Archive for May, 2011

STADIS is being implemented at the Houston Astros and the Durham Bulls in time for the opening of the 2011 season. The New York Mets will opt for full deployment of STADIS for 2011 as well.

ASTON, Pa., March 14, 2011 /PRNewswire/ — Jim Shrader, founder and CEO of International Micro Systems (IMS), announced today the signings of two new clients, the Houston Astros and the Durham Bulls, as well as the decision by the New York Mets to expand their Gift Card only deployment of STADIS to a full deployment.   “These clients will be live and fully operational on STADIS in time for opening day,” according to Shrader.  ”We are delighted to welcome our newest clubs and their food, beverage, and merchandising partners to the STADIS fold and are committed to helping them leverage STADIS to drive incremental attendance and food/beverage/merchandise revenues, increase per caps, and create sales uplift and breakage.”

IMS created the loaded ticket concept in 2004 in conjunction with the Philadelphia Phillies and ARAMARK when first installing STADIS at Citizens Bank Park.  Today nearly 25% of MLB clubs have deployed STADIS.  STADIS is  built upon an open Venue Integration Architecture (VIA) that integrates ticketing, concessions POS, merchandise POS, and emerging fan facing cell phone transaction applications such as Mangia.com.

The NY Mets decided to fully implement STADIS after researching the added value ‘alternatives’ to STADIS offered by ticketing, gift card, and point of sale companies.  ”We are in the unique position to offer our clients an integration path that incorporates all fan facing transaction systems into their single data base.  Competitive offerings are limited to integrating to that particular vendor’s products and often the vendor owns the data, not the club.  In the STADIS environment, the client owns their MS-SQL Server based data.  Further, the client interfaces to their data via STADIS’ web portal which is built upon the Microsoft .net platform,” explains IMS’ Shrader.

“The term we use to describe our relationship with companies with whom we integrate with in one deal and compete with in another deal is coopetition. It’s sometimes a delicate balancing act.  STADIS permits our clients freedom of choice in emerging technologies. We have gone through 3 ticketing applications and 5 POS applications in 3 years at one venue alone,” according to Shrader.

The Durham Bulls are IMS’ second MiLB client and will join the Lehigh Valley Iron Pigs, as the first MiLB clubs to leverage STADIS.

IMS is an IBM Business Partner.  In addition to supporting the STADIS market, IMS also supports Retail Pro ®, the merchandise management application installed at over 50 stadiums, arenas, and race tracks. Kerry Lemos, CEO of Retail Pro ®, states, “IMS has helped establish Retail Pro ® as the Gold Standard in professional sports related retailing.  IMS understands the requirements of large venues and how to deploy Retail Pro ® in these environments.”

IMS also markets and supports Volante Systems food and beverage POS, time and attendance, BOH and management applications.  Volante features unique application sets for concessions, fine dining, bars, clubs, and suites.  It is built upon an architecture that supports features like wireless transmission of mid-game, on-the-fly pricing changes critical to MiLB promotions.  Volante’s architecture was a leading contributor to MiLB’s 2010 Promotion of the Year award presented to the Lehigh Valley Iron Pigs.

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