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Technology & Sustainability

Modern technology throughout

Wil-U has been designed and built from head to toe using modern technology: Android tablets, state of the art app development and world class Microsoft Business Intelligence software. Through our subscription model, keeping it modern is our responsibility, so you can be assured that your solutions will be flexible, sustainable, scalable and future-proof.

Flexible Technology for a Demanding Environment

Charity shops and fundraising events are environments with unique challenges. Often space is at a premium and issues with connectivity are common, and many of the people are volunteers with limited experience and low technical confidence. Wil-U has been specifically designed with the flexibility to work in these environments to give you maximum flexibility.

connectivity

Connectivity

Wil-U POS for charities is designed to be plug and play, with all the devices able to communicate wirelessly through Wil-U’s own secure dedicated wireless network. This means Wil-U devices can be easily relocated with no need to move network cables.

plug&play

Plug and play for an easy life

Because Wil-U’s charity retail solutions work with all devices talking to each other wirelessly, the only cables that are required are power cables. This simplifies the world of your shop teams and fund raisers and makes adding or maintenance of any equipment as simple as plug and play.

easy

Familiar and easy to use

Because we use Android Tablets, all our solutions feel like the apps that your shop teams and fund raisers use every day in their personal lives. This makes our charity retail solutions very intuitive, opening their use to less technology confident team members and giving you far greater flexibility.

Supporting sustainability

Supporting sustainability

Charity shops, do so much to help make a better, more sustainable world, but is the technology you use helping to contribute to that? Wil-U Solutions are designed to not only reduce your carbon footprint but to also save you money whilst doing it.

For instance, Wil-U POS is 20 times more energy efficient than the traditional Charity EPoS, through its use of tablet technology. This typically saves an incredible £350 per annum in energy bills.

Reducing paper and postage is another important design principle in the tools we provide for managing retail Gift Aid. Paper sign-up forms are eliminated, and donors are encouraged to give email addresses to remove the need for traditional mail. Tools are provided to ensure that where traditional mail must be used, it is done in the most efficient manner. Wil-U can balance the value of the retail Gift Aid income with the costs of the postage and the environmental impact.

Scalable and Secure

At the heart of every Wil-U solution is the Control Centre, built on the latest in Microsoft Business Intelligence tools (the BI stack) and safely hosted in the cloud (MS Azure), it can comfortably meet the needs of the largest organisation but works just as beautifully for the smallest.

There is no need to install servers or add any infrastructure. All you require is the hardware we provide for each of your locations (which comes all setup and preconfigured for you) and a laptop or mobile phone to access the Control Centre, where you can view your dashboards, reports, and manage controls. You decide who has access to your Control Centre and what they see, and we provide multi-factor authentication when you want added security.

Wil-U charity retail solutions come with built in device control, which means that you can always see where your devices are and how they are performing.

Scalable and Secure
Future Proof

Future Proof

Wil-U makes use of proven technologies, Android for the tablets and the Microsoft BI stack for the Control Centre. Both are in wide use globally, which ensures that there is a constant upgrade path and easy access to the latest technological innovation. We continually take advantage of this, and Wil-U solutions are provided with regular updates to ensure that you get the benefits for your operation.

We understand that our solutions are part of a broader estate of technology, so we ensure that we provide the latest and most efficient ways of interfacing with your other solutions such as Finance and CRM. We provide a comprehensive set of modern APIs as well as the more traditional data extracts to ensure your Wil-U system supports and enables your data strategy.

Why We Do What We Do

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We just managed a Saturday with absolutely no problems, everybody learning as they went and even those that were worried about a new till really like it!  So happy!

Samaritans-Guildford
Guildford Samaritans
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This seems almost too good to be true! The reporting from the Control Centre gives us all the data we need!

Martlets_Hospice
Martlets Hospice
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Completely painless!

Tynedale Hospice
Tynedale Hospice
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It was super easy to buy and very easy to set up. We took it out of the box, went through the steps and it all worked great. We started taking sales almost immediately!

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Drop Inn Armagh
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Volunteers picked up using the system within five minutes – that’s a testament to how easy it is to use! Having never had an EPOS solution before, it was big news for us. There was some hesitation from the older volunteers at first but they’ve taken to it like a duck to water!

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Yorkshire Cancer Research
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We’ve taken the opportunity over the last few months to really look at how we can improve and build for a successful future. Wil-U provides increased flexibility to our reporting and communication, helping us towards a more efficient way of working which has a direct impact on our bottom line.

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Save The Children UK
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We went from no Gift Aid to operating a fully digital and automated Gift Aid scheme in just two weeks!

ELF
ELF

Want to know more about our Retail & Fundraising systems? Let’s talk

We’d love to know more about your charity and explore how Wil-U may be able to help

Please fill out the form and one of our experts will contact you

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