Unified Commerce
Greg Cantlon
Changing your POS? 7 critical tests your ...
Changing your POS? 7 critical tests your software must pass
Customer Experience
Greg Cantlon
From points to personalisation: Five steps to ...
From points to personalisation: Five steps to galvanise the liquor retail loyalty experience
Team
Carmela Salisbury
Kelly Brown steps down as Triquestra CEO
Customer Experience
Triquestra
6 omnichannel retail painpoints ...
6 omnichannel retail painpoints unified commerce solves
Customer Experience
Triquestra
Delivering a unified CX: liquor retail's new ...
Delivering a unified CX: liquor retail's new priority

team

New in Infinity – November 2024

Here’s new functionality across the Infinity platform that will help you and your team reduce operational complexity and create a differentiated omnichannel customer experience.

Infinity is a modular platform and you may need additional components or licencing to access some functionality.  

INFINITY API

Enhance control of externally-managed inventory

If some of your inventory is managed outside Infinity, such as vendor-managed inventory, our Stock Receipt API now allows you to receipt stock directly off an invoice, including by matching products being receipted to existing purchase orders. The API can also be used to create, update, retrieve and search invoice receipts.

Automate back ordering for efficient stock management

If you manage master suppliers externally, or you need to provide the procurement rules for a supplier to an external system, the Accounts Payable API now allows you to identify suppliers that will put stock items on back order when you receipt invoices matched to purchase orders. Turning on this flag for a supplier automates and speeds up back ordering if any stock is missing when your staff go to receipt it.

Accelerate integrations by confirming active APIs

The Orchestration Service now lets you retrieve the names and versions of each Infinity API you have configured, allowing system integrators to confirm which API versions are actively deployed and giving you a better understanding of the features available as part of your integration.

Generate physical loyalty cards for customers via external systems

You can now use the Loyalty API to create customers with externally managed loyalty card numbers, as well as card numbers generated by your business. This means if you use physical loyalty cards, you can generate cards and assign them to customers via external systems, such as mobile apps and kiosks.

INVENTORY

Streamline inventory management by preventing stores ordering obsolete products

If your business maintains its inventory centrally at the Head Office but allows stores to decide which items to stock and sell, you can take advantage of a new Infinity feature that lets you lock items, so that they can’t be activated or deactivated at the store. This gives you greater control over the inventory and is helpful in situations where a product item has been replaced by one from a different supplier and you want to make sure the obsolete product isn’t sold.

Optimise inventory management with holistic view of stock on hand

We’ve made maintaining master item data more efficient by allowing you to sort and view your inventory by stock on hand, giving you better visibility of stock quantities and allowing you to optimise stock pricing, ranging and ordering across your business.

Reduce errors in branch stock transfers with product unit details

Creating stock transfers is less prone to error now that your store staff can now see products’ unit details when they move stock to another branch, meaning they won’t inadvertently send too many or too few items to the requesting store. So, for example, if a store asks you for three trays of Coca-Cola but your store sells them as cans, you won’t risk sending the wrong quantity.

REPORTS & ANALYTICS

Streamline investigations of inter branch stock transfers

The Inter Branch Transfers Report now shows you the reasons why stock transfers were requested, reducing the overhead involved in investigating why product was transferred to another branch. 

TECHNOLOGY

Identify problematic SQL connections during Infinity upgrades

We’ve improved the messaging you’ll see when there are problems with closing SQL connections during a manual Infinity upgrade. You’ll be able to identify the connection that can’t be closed, the connection’s host, SQL login and SPID, and the program that has executed the connection, allowing you to more easily manage and resolve these issues.

 Refine email generation to prevent customer spam

The way the Infinity Messaging Service handles customer order email generation has been enhanced so that each email type is now separated with its own processor. This means that customer won’t be spammed by multiple duplicate emails after a processor has failed. 

To find out more about any of these enhancements and add them to your Infinity platform, contact us. 

If you’d like to get our regular ‘New in Infinity’ updates in your inbox, sign up to our newsletter.

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:

1

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.

2

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.

3

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.

4

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. 

5

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.  

6

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.  

7

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:

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.

“As a Kiwi owned and operated business, we really pride ourselves on supporting local businesses and communities. The Triquestra team’s responsiveness and flexibility gave us the confidence that we’ll get the swift, on-the-ground support and reliability we need.”

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: 

New in Infinity – August 2024

Here’s new functionality across the Infinity platform that will help you and your team unify physical and digital channels to provide the convenience, speed and variety customers now demand. 

Infinity is a modular platform and you may need additional components or licencing to access some functionality.  

INFINITY API

Expand purchasing options using Products API 

The Products API now lets you retrieve information relating to alternate suppliers. This is useful if you ordinarily buy a product from one supplier but there are alternatives. So, for example, if you are a convenience retailer who ordinarily purchases Coke 355ml cans from Coca-Cola, you can use this new functionality to purchase them from a local supermarket or wholesale distributor.  

Filter product search results by purchasing rules 

The Products Search API now lets you restrict the scope of your search based on the product's purchasing rules, ensuring that products that should not be purchased are not returned in search results. 

INVENTORY

Streamline reporting and ordering with custom item searching 

You can now use additional custom fields to search for items, meaning you can search the inventory using criteria that make the most sense for your business and allowing you to better target item searching. Taking full advantage of this change will reduce the need for more complex reporting and allow you to make more informed stock ordering decisions.  

Protect profits with enhanced PO receipting details 

We’ve enhanced the information you see when receipting purchase orders by optionally adding the target gross profit margin (TGPM) and the current gross profit margin (CGPM) to the receipting screen. Having these details front and centre allows you to make timely updates to retail pricing and to protect against an unexpected reduction in profit.   

Manage refunds efficiently by restricting open department returns 

If you use Infinity’s extended returns function, you can now optionally block the return of open department items. This means you won’t have to accept the return of products that you can’t easily on-sell to other customers. It’s also useful if you manage the refunds for those items outside Infinity, such as direct from supplier. 

ORDER MANAGEMENT

Expand printing options for Pacific region’s TaxCore documents 

Businesses in the Pacific that use Infinity’s TaxCore registration module now have more flexibility in choosing how to print relevant documents. The latest enhancement allows you to print traditional order and quote documents to A4, while still using a thermal printer for all other documentation.  

CUSTOMERS & LOYALTY

Speed up sales transaction reviews with customer names displayed 

We’ve streamlined how you can use the Sales and Credits function to monitor customer transactions by adding customers’ first and last names to the information displayed. This saves you having to manually search by customer code if you want to identify the person involved in a transaction, improving the time it takes to investigate a range of sales activity.  

Customise CPL discounts at branch and sale levels 

Fuel businesses with cents-per-litre (CPL) discounting programmes now have even more flexibility in shaping the offerings. You can allow customers to redeem their discount even if a transaction is below the minimum spend. You can also operate save and spend options on a branch-by-branch basis, so that one branch might allow customers to save or spend their discounts, while another might allow them to spend and not save.   

Additionally, you can choose to discount only the first fuel line in the sale up to the maximum volume regardless how many fuel lines are in the sale, or to discount all fuel lines in the sale up to the maximum volume. Where multiple lines are discounted, the discounts are applied based on the line volume in the order they are added to the sale. 

PRICING & PROMOTIONS

Quickly calculate profits for single product promotions 

If you use rules based pricing to run single product promotions, you can now quickly and easily identify an item’s gross profit based on those promotions. Note that this excludes items offered as part of an active multi-product, multi-buy product set, such as buy-two-get-one-free.  

POINT OF SALE

IStreamline cash handling with recycler dispensing capability 

Businesses that use Infinity’s cash recycler integration can now dispense notes and/or coins from the cash recycler machine, further streamlining your cash-handling tasks and giving you the ability to use the recycler in the same way as a cash drawer for things such as petty cash.   

Accelerate item searches for faster sales 

If you use our advanced item search function with a large number of items and pricing rules, you’ll find we’ve enhanced the speed at which search results are returned, allowing you to complete sales more quickly and offer a more seamless customer experience.    

Provide unique customer booking numbers with agency module 

If your business sells products on behalf of a principal, you can now use Infinity’s agency module to provide a compact, unique and incrementing booking number to customers.

TECHNOLOGY

Improve resilience of Infinity environment with new endpoint additions 

Two new health endpoints have been added to the Infinity API suite to enable you to monitor issues. Calling the Orchestration Service endpoint gives you detailed information of any issues with the API services running on the API server, while calling the Sync Service endpoint allows you to get the status of the service and the underlying processors to assist with monitoring the Infinity environment.  

Simplify back office rebuilds using new command line tool 

A new command line tool lets your ICE trained engineers resolve table linking issues following a Back Office rebuild without having to do a re-synchronisation of each POS terminal. Contact us to find out more about the minimum requirements you need to have installed in order to use this tool.  

Streamline web pricing service with automated DLL Loading 

The Web Pricing Service upgrade has been streamlined by automatically loading the latest DLL that matches the installed Core major database version. This removes the need for manual intervention in renaming the latest DLL and reduces the risk of failure if this step is missed.    

Support extended email address lengths 

Infinity Messaging now supports email address lengths that comply with RFC1035.

To find out more about any of these enhancements and add them to your Infinity platform, contact us. 

If you’d like to get our regular ‘New in Infinity’ updates in your inbox, sign up to our newsletter.

The perfect blend: Four capabilities to look for in a liquor retail tech partner

Can your liquor retail business keep up with customer demand for new digital experiences?

Brick-and-mortar sales still dominate the liquor retail sector, with online sales languishing at single-digit percentages of total sales.

However, the move to online is real, with liquor online sales globally estimated to grow 4.5% between 2022 and 2027, reaching nearly US$40 billion by 2027.

This growth in online sales is introducing more complexity into the business, with channels becoming less physical and more digital. And that’s why everyone’s focussed on finding the right systems to rebuild their businesses from the bottom up for omnichannel 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, 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.

So, how do you evaluate a new retail platform provider?

There are four important capabilities they will need to provide:

1.    Expertise across all retail, not just liquor

You’ll want a mature retail platform that supports liquor and convenience, rather than a narrow, liquor-specific POS system.

A partner with experience in highly competitive retail industries - like fashion and big-box retail - will have expertise in disrupting the customer experience, with APIs and a retail ecosystem few can match.

They’ll bring best practice ideas and capabilities from other retail sectors - not just liquor retail - and have POS omnichannel expertise distilled into all the essential modules you need to deliver seamless and differentiating experiences in stores, online and on mobile apps.

And with all the core liquor features you need out-of-the-box - plus localised functionality and the ability to customise – you’ll achieve a faster return on investment.

2.    Real-world customer experience

A strong track record and referenceable customer base means less risk.

You’ll want a partner with recent and proven success in liquor and convenience retail, with a track record of complex, large-scale deployments across multiple stores, multiple formats and multiple geographies.  

They’ll need to understand your environment where fast service is non-negotiable, staff require specialist knowledge and transaction volumes are highly variable. Make sure they have people who can help you plan and implement your projects, so that they deliver now and well into the future.

Their experience in the liquor sector will give them a deep understanding of the trends changing mobility and convenience, and bring you the best of consumer, retail and CX applications and technologies.

3.    Broad product capability and innovation mindset

Choose a partner that can give you a holistic portfolio and expansive retail ecosystem.

Offering a unified customer experience means unifying all the front- and back-end systems that run POS, inventory, ordering, customers and loyalty, pricing and promotions, analytics and fulfilment. You don’t want to be tied to a point player that can only provide segments.

When you choose a partner with a mature platform, they can focus on delivering innovation because the critical functionality you need already exists.

An open architecture and APIs will let you cultivate a modern retail and CX ecosystem that reduces risk and increases flexibility.

And with agile methodologies plus experience working with agile retailers, they’ll have the ability to move to fast and change direction as opportunities develop, competitors act and customer needs evolve.

4.    Local and committed to your success

A local partner means you can have more influence on the product roadmap and expect faster turnaround.

Liquor retailers are creating distinctive omnichannel customer experiences by developing strong brands, offering tailored convenience, expanding the breadth of their product offerings (or moving into specialist categories) and generating new revenue streams.

They recognise the risk that comes with global vendors that have a narrow focus on liquor POS or 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.

Want help to deliver a personalised, fast and seamless CX?

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 to deliver every customer a personalised, fast and seamless experience, download our ebook:

6 omnichannel retail painpoints unified commerce solves

With rising customer expectations for a cohesive and consistent shopping experience, many retailers have hit a wall because their omnichannel efforts can’t meet today’s retail demands. Here Kelly Brown describes six major challenges you will face in omnichannel retail, and how to solve them.

Customers today are delightfully unreasonable, and 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. 

Retailers are responding by building a customer-centric approach to retail, using technology and experiences to enhance the brand, drive sales and grow loyalty.  

However, it’s complicated.  

Many omnichannel retail solutions can look smooth on the surface but have rough patches underneath. They include legacy solutions that are no longer fit for purpose, and channels operating in functional silos. Things can easily unravel.  

And when 75% of retailers are unable to connect their online and in-store transaction data, most struggle to create a unified user experience that traverses easily between online and offline channels.  

If you’re looking at how to keep pace with changing customer expectations, here are the most common challenges retailers face as they build their omnichannel systems, and how they can be remedied with a unified commerce approach. 

1

Inventory that isn’t real time

Managing inventory is a retailer’s biggest challenge — no matter their size. It’s also the biggest cost. Many retailers launched digital commerce channels without getting their inventory right and can only access rudimentary sales and inventory positions. That prevents them from offering the ‘buy anywhere, fulfil anywhere’ options that are best for customers and most profitable for them.  

The solution: Optimise inventory and availability  

One of the most compelling benefits of unified commerce is a single view of stock across all stores and DCs. This means you can quickly see where inventory is and therefore the fastest place to fulfil from. You’ll improve inventory accuracy, reduce stock requirements, minimise fulfilment costs and get products to customers faster. And you’ll increase sales by using ranging and fulfilment capabilities that enable you to sell products across channels (and even sell products not normally stocked within any channels).  

2

Blending physical and digital experiences 

Services such as click-and-collect, ship-from-store, find-in-store and returns anywhere are all just table stakes today. Many retailers implemented quick-fixes to swiftly get new capabilities up-and-running, but now need a long-term unified solution to connect backend systems and deliver the omnichannel experiences customers expect. 

The solution: Create relevant and agile experiences 

With a unified inventory you can increase your purchasing, ordering and fulfilment options to provide customers with frictionless experiences and access to your entire range from any location. A single platform gives everyone across channels and stores the ability to view all customer touchpoints in real time. And you can extend your range across more sales channels such as in-store kiosks, shoppable screens, pop-up stores, concessions and mobile devices. 

3

Obtaining a single view of the customer  

Today consumers don’t think in terms of channels. They now expect a “one-brand” experience that lets them shop at any time, using any channel, from any device, at the best price. But if you’ve got siloed backend systems and processes that mean your customers must deal with inconsistencies and gaps, you simply cannot offer a seamless customer experience.  

The solution: Personalise your customer experience  

The ability to see each customer’s shopping preferences and purchase history across all channels is critical for building personalised shopping experiences. With a unified commerce platform providing 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, you can ensure customers return, again and again. 

4

Integrating data silos

Retailers use multiple customer-facing and back-office systems, spanning POS, mobile apps, inventory management, ecommerce, CRM, fulfilment, finance, marketing and more. Often loosely connected with manual processes and custom integrations, these omnichannel solutions are fragile, inefficient and costly to maintain. 

The solution: Lower cost of ownership 

A single commerce platform gives you a leaner and more flexible architecture that reduces the need for reconciliation and manual processes to maintain and manage data and functions, and there is only one system to secure. Exposing data and functions (rather than moving and replicating them) makes integration faster and standards-based, improving efficiency, decreasing errors and increasing accuracy. 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.  

5

Adding modern technologies and capabilities  

To keep pace with consumer demands for omnichannel services, retailers need to create and deploy new apps, services and channels. However, connecting legacy systems with modern technologies requires custom integrations, and creating new brand experiences is complex, costly, time consuming and risky.  

The solution: Accelerate speed to market  

With a single platform, 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 and easily move the successful experiments into enterprise-wide operations. These improvements in IT efficiency and flexibility let you launch new tools and services to meet business demands and start seeing revenue benefits faster. 

6

Unifying employee experiences 

After years of underinvestment, many retailers are playing catch-up with the employee experience. Their stores often lack the tools and systems that enable their people to deliver the relevant and personalised customer experiences that match online shopping’s price, speed and convenience.  

The solution: 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. You’ll enhance customer interactions, improve the employee experience and increase conversions.  

This blog was originally published on 13 December 2022 and updated 20 May 2024

Can you keep up with your customers’ expectations? 

Retailers are unifying their backend systems to create the seamless and convenient experiences customers now expect. If you’re experiencing technology challenges that prevent you from unifying your physical and digital experiences, get in touch. We’d love to help you develop the ability to create a compelling in-store experience harmonised with a digital offering for competitive advantage.

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:

New in Infinity – April 2024

Here’s new functionality across the Infinity platform that will help you and your team reduce operational complexity and create a differentiated omnichannel customer experience.

Infinity is a modular platform and you may need additional components or licencing to access some functionality.  

PRODUCT INFORMATION MANAGEMENT

Simplify item data updates to Wedderburn Scales at POS

Businesses using supported Wedderburn scales at the Point of Sale can now send updated item data to the scales via the Atria Wedge software automatically using Windows Task Scheduler, saving you the time and effort involved in updating pricing and other data manually. If you run the Wedderburn integration at the Head Office, price updates made using the Batch Updates function will also be sent to the scales.

INVENTORY

Enhance efficiency of EDI purchase orders

We’ve improved purchase ordering using EDI files by allowing you to identify suppliers that can be sent purchase orders plus items that can be ordered using this method, so you won’t waste time and risk stock shortages by sending EDI orders to the wrong supplier or by ordering products not on EDI.

ORDER MANAGEMENT

Streamline order documents for debtor customer accounts

You now have the option of customising your A4 customer order documents by suppressing the payment section. This feature reduces visual clutter on the documents when you process orders for debtor customers who pay on account.

CUSTOMERS & LOYALTY

Meet privacy law obligations by anonymising inactive customer data

As part of our programme of giving you options for managing your Personal Identifiable Information (PII) risk, we’ve developed a Windows service that anonymises information for inactive loyalty customers. The Infinity Loyalty Anonymisation Service allows you to anonymise inactive customers’ personal details held in the Loyalty database, as well as details of their order deliveries. It will also delete any messages that were sent to inactive loyalty customers using Infinity Messaging.

Simplify management of fuel discount programmes

If your fuel business operates a cents-per-litre discount (CPL) programme, you can now require that customers spend their CPL balance when they buy fuel, instead of allowing them to choose whether to save or spend it. You can also set a minimum amount a customer has to spend before the CPL discount applies. This simplified offering has the advantage of lowering the overhead involved in managing stored balances while still giving your customers the benefit of fuel savings.

Reduce fuel sales leakage with secure refund options

Fuel businesses wanting to support their commercial customers in reducing fuel sales leakages can now require that refunds be made to a credit card or fuel card instead of to cash or another media. Note that this feature requires the Vault payment and extended returns modules in order to work.

Improve auditing of manual fuel discounting

Your Head Office staff can now add a note when manually adjusting a cent-per-litre fuel balance, allowing you to view and audit the reasons why balances are being adjusted in your business.

POINT OF SALE

Improve customer experience with faster age validation checks

If you use Infinity’s advanced age check function to make sure you’re complying with legal age requirements when serving customers, you’ll find we’ve made age validation quicker and easier, improving the customer experience and speeding up sales processing at busy times.

Improve permissions for manual fuel price changes at POS

We’ve made some enhancements to the way fuel price changes can be made at the Point of Sale to minimise the chance of the wrong price being applied. You can now use permissions to determine who can make manual price changes, and you can set a maximum amount in cents by which a fuel grade can be manually adjusted.

REPORTS & ANALYTICS

Identify irregularities in fuel prepay sales and refunds

Fuel businesses can use the new Fuel Prepay Refund Report to spot irregularities in the payment medias used in prepay sales and refunds. So, for example, you can see if a prepay fuel card was used to purchase fuel but the refund was processed as cash. It complements the new functionality that requires refunds to be made to credit or fuel cards (see above), but it applies only to prepay sales made using those cards.

Improve financial compensation for stores running fuel discounts

The CPL Redemptions Report gives your stores and head office staff an understanding of cents-per-litre discounts that have been paid out as a way of supporting financial processes tied to discounts and financial compensation. Stores can use it to see what they have paid out in CPL discounts, while head office can use it to audit store activity, and make sure that stores are being adequately compensated for those payouts.

MOBILE

Infinity quotes and orders app

The Infinity Quotes and Orders mobile app (iOS and Android) has been retired from the product suite as at end of May, 2024. 

To find out more about any of these enhancements and add them to your Infinity platform, contact us. 

If you’d like to get our regular ‘New in Infinity’ updates in your inbox, sign up to our newsletter.

Real-time inventory, stores and loyalty: Where retailers are investing in 2024 

Do you have a plan for technologies to invest in this year? And do you know where to focus your IT budget for maximum ROI? 

In our recent blogs, we asked if retailers were spending enough on their IT and, if not, how to make the case for increasing spend. 

If you’ve successfully navigated these stages to secure new budget and are now wondering where to start, here we look at retailers’ top spending goals for 2024 and the building blocks they’ve prioritised for maximum returns. 

We know that retailers are increasing their investments in new tech this year, with research showing that virtually all retail execs – an incredible 99% - predict increased spend. The growth in spend is sizable, with a 10% increase on average and nearly a quarter (23%) predicting 15% or more. 

When asked about their goals for their spend, most retailers (94%) ranked new technology as a significant driver for drawing in new customers, with 35% citing it as their main driver.  

And while ROI has always been important, these new tech investments are being held to an even higher standard. Enterprises now rank the ability to receive ROI within 6 months their second highest consideration (after ease of implementation). 

The metrics they’re using this year to gauge their success 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.  

So we know that retailers are significantly increasing tech investments this year to create fresh, value-added customer experiences, but where are they focusing?  

There are three investment priorities in 2024: 

1. End-to-end inventory transparency 

Inventory visibility has always been important in retail. But with the proliferation of touchpoints and channels – both online and in-store – retailers now need to see a real-time view of all their inventory, right now.  

Without an accurate view of inventory, retailers are virtually guaranteed to interrupt the flow of an omnichannel shopping journey. If you don’t know the quantity of an item, where it is located, its current price nor status, you can’t offer the ‘buy anywhere, fulfil anywhere’ options that are best for customers and most profitable for you.   

With the average retail inventory accuracy at only 63%, that can mean problems with a whopping 2 in 5 orders. And as the customer journey continues to evolve to meet changing consumer demands, providing a seamless omnichannel experience will only get more difficult.  

The solution: Real-time inventory 

A unified commerce platform gives you a single, accurate and up-to-date view of all your inventory so you can be sure that you have the right product at the right place at the right time. 

That means you can quickly see where inventory is and make better decisions about what stock to order and how to make it available in your physical, mobile, online stores, DCs and call centres.   

You’ll improve inventory accuracy, reduce stock requirements, minimise fulfilment costs and get products to customers faster. And you’ll increase sales by using ranging and fulfilment capabilities that enable you to sell products across channels (and even sell products not normally stocked within any channels).   

2. Unleashing omnichannel experiences through stores 

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 while the shift towards online retail is real, physical retail is going to continue to grow at 4% year on year.   

But 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.  

The solution: Point of sale  

As you transform your stores to be the centre of your omnichannel experience, your retail systems must transform as well. POS systems are now the anchor for unified commerce platforms that unify online and store experiences with back-end systems so you can create holistic experiences across all customer touchpoints.   

That lets you create the elevated experiences customers now crave, by bringing digital convenience to stores, fulfilling orders via stores to increase profitability and delivering personalised and tactile in-store experiences.    

Unified commerce is now retail’s top priority, with 88% of retailers investing in unified commerce or considering doing so to make their businesses stronger, smarter and ready for the future. Retailers who used unified commerce in 2022 saw a 7% revenue boost over those who did not.    

3. Attracting, scaling and earning more from loyal customers 

As inflation and cost-of-living increases put pressure on consumer spending, shoppers are becoming more discerning and deliberate, rapidly switching between brands in the search for bargains. That’s why customer retention has become an important strategy for retailers wanting to capture market share and maximise profits. Retaining customers costs less than acquiring new ones - customer acquisition costs have increased a whopping 222% in the past decade - and returning customers are more likely to spend than new customers.  

As more customers opt out of being tracked, retailers also need a compelling reason for consumers to be willing to identify themselves when they approach from different channels or touchpoints.  

On average, nearly two-thirds of US consumers belong to one-to-five loyalty programmes. However, most consumers use 50% or less of their memberships. So the challenge for retailers is developing engaging programmes that convert members into users and, in turn, create profitable loyalty.   

The solution: Loyalty 

With customer details captured and stored in single unified commerce hub, you can recognise customers consistently, wherever they shop with you. You’ll know which customers are most profitable and what their preferences are. Your store teams can view this information to offer personalised service and encourage conversion at point of sale. 

Looking ahead, large retailers are learning to drive customer loyalty and growth by pooling data within an ecosystem of brands. Multiple companies are tapping into their complementary product and service offerings to develop a joint loyalty programme around a unifying customer value proposition.  

Consumers will receive heightened experiential benefits in addition to faster loyalty rewards growth, more flexible redemptions and an unmatched simplicity and daily relevance. Retailers and brands will see a rise in reach and frequency of usage. They will gain access to richer, more privileged consumer data, shared infrastructure and cross-marketing opportunities.   

Want help to decide which tech innovation projects to tackle first? 

We can advise you on the key technology investments driving growth and customer loyalty this year. 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 needs, download our ebook: