take customer order, communicate back to the kitchen, right, and keep track of what they are ordering. As an example, in this small restaurant that he recently signed up, they have customer coming in sitting down having dinner. So you need a system that can handle customer service or table service, fine dining, sit down restaurants. So our solution handles that. Then the same restaurants, you have customers walk in, I would like to have these and this item, this rice, this beef to go. So you need a system that can intelligently take the order for takeout customer. Now let's move forward to today's younger generations. For example, I see my children, they would like to order some food, and they would either go online, order it, or they have an app on their mobile phone. So they could basically dial pay with the mobile app that is on their smartphone, right. So this small restaurant has we developed a mobile app for them. So their customer can go to Apple Store, download the app and place the order anytime from anywhere. Right. So even a small store now can use technology only not so long ago, only the big businesses could afford to use it. Now it's an even playing field. It's an even playing field. This was a this existed in China a few years ago. We've done with a some kind of code Q code, what is our code and you wanted to buy a newspaper. You flashed your card on that guy's code at the newsstand. And it immediately sends sends it transfers the money into his account. And it sends him a little note saying the money has been transferred, then it gives you the newspaper. Right. So you you actually hasten the the speed of the transaction way fast and over the phone. There's no other equipment involved. Right. Right. And that's where it's going, you know, right. So I think you'll see more of that. And people will and those millennials coming up will want that. And they don't want to carry cash. No, they don't want to order anyway, they want. So would they tolerate this is really a question. Would they tolerate being having an account at the store like in the Amazon Go Store, an account there, it's forever, or at least for the foreseeable future. And then you walk in, you buy something, and somehow it knows you bought something, and it goes on your account. And you never even, you know, a trend, you never talk to anybody, you just pick it up and walk out and, and you get a bill on your cell phone. Is that coming? That is exactly what it was does. So I talked about, you go in and dine in the system handle that you walk in and you want to order if somebody takes your order fine. We also have kiosk, you don't want to talk to somebody, somebody can place the order on their kiosk, wait 10 minutes, food is ready, you leave. Okay. In addition to that, right, you already see that everywhere. That's nothing new. You have table side ordering system, the waiter's getting a little iPad or a device and they take your order, right. Now, the new thing is, besides an app or your on your smartphone, another app is you go to website, you place the order. The latest thing is, as you know, there's like 30 different companies doing home delivery. Guess how cumbersome it is today. So if you own a restaurant, right, and you sign up with, let's say Uber eats, you know, as one of the home delivery, they give you an iPad, they send the order, it shows up on your iPad. And then you have to take that and enter it into a POS system. Well, people, it takes time from their system to enter into your POS, right. And people make mistakes, right. The beautiful thing about our system is we integrate with all of those 30 delivery services. If they place the order, it automatically shows up. Brilliant. May I say that's brilliant. That's what you got to do. Absolutely. You're ahead of the pack on that. We take a short break, Michael and Francis, we're going to come back. And I want to talk about how you code this kind of thing. How you make this happen. And how modular is your code? What kind of reusable modules are you building? And how hard or easy is it to adapt it? When the sensors changed when some of the fundamentals change, going forward, because you're always changing, you always got to be up. You know, if I'm your customer, I want you to change. I want you to always be looking at the new technology. We'll take a short break, we'll come back and then we'll drill down on that. Okay, sounds good. Very good. Aloha. I am Deila Nyonegira, a host here at Think Tech Hawaii, a digital media company serving the people of Hawaii. We provide a video platform for citizen journalists to raise public awareness in Hawaii. We are a Hawaii nonprofit that depends on the generosity of its supporters to keep on going. We'd be grateful if you'd go to thinktechhawaii.com and make a donation to support us now. Thank you so much. Aloha, I'm Yukari Kunisue, the host of Konnichiwa Hawaii, Japanese talk show on Think Tech Hawaii. Konnichiwa Hawaii is all Japanese broadcast show and is streamed live on Think Tech at 2pm every other Monday. Thank you so much for watching our show. We look forward to seeing you then. I'm Yukari Kunisue. Mahalo. Okay, you guessed it. If you were guessing that this is the part two of the Computant story, you were right. In fact, we're calling this, continuing the conversation with Computant. Francis Tulu and Michael Chun. Michael, let's turn to you for a minute. Sure. So this is very sophisticated with Francis was talking about, especially we have to integrate, you know, various third party companies and make it all work in the delivery system. I'm very impressed with that. Where the restaurant owner, for example, can organize deliveries on an automated basis among a number of delivery companies saving all kinds of headaches and questions. And this is an easy solution for him. And it's an easy solution for the customer. And I was saying during the break that, you know, I think delivery is really the cat's meow. It's going somewhere because what price convenience. If I'm at home, you know, I would sooner like to get my cell phone out while I'm watching the ball game, whatever. And what is something instead of, you know, getting in my car going down there, going through a whole hassle. I can't even see what, you know, what the next play is in the ball game. This way I get to see the next play and eat well. It's got to be more and more popular. So question is how you put this together? I mean, we had on that first chart, we had like five different kinds of companies. Are you reusing code modules for that? Or are you starting fresh each time? What kind of, what kind of language are you using in building these systems that can't be easy? Because it's so ambitious, yeah? So if you're wanting to get to kind of more of the nitty gritty detail of the software, I'm not smart enough. Yeah, I'm definitely not smart enough to explain that with details. But kind of coming into more of like, talking to the customers and more on the needs, we, we had, at a very young age, I learned from one of my teacher that the definition of technology to me was the whole purpose, sole purpose of technology, no matter what direction it goes, needs to make people's life easier, more convenient. If it doesn't serve that purpose, especially the businessman, right? If it doesn't do that, it's not considered technology, right? It's, it's knickknack, right? So we had to identify kind of, we, I know Francis kind of went over the different companies, it's because the different companies that Can we see the chart of the five companies again? The five companies, yeah, the whole reason why there is, you know, five companies in the first place is because there was a specific needs that, you know, we had to address, right? There's no point in creating all these companies if they don't serve a purpose. So when we came into ITAB, we realized that we needed a way for small businesses, small restaurants, like you mentioned before, to stand with them, stand up against the big boys, right? And we needed to make it feature rich just because it's coming from an iPad, just because it's at a lower price point, we didn't want people to feel like they were kind of getting less features, less bang for their buck. We want them to know that this is an integrate and it's very adaptable to things that are coming out in the future. We want to, if there's a new trend that we never heard of before and it's coming out, we want to be able to adapt to that and we have a That's for all five companies? All five companies because, you know, because, you know, so some of those companies were early and some of them were later in a timeline. And, you know, the question I'm really putting to you is, are you always refreshing the earlier ones? Are you putting new features on? Are you, you know, a new, a new module of code comes out, a new third party plug-in, whatever it is. We have to do both. We have to do both. For example, ITAP-POS was ground up. It's the latest technology, new programming codes that didn't exist three years ago. So it's a ground-up design, right? Taking the latest and greatest technology out there. You know, five years, seven years ago, there was no Uber delivery service, right? Amazon delivery service, right? So you have to have technology that takes advantage of the movement, technological movement that is happening in the business world, in the community, the changes. So in this example, we had to read, you know, design everything from ground up. But if you look at some of the system that we have had 20 years ago, right? As you know, computer hardware changes, operating system changes, more processing power, right? So the existing codes that we have had for all these years, right? We have to sometimes redesign, recode, because now the computers are faster and, you know, processors cheaper, right? The store is cheaper, right? To stay at the cutting edge. Exactly. You know, like yesterday, my cell phone said, oh, you want to update your operating system? I said, yes, because I'm the kind of guy who always says yes. So, you know, it goes through the routine 15 or 20 minutes, and now I have, you know, new operating system. Can you take some of the pieces on that chart and do them remotely and say to the shopkeeper or whatever, the business person, stand by, we're updating your operator, we're updating your code, or do you have to go over there? Or do you have to, you know, do a complete change-up on change-out on all the elements? So, it's going to depend on the technology. Because ITB is cloud-based, meaning whether it's your business or a thousand other retailers or restaurant owners' business, it is in the cloud, we make one update while you're sleeping, right? And it updates everybody. It's no different. It's no different than your iPhone. As an example, we, any time we're programming change codes, right, that we upload to the cloud, next time when you turn on your iPad, right, to open your business, right, it will tell you just like your iPhone. Updates are ready. Click here to update, touch here to update. You do that. In a matter of minutes, you're done. See, that's really good. I mean, on two levels. One is obviously you're moving ahead, you know, that's cutting edge. But also, when I see, in my case, it's Samsung. When I see Samsung do that, I say good. They're watching the store. You know, they got new things. They're not sleeping at the switch. And it's all from my benefit, presumably. I hope the privacy is good. We all know that. We never know. But, you know, it encourages me. It gives me confidence in the system. So, if you're going to have five pieces on the chart, you're doing it with all five. Yeah. Right. Yeah. Right. Very important. Okay. Want to go to more slides and explain? Sure. Yeah, the next slide, after that, yeah, after the issues one is the benefits. So, this is kind of stating a little bit of benefits about, you know, us, right. So, again, we have low startup cost. It can start as low as $30 a month to run your business, you know. And, again, no long-term contracts. You know, we know... That's for a small business. For everyone. Anybody that wants to use iTab, we don't have any. So, you know, so it could have any kind of retail in it. Oh, yeah. You can be a quick service restaurant where you're just coming in and buying something. Selling widgets, selling, selling crepes, whatever you want. Right. It can be a table service. It can be fine dining, you know, whichever kind of... That's got to be very competitive in this market because a lot of people are going to charge a lot more than that. That's really low price, isn't it? It is, but we do want to... We stand out because we want to be fair to our customers. We of course, as a business, is we have to make money. But at the same time, we're here... Like I mentioned, we're here to make partnerships. We're not just a client and client relationship, right? If someone signs up for a POS, we're with them. We're there to help themselves with their issues, whatever they're going through. So just throwing out a high price just for the sake of making money, you know, and not... So if they tell you at three o'clock in the morning, or whatever it is, 24 by second, that, you know, there's a little something in there developing in their business, and you know, they need a little... I need some kind of extra widget, some kind of extra bell or whistle. Are you going to be able to either A, bring that in from your existing inventory of functionality, or B, make it. You're going to make a new function if they want that. But that's going to go higher than $29.95, you know. So, you're absolutely right. Let's say your neighbor opens up a little coffee shop, right? And it's a 800 square foot little store, and all they need is one POS terminal, and it's quick service, meaning you come in, you buy, you pay, you walk away. Got a coffee. But they do, yeah. Yeah, coffee. So, all I need is one POS terminal running on my iPad. That's $29.95. It's a quick service. It's not complicated at all. Does it include tips? Absolutely. Including tips, you know, processing credit cards. I think I've seen your stuff. Yeah, I think they really... I have to say what kind of tip I want to give. Right, right. So, that's quick service, one terminal. Nice, okay. I own a medium-sized restaurant in a 2,000 square foot. I can sit 70 people, and I want maybe two or three, you know. iPad, I tap POS, right? Terminals, to take order because it's a bigger place, and it says sit down restaurants. And oh, I want reservation. I want inventory management, right? So, then you move up to the next level, and we call it advanced level, right? And advanced level is $59.95. Hard terminal. Hard terminal. So, the beauty of it is this. If you have a small business... That includes the charges for their credit card charges, or is that just a basic software? So, it is the software. Is there other credit card charges on top of that? Credit card charges typically they sign up with a bank or a merchant service provider, right? And whatever the bank or the merchant service... That's between the businessman, the business, and the bank. Exactly. We only have a couple of minutes left. So, I want to get a handle from you guys on, you know, POS is very important and it's happening in this country. And it's grassroots business, grassroots entrepreneurship. All these people want to make a buck, sometimes very creative, sometimes not so good at business. I mean, this is really filling a huge need on a national economy. What's next? I suggest, you know, you guys haven't stopped yet, and there are a lot of sensors, if you will, that you could bring into your software beyond reading a credit card. And you always want that. But sensors, for example, in transportation, in, you know, facial recognition or license plate recognition. And for example, Linda Lingo had this thing about the, I forget what she called it, the special lane in the highway. And you'd pay more for that lane if there was a lot of traffic on it. You know, the processing for me doesn't sound very hard. And really, it should be a local company if anybody's going to do that. We don't need anybody from LA to do that. We can do it right here. It's just all logic. It's that much code, not a lot. So, I mean, is there something like that in the future? Is that five company chart going to turn out to be six or seven? Can you tell us, and I won't mention a word of it to anybody, can you tell us what your next step is, Francis? My next step right now focus is helping the local businesses thrive. We often forget that in any business, right, you have to manage your people. You have to manage your product, right? You have to service your customer. And then the part that most people don't, I mean, most people dread about and don't want to do is keeping track of all these numbers, meaning accounting. So, Backoffice. Backoffice in the cloud. Backoffice stuff. So, our system, from employee clocking in, right, so you can collect what time John started and what time Julie finishes, right, we captured that data. And then if you said, I would like to integrate the HR and payroll with ITF POS, we have that option. And then in ITF, you're buying inventory, you're making food and you're selling to your customer and you're making money, collecting money, you have to pay your vendors. Therefore, you need accounting to pay your bills, right? What about analytics? That's my last question. That is part of the system. I would say that when you get to, you know, keeping data and expanding the accounting function, the next step is analytics, because analytics tells me how well I'm running my business. Exactly. It tells you in real time your labor cost, your food cost, you know, how many customers you turn over, what, how much you sold, what's your profitability, minute by minute, and you could be anywhere in the world as long as you have laptop or iPad with internet service. All the analytics is available with your finger tips. Thrilling, Michael, you guys are really at the cutting edge and I wish you well in every way. And you're an important part of the local economy. You're the tech industry that we always wanted to have. And you are, you know, a living example of the fact that we can export our technology and our intellectual property elsewhere. So grow, get bigger. Thank you. We want you to do that. We're with you all the way. Thank you, sir. Thank you, Francis. Great work. Thank you so much. Yeah. Yeah. Aloha. Aloha.