So, you’ve decided to upgrade your retail system. Now what?
Over recent blog posts, we’ve looked at why your POS platform and retail system need to keep pace with customers’ expectations for ‘phygital’ shopping experiences, laid out the questions to ask before changing your POS and given you strategies to use to unlock the money needed to make that vital investment.
Convincing your business to move to more modern technology is a huge win, but it’s just the start of the journey towards implementation. The next step is perhaps even more important — choosing the right implementation partner.
No matter the scale of what you want to accomplish — extending POS functionality, creating a single view of inventory, or starting your unified commerce journey to connect POS, inventory, fulfilment, order and customer data — you need a partner with the right people, processes and technology.
You’ll need someone who can provide you with the systems to innovate quickly, optimise inventory, maximise margin and deploy frictionless customer experiences, efficiently and profitably.
You’ll also need someone who understands the 24x7 demands of retail and the budgetary pressures that retailers face, while having technical insight into the solutions you need now and how those solutions will help you meet the challenges of the future.
Here are the important indicators of a good technology partner, plus questions to ask:
1. Maturity and market responsiveness
Look for a partner who’s been around retail for a while, with a platform built on a modern architecture and a sound business model and proposition. They’ll need to understand your fast-paced, data-intensive environment where any significant level of downtime is unacceptable.
Their people will have the capability to help you plan and implement your projects so that they work for you now and into the future. When you choose a partner with a mature platform, they can focus on delivering innovation because the core functionality you need already exists.
2. Real-world customer experience
Make sure your partner has a recent and proven success record for planning, implementing and managing complex, large-scale deployments across multiple stores, multiple formats and multiple geographies.
Ask for evidence of the relationships, products and services that help their clients to be successful, including the consultancy, customisation, integration, training and support services you’ll need.
3. Flexible and innovative mindset
You want a partner who’s got the people and processes to move quickly, while cultivating an environment where innovation flourishes.
Check that they have a history of responsiveness and the ability to assess and correct any unforeseen issues. Can they change direction, be flexible and achieve competitive success as opportunities develop, competitors act and customer needs evolve?
4. Broad product capability
Choose a partner that can give you a broad and holistic portfolio, perspective and experience. You’ll need all your core requirements out-of-the-box, plus the ability to customise and easily add new functionality.
If you’re looking to implement a unified commerce approach, they’ll need to be able to unify all the backend systems that run POS, inventory, customers and loyalty, pricing and promotions, analytics and fulfilment. You don’t want to commit to a one-dimensional provider who can only cover some of your requirements.
Your partner should let third parties connect via APIs and cultivate a vendor ecosystem to reduce risk and increase flexibility.
Also check that they have a strategic roadmap and investment committed for new capabilities.
5. Consulting and market understanding
Find a partner that will guide you in the right direction and tune technologies to fit your individual business needs. Do they have consultancy skills that span business and technical knowledge? Can they advise you on business processes as well as on how the software works? Make sure they understand your wants and needs (as well as those of your customers) and can translate them into products and services.
6. Exceptional operations
Check that your partner can meet their goals and commitments, and that they have the organisational structure, skills, experiences, programmes and systems to operate effectively and efficiently. That includes agile. They should be able to demonstrate proven, repeatable ways of working that consistently deliver outcomes, and show that they really understand agile principles, methods and practices.
7. Local and committed to your success
Look for a partner that is a local business, focused on your region’s potential to succeed. A local partner means you can have more influence on the product roadmap and enjoy direct engagement with people on the ground committed to your success (and not distracted by offshore business activity). And a mid-size partner is more likely to view you as an important customer of influence.
How Triquestra can help
Triquestra has been delivering retail management systems in multiple industries and geographies for more than 25 years.
Our Infinity unified commerce platform combines point of sale, inventory, ordering and fulfilment, loyalty, pricing and business intelligence on one open platform. That means you’ve got a hub that centralises all customer and inventory data in near real-time.
You’ll get the innovation, optimised inventory and frictionless customer experiences you need — efficiently and profitably.
Want help to innovate and scale new services, faster?
If you’re looking to upgrade and extend your POS functionality, get a clearer view of your inventory or unify your physical and digital channels, get in touch. We’d love to help you implement the solutions you need today and in the future.
This blog was originally published on 21 January 2019 and updated 7 October 2024 and 17 March 2026.
For more on how a move to a unified commerce strategy gives you the flexibility and agility you need to keep in step with consumers’ changing needs, download our ebook:
