As any retailer knows, consumer preferences and expectations are constantly evolving. Customers want flexible, personalised experiences that allow to them to pick and choose between physical and digital channels, and they expect those experiences to be seamless.
‘Omnichannel’ has been the term most often used to describe the strategy retailers need to adopt to deliver on this customer demand, while ‘unified commerce’ has also reached buzzword status. Both are used to describe the delivery of seamless experiences across channels.
But while they’re used interchangeably, there’s a significant difference between them.
Unified commerce is the next-generation architecture that finally delivers on what omnichannel promised.
A unified commerce platform provides a central hub that breaks down the silos between channels to deliver truly seamless experiences, while also solving omnichannel’s biggest weakness – operational complexity.
Unified commerce is gaining traction, with one study showing that rolling out a unified commerce platform was a top priority for 30% of retailers, while a combined 71% were somewhere on the path to adopting a unified commerce strategy.
Still, barriers remain. A study by Adyen this year found that 28% of those businesses without a unified platform lacked data on customer behaviour across channels, and 30% lacked the technology infrastructure to offer truly personalised experiences.
As we discuss here, the challenges faced by retailers offering hybrid in-store and online shopping options without the benefit of an integrated platform can be significant, while those prepared to take the leap gain competitive advantage through a deeper understanding of their customers and their evolving wants and needs.
Omnichannel offers options but creates operational complexity
Omnichannel strategies talked about creating seamless and consistent customer experiences across all channels, but the execution has fallen short.
Why? Retailers have to quickly spin up new channels as consumers demand them. An omnichannel approach connects numerous channels but they operate in functional silos, meaning that customers can’t move between channels in one seamless interaction.
Omnichannel makes things much harder for retailers in five ways:
Integrating data silos: Often loosely connected with manual processes and custom integrations, omnichannel solutions are fragile, inefficient and costly to maintain. The silos generate a cascade of inconsistent, inaccurate data shared across the business, making it virtually impossible to deliver a seamless customer experience.
Inventory that isn’t real time: Many omnichannel systems only access rudimentary sales and inventory positions. This prevents retailers from offering the ‘buy anywhere, fulfil anywhere’ options that are best for customers and most profitable for them.
Adding modern technologies and capabilities: Connecting legacy systems with modern technologies requires custom integrations, making the creation of new brand experiences complex, expensive, time consuming and risky.
Obtaining a single view of the customer: Silos negatively impact customers because they have to deal with inconsistencies and gaps, such as partial sales histories, different answers to questions or having to start new conversations in each channel.
Loss of innovation: Day-to-day inefficiencies mean that internal teams are tied up in remediation and troubleshooting and have less time to spend on creating the innovative, personalised experiences customers desire.
Operational complexity in the real world:
A customer browsing your web store sees that a product is available and orders it online for in-store collection. But behind the scenes, you’re running the online store and in-store POS on different systems, meaning data isn’t integrated and is syncing at different rates. To the customer, it might look like everything is working in harmony, until they find out that the product they ordered isn’t available because the stock level data in the online store is out of date.
Unified commerce puts the customer experience first
Customers today expect to transact when, where and however they want. They don’t care how you achieve it and will reward you if you have it – or shop elsewhere if you don’t.
The only way to meet these demands for a truly unified experience is to move beyond omnichannel to unified commerce.
As Nick Gray, founder of retail consultancy I Got You, recently told Inside Retail, ‘Unified commerce is where you put the customer at the heart of every decision, so it’s a customer-centric retail strategy that seamlessly connects all sales channels.’
Unified commerce breaks down the walls between internal channel silos by using a centralised platform that combines point of sale, inventory, ordering and fulfilment, loyalty, pricing and business intelligence.
With a unified view of the customer, and all channels and engagement points connected in real-time, you can deliver a personalised and consistent customer experience by way of a single source of truth. No hitches, and no inconsistencies.
You can make purchasing online and in-stores more seamless and convenient through endless aisle, digital payments and ‘buy anywhere, fulfil anywhere’ services.
And you can quickly respond to changing customer expectations and new technologies by using microservices and APIs to expose data and connect third-party services.
This blog was originally published in October 2023 and updated July 2025.
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How drop shipping can drive down cost and grow revenue
Think of drop shipping and you might imagine a small, start-up online entrepreneur selling a relatively small range of products sourced from suppliers who handle the shipping and delivery.
But drop shipping can also be a powerful tool for larger, established retailers looking for ways to maxmise revenue, drive down cost and enhance fulfilment options.
Here we look at some of the advantages to be gained from drop shipping, and at how to seamlessly integrate it into your existing business model.
The rise and rise of drop shipping
Consumers’ love for the convenience of online shopping has seen drop shipping grow exponentially. This year, the global drop shipping market is estimated at a whopping US$434.98 billion, with the Asia Pacific region accounting for US$156.59 billion of that value, while annual growth is predicted in the range of 22% until 2034.
Over the next decade, growing middle-class wealth is expected to see Asia Pacific dominate the global drop shipping market as consumers look for ways to spend their disposable incomes, with overall market value expected to rise to US$939.50 billion.
Understanding the benefits
Given these numbers, it makes sense for established retailers to consider ways to get a slice of the drop shipping market pie. And, as well as revenue growth, drop shipping can offer a range of benefits to recognised brands.
For a start, by sourcing and shipping products directly from the supplier as and when customers want them, you avoid the overheads that come with warehousing and the costs of potential spoilage. This is especially true for retailers, such as furniture and homeware vendors, that sell large items requiring ample storage.
Not having to warehouse stock also allows you to offer a wider range of products, and you get to trial new product lines without having to buy large volumes up-front, thereby lowering the risk of being left with unsold stock.
Using drop shipping also gives you an added fulfilment option when it comes to meeting your customers’ desire for fast, efficient delivery.
What’s more, established brands with an existing online offering and customer base can avoid some of the pitfalls that come with setting up a drop shipping business by leveraging existing suppliers, sales channels and customer support.
Managing the risks
Like all aspects of retail, drop shipping is not without risks that need to be managed for brand protection. Suppliers need to be carefully vetted to ensure shipping costs and estimates are reliable and accurate, legal obligations are met and product quality is maintained.
At the other end of the supply chain, customers need to receive the same level of care and support as if they had bought from your warehoused stock, so that the buying experience is seamless. That means giving your people up-to-date information about drop ship orders and empowering them to quickly address any issues.
Choosing the right partner
Making the move to drop shipping as seamlessly as possible, for both you and your customers, means choosing a technology partner who can help you integrate it into your existing business model in a way that lets you easily track drop shipped orders and inventory.
That’s where Infinity comes in.
With Infinity, you can easily create a new stock item that is added to your inventory but flagged as a drop ship product for order fulfilment.
You can then search for and retrieve drop ship orders and monitor their progress to delivery just as you would with a conventional order.
And if the customer changes their mind and wants to return or refund the item, Infinity can bring the product into your inventory so it can be receipted, counted and returned to the supplier.
When it comes to drop shipping, Infinity gives you the flexibility to expand your offering and manage orders without the cost of end-to-end inventory management. You get to choose what’s best for customers and most profitable for you.
Drop shipping in practice
When one of Australasia’s best-known furniture retailers was looking for a way to expand the range of items on offer from existing suppliers without increasing warehouse capacity, they turned to Infinity to handle drop shipped inventory and orders.
The process is streamlined and easy.
When a customer goes to the online store and identifies a drop ship product they want to buy, a new stock item is instantly created on the fly via an Infinity API that connects the web store to the supplier’s system.
The item becomes part of an order that is tracked through to completion, as well as being assigned to a physical store based on the customer’s delivery address and post code.
If any issues arise, the customer can go instore and know that their query will be handled, up to and including order cancellation, while store staff can retrieve and view the order just like any other.
The result? An expanded product offering and seamless customer experience.
Want help to get the most out of drop shipping?
If you’re looking for help to meet the demands of today’s and tomorrow's delivery conscious shoppers, get in touch. We’d love to help you deliver the shopping experiences customers expect.
5 online shopping trends in Australia and New Zealand
The growth of online shopping has been one of the biggest stories in retail for a number of years now, with major implications for how retailers reach their customers and plan everything from promotions to bricks-and-mortar presence and warehousing.
Here we look at five recent trends to keep in mind when planning your 2025 online and phygital strategies to help you tailor your offering and engage with customers in ways that best meet their evolving habits.
1. Online is here to stay
The past five years have delivered plenty of turbulence in retail, but a clear trend has emerged: online shopping is now part of most people’s regular shopping experience and is here to stay.
While inflation and slowing economic growth forecasts have dented consumer confidence, the portion of total spend going to online has either held firm or increased. In New Zealand, Q4 of last year saw total retail spend increase by only 1%, but online spending went up by 9% to $1.73 billion. Around 40% of all Kiwis aged 15 and over shopped online between October and December, an increase of 4.6% from the same time in 2023.
Meanwhile in Australia, at least eight out of every ten households shopped online during 2023, up 1.4% from the previous year, with at least one in seven making weekly online purchases.
When it comes to deciding how to shop, consumers are choosing the convenience of ecommerce and are building online purchasing into their everyday lives.
2. The generations shop differently
The shift to online, though, isn’t spread evenly across all generations, with young people being the most enthusiastic online shoppers. According to Australia Post, 21% of purchases made by 18-26-year-olds happen online, while for 27-43-year-olds the number is even higher at 23%. Gen Xers buy online 19% of the time, and baby boomers rate lowest at 14%, although the total spend among this last group continues to grow as they warm to ecommerce.
For many young shoppers, buying online has become a weekly habit. A study of shopping trends for 2025 found that 51% of Gen Z customers and 41% of Millennials shop online multiple times a week, often responding to customer reviews. Boomers are more deliberate, less frequent shoppers and are more likely to be influenced by perceived value through promotions and discounts.
3. Smaller purchases, more often
Age also plays a role in how shoppers have responded to tougher economic conditions. While young consumers have cut back in response to cost-of-living challenges, older buyers with higher disposable incomes are more willing to spend on items they need or want.
Overall, though, there has been a trend towards shoppers choosing to make smaller purchases more often, resulting in smaller basket sizes. In New Zealand, consumers are buying online more often but are spending less when they do so. They are using online stores as a way of comparing prices and searching for the best deals, and they are willing to swap to a cheaper alternative if it means getting a bargain.
A similar pattern has emerged in Australia, where in 2023 consumers made smaller purchases more often, with the average basket size down 4.6% from the previous year.
Cost-conscious shoppers are also looking overseas to find the best deals. In Q3 2024, New Zealanders’ online transactions with local retailers fell to 68% from 70% the previous year, as offshore transactions grew. And a 2024 survey of Aussie shoppers found that 11% of their online spend is done with overseas-based retailers like Shein and Temu. As economist Chris Richardson of Rich Insight said at the recent Australian Retail Association Leaders Forum 25 in Sydney, competition in this space is fierce and getting fiercer.
4. Big sales events dominate
The hunt for a bargain has seen high-profile events such as Black Friday, Cyber Monday and Boxing Day continue to dominate online sales numbers. Australia Post found that Australian retailers enjoyed a 7.8% year-on-year increase in online purchases during 2024’s cyber weekend, with 7.6 million households taking part, while spending over the same weekend in New Zealand was 7% higher than the previous year as instore spending held firm. Boxing Day, meanwhile, saw a whopping 30% increase in online transactions from 2023.
5. Instore keeps its top spot
Despite these impressive gains for online retail, instore shopping remains the single biggest sales channel. In New Zealand, for example, while online spending amounted to $1.73 billion in Q4 of 2024, instore spending came in at $14.4 billion.
What’s more, in Australia 38% of shoppers still prefer visiting a physical store to shopping online.
The split between online and instore, however, is not a hard and fast one. As Scott Fyfe, CEO of David Jones, recently noted, 70% of his customers start their digital journey online before coming into store. Even if a sale ends up being completed instore, it’s clear that shoppers use online to check prices and availability, making the web store a vital part of the overall journey.
Meeting the moment
Online shopping is and will continue to be an essential and expanding part of the retail landscape. So how do you incorporate these trends into your strategic planning?
For a start, pay close attention to customers’ price sensitivities and spending habits so you can price goods effectively by demographic. Mature customers may be willing to pay more than young shoppers, so look at who you are enticing and targeting with promotions, and price accordingly.
Use data analytics and demand forecasting to identify the best times to run promotions, including but not limited to the major annual sales events, and then tailor deals by market segment.
Perhaps most importantly, rather than seeing online and instore as separate channels, take a phygital approach that recognises the way customers use your online store both as a place to buy and as a place to browse for instore shopping. Fully integrating these channels means establishing a single source of truth, so that both you and your customers have a reliable, real-time view of stock and price.
Want help to modernise to make the most of your online offering?
If you’re looking for help to meet the demands of today’s and tomorrow’s customers, get in touch. We’d love to help you deliver the seamless shopping journey customers expect.
Unleashing the Power of the Point of Sale
The past few years have brought unique challenges to offline shopping, as the Covid-19 pandemic closed stores and shoppers turned to their screens like never before.
But as the world re-opened, physical stores bounced back, and they will continue to hold their own even in the face of growing demand for online offerings. While global online retail sales are expected to grow to US$6.8 trillion by 2028, offline will still be the dominant channel, accounting for 78% of global sales.
Shoppers, though, don’t see online and in-store as separate channels but as part of a unified buying journey. They might research a product online before buying it in-store, or vice versa. So it makes sense to think about how to best integrate your stores into the overall customer experience. By speeding up delivery, personalising the offering and providing hands-on interaction, you can use your stores to help deliver the cohesive, consistent omnichannel journey customers now expect.
Here, we look at how integrating stores involves considering customer preferences and behaviours, improving employee performance and choosing a POS system that changes as you do and allows you to unleash the power of unified commerce.
Personalised and tactile customer experiences
For customers, shopping in-store brings a range of tangible benefits — instant gratification, personalised assistance, product comparison and social interaction. And meeting customers face-to-face gives retailers the chance to offer a tailored, tactile experience that builds loyalty, drives repeat business and enhances profitability, even when the final purchase happens online.
Elevating these personal encounters so that they give you a competitive advantage can take a variety of forms, from speedy fulfilment of click-and-collect orders, to staff making recommendations based on wish lists and order histories, to providing accurate stock information by store (including out of stock, in stock and on order).
But transforming your stores to be the driver of customer loyalty and retention means that your store retail systems must transform as well. A modern point of sale is now the anchor for a unified commerce platform that unifies online and store data with back-end systems, so that you can offer customers the best possible all-round experience.
Personalising in-store offerings needs a nuanced understanding of shopper profiles and a unified platform that gives you a single source of truth for all inventory, order and customer data. With all your customer details captured and stored in a single unified commerce hub, you can recognise customers consistently, wherever they shop with you.
Empowered employees
After years of underinvestment, many retailers are playing catch-up with their employees. Their stores often lack the tools and systems that enable their people to deliver the relevant and personalised customer interactions that match online shopping’s price, speed and convenience. Some stores find themselves running multiple systems, forcing their teams to juggle between different apps and screens as they serve customers and slowing down the overall sales process.
Armed with the right customer data and tools, your store staff can more easily make decisions, provide personalised upselling advice, sell inventory at any location and serve customers faster, anywhere in the store. Lifting your employees’ performance leads to enhanced customer interactions and increased conversions.
Making tools easy to use and intuitive also enables new employees to quickly get up to speed and begin selling almost right away. By consolidating store technology onto a single POS-based retail system, your teams can do everything in a single view, from sales transactions, customer loyalty, pricing, product and promotions through to virtual appointments and endless aisle access to stock. And by removing the frustrations caused by complex technology, you'll also help lower staff turnover.
Best of all, empowering your people to offer an exceptional customer service allows you to strengthen relationships with happier, more loyal customers.
A scalable and adaptable POS
Today, the store is mission control for a seamless omnichannel customer experience, making the POS the hub for unified commerce. The POS needs to span endless aisle, click and collect, store fulfilment, pricing and promotions, and loyalty, as well as functions that allow customers to search, transact, acquire and consume products across all your channels.
It's also crucial that your POS solution is scalable and adaptable to suit your business’s changing needs. Whether you're expanding into new locations or launching pop-up stores, your POS system must be able to scale quickly and adapt to changes in customer expectations. While it might seem obvious, scalability can easily be overlooked in the excitement of cutting-edge technology.
POS adaptability means having a system that can quickly adjust to evolving customer preferences. It should operate seamlessly across tablets, phones and fixed tills, allowing transactions to flow between devices effortlessly. This flexibility opens possibilities for innovative store layouts and experiences, and allows you to think creatively about how and where to personally interact with customers.
And as you grow, your POS solution must be able to function anywhere your ecommerce platform can. Your growth plans should also account for how your physical stores can complement your online presence — not just to drive online sales but also to strengthen customer loyalty.
Want help to modernise your point of sale?
As you transform your customer experience to deliver the seamless and personalised buying journeys your customers crave, your point of sale system must transform as well. If you’re looking for help to shape your strategy and extend your omnichannel capabilities, get in touch. We’d love to help you develop the solutions you need now and guide you to where you’re headed next.
Seven things to look for in a retail technology partner
Can your retail system keep up with customer demand for omnichannel experiences?
Consumers now see both the online and offline shopping experience as part of the same buying journey and not one versus the other.
This is introducing more complexity into the business, with channels becoming less physical and more digital. And that’s why unified commerce is now retail’s top priority, with 88% of retailers investing in unified commerce or considering doing so to build a customer-centric approach to retail.
But at a time when 2 in 5 retailers (40%) lack in-house expertise to make the most of new technologies, and only 25% of retailers can connect online and store data, many retailers are looking at how to rebuild their businesses from the bottom up for their unified commerce business model.
They know that working with the right people and the right technologies will make the roll-out of new customer experiences much easier and deliver results much faster.
If you’re developing the roadmap or requirements for your next point of sale or retail platform, start here.
There are seven important indicators of a good technology partner:
Maturity and market responsiveness
With a mature platform you can focus on delivering innovation because the critical functionality you need already exists.
Look for a partner who’s been around retail for a while, with a platform built on a modern architecture and 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.
Real-world customer experience
A strong track record and referenceable customer base means less risk.
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.
Have they implemented unified commerce systems or are they just unifying digital commerce channels? 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.
Flexible and innovative mindset
Seek a partner that can pivot quickly as markets change.
You want a partner who’s got the people and processes to move fast, while cultivating an environment where innovation flourishes.
Check that they have a history of responsiveness and the ability to assess and quickly correct any unforeseen issues. Can they change direction, be flexible and achieve competitive success as opportunities develop, competitors act and customer needs evolve.
Broad product capability
Choose a partner that can give you a holistic portfolio and expansive retail ecosystem.
Offering a unified experience means unifying all the backend systems that run POS, inventory, customers and loyalty, pricing and promotions, analytics and fulfilment. You don’t want to be tied to a point player that can only provide portions. You’ll need all your core requirements out-of-the-box plus the ability to customise and easily add new functionality.
Your partner should let third parties connect via APIs and cultivate a vendor ecosystem to reduce risk and increase flexibility. You also need to know that your partner has a strategic roadmap and investment committed for new capabilities.
Consulting and market understanding
Ensure your partner can translate your business needs into functional solutions.
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 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.
Exceptional operations
Make sure they combine experience, processes and systems for faster ROI.
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 — make sure they’ve done the training and really understand agile principles, methods and practices.
Local and committed to your success
A local partner means you can have more influence on the product roadmap and expect faster turnaround.
Retailers are developing a customer-centric mindset and building new skills and capabilities to compete with new competitors. They recognise the risk that comes with global vendors with an indirect model of engagement and support.
A local business means you can enjoy direct engagement with on-the-ground people focussed on your needs, and not distracted by offshore business activity. With direct access to second and third level support and simple processes, you’ll enjoy leaner, faster support services.
Biggest isn’t always best. A mid-sized company will have fewer layers of bureaucracy, giving them more agility and responsiveness. It also means that you’ll be an important customer of influence to your partner - they will value your business and work hard for it.
This blog was originally published on 21 January 2019 and updated 07 October 2024.
Want help to innovate and scale new services, faster?
Triquestra has been delivering retail management systems in multiple industries and geographies for more than 25 years. Our product and people are supporting award-winning retailers delivering disruptive, world-first customer experiences that build loyalty and grow sales.
If you’re experiencing technology challenges that prevent you from unifying your physical and digital channels, get in touch. We’d love to help you digitise your business to create the unified experiences your customers now expect.
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:
Turbocharging delivery: why you start with unified inventory
How well is your business geared to deliver the fast fulfilment options consumers now expect? Retailers with a single view of inventory across all locations can slash delivery times, profitably.
Over recent years, retailers have adapted to changing consumer demands, evolving channels and rising customer expectations around convenience, choice and speed.
And now they’re turbocharging their digital and physical fulfilment to help differentiate the CX.
Why is delivery speed so important?
Customers now expect retailers to provide multiple fulfilment options, ranging from same-day shipping (for a fee) through to free delivery over a longer timeframe and everything in between.
They consider reliability to be just as important as speed when it comes to delivery, preferring their orders to arrive when they expect them, rather than promised a same-day or next-day delivery that never appears.
And the time is right to use stores as mini-distribution centres. Soon, up to half of all online purchases are expected to be fulfilled directly from physical stores, and up to 50% potentially being returned to these locations.
The challenges of omnichannel delivery
However, omnichannel fulfilment can be the source of many inventory optimisation challenges.
Compressing delivery times and introducing store-based fulfilment means adjusting inventory management, allocation and replenishment strategies. It requires careful analysis of the destination of products, distinguishing between those that will be sold on the shop floor and those designated for fulfilment, and adjusting replenishment processes to ensure optimal stock levels for both.
In addition, many retailers can only access rudimentary sales and inventory positions, and have complex systems that are fragile, inefficient and costly to integrate.
So, what is required to compress delivery times and introduce omnichannel fulfilment?
1. Real-time inventory visibility in every location
To provide the speed and convenience consumers expect, retailers are moving from multichannel silos to unified commerce platforms that provide a unified view of inventory across all stores and DCs.
Real-time data on stock levels can benefit your business in many ways:
Reduce inventory costs by ensuring you’ve got the right inventory available in each location, without carrying the cost of overstocking or ‘buffers’
Optimise your product range by matching stock to each store’s location and demographics
Create dark stores for online order fulfilment, turning physical locations into temporary or permanent fulfilment nodes to enable faster delivery and keep retail staff working
React to trends quickly and forecast demand based on historical data, sales forecasts and seasonal variations
Extend your range across more sales channels such as in-store kiosks, shoppable screens, pop-up stores, concessions and mobile devices.
2. Optimise store fulfilment processes
Once your inventory is under control, you’re free to extend your omnichannel delivery.
By using your stores for fulfilment or pick-up, you can increase the amount of inventory for sale while reducing inventory cost and slashing delivery times. Many potential online sales previously lost to inventory shortages can be saved when stores also function as fulfilment centres. And the return on investment can be spectacular. With endless aisle fulfilment, our clients have achieved a 200 to 300% growth in online revenue.
Target USA is one high profile example. It consistently fulfils the majority of its sales, including online orders, directly through its physical stores. In Q2 2024, 97.9% of Target’s orders were fulfilled by its stores, which are a ‘one-stop’ for fulfilment, including returns in store, kerbside returns and even kerbside returns and pickups.
Store-based fulfilment also presents a unique marketing opportunity. Consumers are more environmentally conscious, and using stores as hubs allows customers to make more sustainable choices in the way they purchase products. Store fulfilment allows retailers to streamline packages for more efficient last-mile delivery - minimising the numbers of trucks on the road, reducing environmental impacts, boosting profit margins and enhancing the overall customer experience.
And even better, store fulfilment doesn’t demand that eco-conscious consumers pay extra. Retailers just need to guide customers toward using the more sustainable and, importantly, often faster fulfilment options that are already accessible through their stores.
This post was originally published on 15 December 2021 and updated on 19 September 2024.
If you’re urgently revamping your omnichannel delivery capabilities and want advice on which projects to tackle first, our checklist could help. It will let you assess where you are at against retail leaders and decide what you need to improve. Download it here.
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:
Changing your POS? 7 critical tests your software must pass
Is your point of sale system good enough for today’s omnichannel environment?
In a recent blog, we talked about how changing consumer expectations are disrupting legacy point of sale technology and shared five areas to focus on to differentiate the store customer experience.
If you want to ensure your next retail platform will grow and evolve alongside your needs, here we look at the challenges retailers experience when making the shift to a new POS, and the important tests the new tech needs to pass.
For many omnichannel retailers, the rise of online shopping has set higher expectations for in-store experiences.
Physical stores now play a key role in driving demand and profitability - even when the final purchase happens online.
Shoppers today view their online and in-store interactions as part of a unified buying journey, not separate channels. And by speeding up delivery, increasing share of wallet, and providing hands-on product experiences, stores are enhancing and differentiating the overall customer journey.
Yet, a significant challenge persists: many retailers find that their outdated point of sale systems are unable to meet the needs of today’s omnichannel shoppers, especially with the ‘phygital’ experiences that tech-savvy consumers now expect.
And making the shift to a new point of sale is complicated:
Many retailers defer upgrades because of concerns about potential disruption to current operations, the resources required for successful implementation and the task of staff training.
Compatibility issues with existing and future systems can make the transition to a modern POS seem a daunting task.
This can be amplified by a fear of not achieving the anticipated return on investment, especially if they’ve previously been burned by failed tech projects.
In the past, retailers who got behind on their store technology investments frequently focused on catching up to current standards. However, now the focus is on future proofing – choosing platforms that speed up innovation, with the flexibility to change direction as opportunities develop, competitors act and customer expectations evolve.
You don’t want a project that fails to deliver the desired returns because the wrong product was selected.
So at a time when point of sale software is undergoing a surge of disruption, innovation and investment, how do you select the right system for your business requirements?
Here are the 7 tests a point of sale purchase must pass, with the first being the most crucial of all:
Test 1. Can it be rapidly implemented and deployed?
The number one priority for most of the retailers we speak with is speed of deployment.
The complexity of upgrading legacy POS infrastructures can present significant operational challenges. This means you need a platform built on a modern architecture, with all your core requirements out-of-the-box plus the ability to customise and easily add new functionality.
When you choose a partner with a mature platform, they can focus on delivering innovation because the core functionality you need already exists.
Check the provider has recent and proven success planning, implementing and managing complex, large-scale deployments across multiple stores, multiple formats and multiple geographies. They’ll need to understand your fast-paced, data-intensive environment where any significant level of downtime is unacceptable. And their people will need the capability to help you plan and implement your projects so that they work for you now and into the future.
Our client GAS took only 10 weeks to rollout Infinity across 127 stores – a masterclass in POS deployment. GAS now has a modern retail system that supports its retailers to provide great customer experiences and drive growth.
“That is what Infinity point of sale system is able to deliver to us, a system which is fast, reliable, secure and on a modern architecture and platform.”
Nahid Ali, GAS General Manager
Test 2. Will it support your unified commerce business model?
Today, the store is mission control for a seamless omnichannel customer experience, making the POS the anchor for unified commerce.
That means you’ll want a point of sale system that will not only work with your existing systems, but also provide an end-to-end solution for a unified commerce business model.
The POS needs to be the hub for unified experiences spanning endless aisle, click and collect, store fulfilment, pricing and promotions, clienteling and loyalty, as well as functions that allow customers to search, transact, acquire and consume products across all your channels.
You don’t want to be tied to a point player that can only provide portions.
“The reason unified commerce resonated with me is that it would give us one core platform do the heavy lifting and a single source of truth to manage the customer data, inventory and order orchestration, rather than relying on too many systems to push and pull data everywhere.”
Shane Lenton, previously Cue’s Chief Information and Digital Officer
Test 3. Will the system work offline?
No matter how exceptional your retail customer experience is, it becomes irrelevant if you're unable to complete a sale.
When inevitable network outages happen, you need to trust that your POS will keep all your stores operational without any disruption.
When implemented correctly, the offline POS experience should be so seamless that your staff may not even realise the system is offline.
Though some features may be limited, it's essential to know what transactions can still be processed during the loss of connectivity. For example, the system should handle card and cash payments, process returns, capture customer data and link it to profiles, and continue scanning products for smooth checkouts.
Test 4. Can it grow with you, and adapt to change?
Whether you're expanding into new locations or launching pop-up stores, it's crucial to ensure your POS system can scale quickly and adapt to changes in customer expectations. While it might seem obvious, scalability can easily be overlooked in the excitement of cutting-edge technology.
Your growth plans should account for how your physical stores can complement your online presence - not just to drive online sales but also to strengthen customer loyalty. Your POS solution must be able to function anywhere your ecommerce platform can.
POS adaptability means having a system that can quickly adjust to evolving customer preferences. It should operate seamlessly across tablets, phones and fixed tills, allowing transactions to flow between devices effortlessly. This flexibility not only opens up possibilities for innovative store layouts and experiences but also provides the practical benefit of better backup strategies for your devices.
Your partner should let third party solutions connect via APIs so that you are free to focus your development efforts on the front-end. You can be more agile and create a community of third-party apps and systems that work together in an ecosystem. As a result, you’ll reduce integration and maintenance overheads, increase real-time accuracy and enjoy virtually limitless scalability and agility.
Test 5. Does it have an intuitive UX for a better EX?
Today, any innovation within the store must minimise friction for store teams because this directly contributes to delivering a superior customer experience. The focus is now on speed and simplicity to maximise staff productivity, no matter where they are in the store.
An easy to use UX and straightforward setup will enable new employees to quickly learn the system and begin selling almost right away. By removing the frustrations caused by complex technology, you'll also help lower staff turnover.
In addition, many retailers run multiple systems within stores, forcing their teams to juggle between different apps and screens as they serve customers. By consolidating store technology onto a single POS-based retail system, your teams can do everything in a single view, from sales transactions, customer loyalty, pricing, product and promotions through to virtual appointments and endless aisle access to stock.
Test 6. Will it make complex sales simple?
For enterprise retailers with multiple brands, B2B operations or franchises, you’ll need a POS system that makes complex sales simple.
You’ll want to control everything from either head office or at store level to set pricing and promotion rules, permissions, return and refund validation, discounting and cash management.
And ensure it supports complex sales like charge-to-account, quote management by channel, debtor management, loyalty and all types of pricing, including retail, trade, contract, promotional, project, customer-specific and rules based.
“Infinity is one of the few platforms able to accommodate our diverse business model, with both retail and wholesale customers requiring multiple volume breaks and bulk purchasing. And Infinity’s New Zealand presence gives us an out-of-the box solution with local capabilities that can be customised to our requirements.”
Amanda Thompson, General Manager of Moore Wilson’s
Test 7. Can you rely on the vendor for new functionality and ongoing support?
Working with the right people and processes will make the roll-out of your new point of sale much easier and deliver results much faster.
A local partner means you’ll have direct access to second and third level support, with direct engagement with people on the ground committed to your success (and not distracted by offshore business activity).
It means you can have more influence on the product roadmap, with fewer layers of bureaucracy giving them more agility and responsiveness. And a mid-size partner is more likely to view you as an important customer of influence.
Louise Mitchell, NPD’s Senior Category Manager
Want help to modernise your point of sale?
As you transform your customer experience to deliver the seamless and personalised buying journeys your customers crave, your point of sale system must transform as well. If you’re looking for help to shape your strategy and extend your omnichannel capabilities, get in touch. We’d love to help you develop the solutions you need now and guide you to where you’re headed next.
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:
How the move to ‘phygital’ is disrupting point of sale technology
Retailers are shifting focus from ecommerce to their stores to better serve omnichannel customers. Here's how changing consumer expectations are transforming in-store technology and disrupting legacy point of sale (POS).
For most omnichannel retailers, the growth of ecommerce has meant boosting their investments in physical retail.
That’s because the store is essential to creating and satisfying customer demand - even if the customer ultimately transacts online. Consumers now see both the online and offline shopping experience as part of the same buying journey and not as one versus the other.
With the ability to see, touch and feel products and assess alternatives, stores are important for marketing and customer acquisition. Store conversion rates are typically 20-40% - around ten times more than ecommerce channels (only 2.5-3%). The store remains the dominant sales channel, still generating more than 70% of sales. and continuing to grow at 4% year on year.
And with pressure on consumer spending plus inventory, pricing and interest rate uncertainty, retailers want to leverage their existing investments in stores and staff - 71% cite store operations as top-three driver for their tech investment strategy.
As the store shifts to become the hub of the omnichannel customer journey, the point of sale must shift as well.
But many retailers have hit a wall because their POS technology can’t support their customers’ current omnichannel demands, let alone the ‘phygital’ shopping journeys now expected by digitally savvy consumers.
They’ve been focussed on ecommerce initiatives, delaying important POS hardware upgrades and the shift to modern operating systems. Some retailers have POS systems that are end of life and about to be sunset, and others are hamstrung by legacy in-house solutions that require custom integrations with modern technologies or are no longer supported.
And at a time when 75% of retailers can’t connect their online and in-store transaction data, they struggle to deliver the cohesive, consistent unified experiences customers now expect.
If you’re upgrading your point of sale to modernise your customer experience, here are the important shifts in functionality to consider:
EX aligns with CX
Today, any store innovation must reduce friction for the store teams, which in turn will drive a great customer experience. Speed and simplicity are now the priority to help people be as productive as possible, wherever they are in the store.
However, many retailers run multiple systems within stores, forcing their teams to juggle between different apps and screens as they serve customers.
Retailers are consolidating store technology onto a single POS-based retail system that lets their teams do everything, from sales transactions, customer loyalty, pricing, product and promotions through to virtual appointments and endless aisle access to stock.
Clienteling gets personal
Clienteling is becoming more sophisticated as consumer expectations for a frictionless ‘one brand’ experience rise. However, many retailers still have channel silos that mean any interaction or activity that the customer had with them online is not available to the customer or staff within the store.
Leading retailers are helping their in-store teams deliver more personalised experiences by using AI and data from across online and offline channels to create timely and relevant communications, recommendations, offers and rewards.
Initially provided for customers visiting stores during click-and-collect pickups, retailers like Cue Clothing are extending customised recommendations into other communications with customers, such as e-receipts and shipping notifications.
They’re taking advantage of the unparalleled knowledge of their store staff to boost digital sales and service by giving in-store teams the tools to connect with shoppers virtually. By integrating video commerce platforms with POS solutions (like Infinity) they’re automating the end-to-end process, from customer communications and data insights to seamless sales transactions and fast delivery.
Store experiences go digital
Retailers know that consumers now expect more from stores and are working to match those expectations with new experiences – such as events, service offerings, customisation, resale, repairs and so much more.
That also means extending digital experiences into stores, such as the ability to look up loyalty points, explore product information or browse and order from the entire inventory.
Mobility is a high priority and retailers are providing fast and flexible self-service checkouts, mobile point of sale and contactless payments everywhere the customer is - in the store, out in the yard, at trade shows and pop-up stores.
They’re using multichannel wishlists to let customers add items to wishlists in stores. By capturing both in-store and online shopper interactions they’re able to retarget customers with personalised marketing campaigns that build engagement and grow sales.
Fulfilment a competitive advantage
Today consumers make their purchasing decisions based on shipping costs and timings. They expect options – from slow to fast, and everything in between – plus visibility, communication and tracking, no matter the fulfilment solution.
However, most retailers struggle to quickly deliver new fulfilment experiences via their POS.
With modern point of sale systems, retailers are using their stores to support the fulfilment options consumers now expect and positioning inventory closer to customers – the source of demand.
Endless aisle access to all inventory via the POS lets them offer the fulfilment options consumers expect – such as click-and-collect, store-to-door and scheduled delivery, plus innovative new delivery solutions, such as 1-hour delivery via Uber and Shippit.
Future proofing an imperative
In the past, retailers who got behind on their store tech investments frequently focused on catching up to current standards.
Now, the focus is on future proofing – choosing platforms that speed up innovation, with the flexibility to change direction as opportunities develop, competitors act and customer expectations evolve.
When it comes to POS solutions that can support omnichannel experiences, look for a platform that provides a unified hub for all your channels – reducing integration, complexity and overheads, and increasing efficiency and accuracy.
With agile methodologies and APIs to easily plug-in new apps and systems, your new POS will be your platform for innovation – a springboard for adding new channels and services at a speed and scale that would be unachievable within a traditional omnichannel model.
This blog was originally published on 28 Feb 2023 and updated 7 August 2024
Want help to modernise your point of sale?
As you transform your customer experience to deliver the seamless and personalised buying journeys your customers crave, your point of sale system must transform as well. If you’re looking for help to shape your strategy and extend your omnichannel capabilities, get in touch. We’d love to help you develop the solutions you need now and guide you to where you’re headed next.
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 new ebook:
Why unified commerce is the nirvana of omnichannel
There’s a profound shift unfolding right now in the way retail technologies are assessed, implemented and integrated. And the primary force behind this upheaval is changing consumer expectations for a “phygital” shopping experience.
Many retailers have had to take a ‘just get something done’ approach to creating seamless customer experiences that span digital and physical channels. Now they’re struggling with omnichannel set-ups that only link systems together and can’t keep pace with changing consumer behaviours.
Many also face a technology cliff, with legacy solutions so old that they’re no longer fit for purpose or unable to support their phygital ambitions.
In addition, around 2 in 5 retailers (40%) lack in-house expertise to make the most of new technologies, and only 25% of retailers can connect online and store data to create the omnichannel experiences consumers now expect.
But omnichannel should not be the end goal. It’s just one approach to getting a single view of your customers that will help you deliver unified experiences.
Instead, a unified commerce approach will break down your channel silos and move your retail business toward the holy grail of holistic, real-time, personalised customer experiences spanning in-store, online and everywhere in between.
To help explain why unified commerce is the nirvana of omnichannel, here’s a look at where we are now and where we’re going.
Multi-channel
To keep pace with new technologies and changing consumer demands, retailers are giving customers access to new mobile and online channels. In a multi-channel approach, each touchpoint and channel operates independently, with separate people, processes and technologies existing in functional silos.
But when you only add and don’t actually integrate new channels with the rest of your organisation, you create bad service experiences that frustrate internal teams and customers.
Silos mean that your customers have to deal with inconsistencies and gaps, such as incomplete sales histories, different tones of voice or having to start conversations afresh in each channel. These silos inevitably lead to disappointment and frustration, a lack of trust and even a sense that your organisation is incompetent.
Omnichannel
With an omnichannel approach, you’re connecting numerous backend systems so that customers can seamlessly interact with your brand. However, your channels are still operating in functional silos.
That means most attempts to offer unified experiences fall short.
You’re likely to be struggling with legacy technologies that have been customised and are infrequently updated, and then you bolt on new solutions that don’t easily integrate. These omnichannel systems are fragile, inefficient and costly to maintain.
And things can easily unravel. Adding new channels and tools requires additional custom integrations that are complex and slow, adding significant costs and curbing the agility and scalability you require.
Unified commerce
Unified commerce provides a central hub that breaks down the silos between channels and backend systems to deliver truly seamless experiences, while also solving omnichannel’s biggest weakness – operational complexity. Rather than building custom integrations to unify different systems, you can easily use all the tools and services within a single unified platform.
With a unified commerce approach, you can achieve retail nirvana by creating immersive and frictionless experiences for customers across all channels, touchpoints and locations. It gives you a single source of truth for inventory, order and customer data. With this one view of the customer, and all channels and engagement points connected in real-time, you can deliver a personalised and consistent customer experience.
You can also quickly respond to changing customer expectations and new technologies by using microservices and APIs to expose data and connect third-party services.
Unified commerce has been a game changer for our clients.
It eliminates the customer journey pain points and amplifies the ‘wow’ moments. Now you can treat each customer as an individual, all the time – one person with one account, interacting with one brand.
Unified commerce can benefit your business in many ways:
Simplify your technology
A single commerce platform gives you a leaner and more flexible architecture to deliver greater agility, increased efficiency, more control and cost savings.
Accelerate speed to market
These improvements in IT efficiency and flexibility let you launch new tools and services to meet business demands and start seeing revenue benefits faster.
Optimise inventory and availability
Your most significant benefit will be increased sales generated by ranging and fulfilment capabilities that enable you to sell products across channels (and even sell products not normally stocked within any channels).
Boost in-store productivity and sales
By arming your store staff with the right customer data and tools, combined with AI-driven recommendations, they can more easily make decisions, provide personalised upselling advice, sell inventory at any location and serve customers faster, anywhere in the store.
Personalise your customer experience
With a holistic view of your customers, you can better plan your pricing and promotion strategies and get the right offer or message to the right customer, at the right time and right place.
Create relevant and agile experiences
With a single source of truth and powerful analytics, you can turn large amounts of data from disparate sources into insights that help you to attract and engage customers in new ways and improve your bottom line.
The result is the ability to deliver the personal, ubiquitous and unified experiences your customers expect, fostering loyalty, driving growth and improving profitability.
This post was originally published on 3 March 2020 and updated on 08 August 2024.
Want help to plan your next steps?
We can help you define your goals, develop a business case and create your roadmap to deliver the unified experiences that are best for customers, and most profitable for you. Get in touch.
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:
From bland to demand: 6 opportunities from increasing your IT spend
Are you confident your next tech investment will help achieve your strategic business goals by solving the challenges you face and creating new opportunities?
In recent blogs we asked if retailers were spending enough on their IT and, if not, how to make the case for increasing spend. We also shared retailer’s top spending goals for 2024 and three investment priorities.
Now we’re looking at the metrics retailers have set themselves to gauge their success in 2024, and the opportunities unleashed by increased IT spend.
Even though it’s tempting to press pause during another challenging year, the most successful companies will be those that find ways to differentiate to meet changing customer demand.
Retailers that are aggressive on growth – creating distinctive omnichannel customer experiences and expanding their product offerings, while also reducing costs over time - are the companies that will create value, meet customer needs and head off the competition.
The most progressive and driven retailers know that they need to do it quickly. But at a time when only 25% of retailers can connect their online and in-store transaction data, many retailers struggle to create a unified user experience that traverses easily between online and offline channels.
That’s why unified commerce is now firmly established as the dominant modern retail strategy, with 88% of retailers investing in unified commerce or considering doing so to unify online and store experiences and make their businesses stronger, smarter and ready for the future.
Making investments count
So how do you ensure your next investment will drive growth in a muddled economic environment?
As retailers ramp up their technology investments this year, they’ve put in place critical metrics to measure the value:
Customers at the centre: Most retailers (94%) ranked new technology as a significant driver for drawing in new customers, with 35% citing it as their main driver. The metrics they’re using this year include increasing new customers numbers (54%) and retaining existing customers (47%). The amount customers spend is also scrutinised, with retailers looking for increased sales (48%) or cost savings (48%) that can be attributed to their tech investments.
But, despite customers being at the centre of ROI metrics, nearly half of organisations invest in technology without thinking about the customer experience (48%).
Empowering employees: Employees are also at the centre of what makes technology work: 61% of retailers ranked well-prepared and well-informed staff equipped with new technologies as the most important factor for a successful in-store experience.
However, more than 2 in 5 (41%) do not seek or consider employee input for these same technology investments, despite the impact this tech will have on them and the valuable insight they have into how it affects customers.
Demanding more from partners: As they put the pressure on themselves to make tech investments count, retail execs are also putting pressure on their partners. Their top expectations of tech vendors include accessibility of solutions (50%), the ability to build long-term partnerships (48%) and ‘cutting edge’ technology (46%). Unsurprisingly, they also demand retail industry expertise (45%) and use cases for technology solutions (42%).
But 2 in 5 retailers (40%) lack in-house expertise to make the most of these new technologies.
As you build your foundation for modern retail, are you confident your next tech investment will deliver REAL value for your business?
There are six important opportunities your retail business can unleash by increasing its investment in IT:
1. Simplify technology and improve business agility
A modern infrastructure gives you a leaner and more flexible architecture to deliver greater agility, increased efficiency, more control and cost savings:
Scalability: third parties can easily plug in, building the ecosystem of retail software, tools, resources and devices you can add and change to match your business needs.
Accuracy: exposing data and functions via APIs (rather than moving and replicating them) makes integration faster and standards-based, improving efficiency, decreasing errors and increasing accuracy.
Easier to maintain: a central platform reduces the need for reconciliation and manual processes to maintain and manage data and functions, and there is only one system to secure.
Reduced costs: Reduced maintenance, fewer developer hours, faster integration and scalable infrastructure decreases your overheads.
2. Meet changing customer expectations
Changing consumer preferences and rising expectations for omnichannel experiences are creating new growth opportunities. The retailers that deliver a personalised and memorable CX are best positioned for long-term growth and loyalty. With a holistic view of your customers, you can better plan your pricing and promotion strategies and get the right offer or message to the right customer, at the right time and right place. By creating remarkable customer experiences that meet or even exceed consumer expectations, customers will return again and again.
3. Accelerate speed to market
Improvements in IT efficiency and flexibility let you launch new tools and services to meet business demands and start seeing revenue benefits faster. There’s less work required to plug in and implement new functions across channels, test cycles are reduced, and you’ll use development capacity more effectively. You can run experiments to test new customer experience innovations, easily move the successful experiments into enterprise-wide operations and adapt to new market demands. You’ll innovate quicker, increase speed to market and build your competitive advantage.
4. Better data insights for relevant and agile experiences
A single, unified platform gives everyone across channels and stores the ability to view all customer touchpoints and react to potential issues in real time. With a single source of truth and powerful analytics, you can turn large amounts of data from disparate sources into insights that help you to attract and engage customers in new ways and improve your bottom line.
5. Optimise inventory and availability
With a unified retail platform that gives you a single view of stock across all locations, plus the ability to easily move it around the business, you’ll improve inventory accuracy, reduce stock requirements, minimise fulfilment costs and get products to customers faster. Your most significant benefit will be increased sales generated by ranging and fulfilment capabilities that enable you to sell products across channels (and even sell products not normally stocked within any channels). And by giving customers a range of purchasing and fulfilment options, you’ll enhance your service and increase customer satisfaction.
6. Boost employee productivity and sales
By arming your store staff with the right customer data and tools at point of sale, combined with AI-driven recommendations, they can more easily make decisions, provide personalised upselling advice, sell inventory at any location and serve customers faster, anywhere in the store. You’ll enhance customer interactions, improve the employee experience and increase conversions.
Want help to build your foundation for modern retail?
We can advise you on the key technology investments creating differentiated customer experiences and business agility. Just contact me at kelly.brown@triquestra.com or get in touch.
For insights into how a unified commerce approach gives you the flexibility and agility you need to keep in step with consumers’ changing need, download our ebook:
What is unified commerce?
Unified commerce is the term used for a retail software system which connects all your inventory and customer data to all your online, in-store and mobile sales channels.
Use our extensive resources to learn more.
