Power your retail innovation strategy with APIs

Connecting channels and personalising the shopping experience is vital to meeting consumers’ rising expectations. One major advantage of using a unified commerce platform as your retail management system (RMS), is its open architecture that lets you easily make those connections with APIs.

APIs (Application Programming Interfaces) are present in every part of our digital world. Every time you use an app like LinkedIn, make a Skype call or listen to Spotify on your phone, there’s an API in action.

APIs let you add specialised functionality to a website, application, platform or software without having to write all of the back-end code. By using APIs, you can connect tools and expose data in real time, rather than having to replicate or move it. The result is one set of functions that’s available across various systems, plus an easy way to plug in and deploy new services, channels and devices. 

These improvements let you shift your team’s priority from maintenance to innovation. By using APIs to access existing solutions in the market, 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.

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APIs in action

Here are just some of the ways APIs help you optimise operations and personalise customer experiences:

Retail anywhere, any time

APIs let you easily expose your product catalogues and other eCommerce solutions to give customers many more ways to engage with your brand, including social commerce.

Deliver anywhere, any how

Shipping and delivery APIs let you integrate third party services to automate everything from the sale through to the parcel being delivered to your customer’s address of choice. Think fulfilment options like click-and-collect, store-to-door and drop shipping.

Payment convenience counts

Give consumers the payment options and ‘buy-now, pay later’ services they want. Infinity was the first in the world to integrate with Afterpay at point of sale and supports Adyen, Smartpay, Laybuy, Alipay, WeChat Pay, and Slyp to name a few payment partners.

Voice and visual to boost personalisation

Visual search APIs help customers quickly find the products they want – like Cue Clothing’s Style Finder mobile app. And you can consider using Siri, Alexa and Google Assistant APIs to further tailor the shopping experience and boosts sales.

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So how do you start making the most of APIs?

Begin by evaluating your company’s value chain. Can you easily integrate and use APIs to access third-party platforms and services to scale your business? Or can you release your own APIs to attract partners and build out your platform? The two options are not mutually exclusive. 

An API-enabled platform like Infinity lets you scale your business quickly by easily adding new apps and services as business requirements change.

We can also help if you’re looking for advice on how to create a strategy and implement an API programme that quickly creates customer and business value.

The end result is the ability to create extraordinary customer experiences that help to capture market opportunities, generate additional revenue and build brand advocacy.

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Find out more about Infinity APIs and our integration partners. Then contact us for advice on how to use APIs to achieve greater agility, faster growth and better margins.

Turning retail experience ideas into reality: meet our new Consulting Lead

Neshma Emile has recently been promoted to Consulting Lead. She’ll be helping more Triquestra clients use the Infinity platform to transform customer experiences. 

Before joining Triquestra, Neshma had ERP implementation roles at construction and building products companies. As a Business Analyst, it was her job to help her clients convert ideas into tangible realities. As Consulting Lead, she’ll be supporting the consulting team to do the same.

“As BA, I was responsible for gathering requirements from the customer and turning them into testable, then usable product. Making sure we’re on the same page and delivering in scope and on time. Now, as Consulting Lead, I also help other business analysts do what they do best. Offering a helping hand so they can become better advisors and get the best results for our customers,” says Neshma. 

“The way Infinity can help retailers digitise and innovate today is really great. How we deliver order management, click-and-collect, how we've integrated with Slyp receipts – we're doing everything to keep our clients in tune with what's modern in the market. It’s our goal to give our clients new ways of connecting to their customers through our product and experience,” she says. 

Because Neshma comes from an ERP background, she understands software and process integration and thinks Infinity is an outstanding retail platform. “With Infinity, because it's designed to meet the specific requirements of retail end users, we always hit the nail on the head. Infinity always gives customers what they need because it's such a mature and stable unified commerce platform. People can innovate off of it really quickly and know that it won't break other systems or processes.”

In regards to innovation, she gives examples like Cue Clothing’s click-and-collect and Z Energy’s Pumped and Sharetank. “For Sharetank, we had Infinity working as it needed to for fuel POS. Then we enhanced the platform and the APIs which are used by the Z app to let consumers find the lowest priced fuel in a 30k radius, prepay for that fuel and then share it with others. And for the Pumped loyalty programme, we proved how stable Infinity is to manage 250 sales transactions per minute.” 

Neshma thinks Triquestra is a good company because of the digital transformations she works on and the company’s culture. She explains, “We’re great at prioritising and we're great at communicating with customers. Our solution and business architects will go in and partner with the client to make sure that the solution is well thought out. 

“We work in a high pressure environment and you'd think you'd have people really anxious and angry but we're not! We're really happy. Even if someone’s role isn’t customer facing, everyone is always looking out for our clients’ best interest and doing what they can to make sure those clients are happy. 

“You’re also really given the opportunity to learn, grow and push yourself every day. I’m young and I don’t have to compensate for that. They hired me because of my skills and work ethic and that’s what they reward me for.” 

Neshma and everyone at Triquestra is very conscious of what retail means today. “While online shopping has definitely changed the landscape, people haven’t stopped going to the shops. It’s the experience the shopper has, whether they’re online or instore, that makes one retailer more successful than another these days.”

Scott Bishop on building a customer-focused innovation culture at Z Energy

This story was originally published on 21 January 2020 and updated in May 2021

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One of the biggest challenges retailers face is a lack of an innovation culture. They know they need to keep pace with new technologies and changing consumer demands, but are unsure about how to embed innovation and make it an ongoing process.

Back in early 2020, I spoke with Scott Bishop, then the Chief Innovation Officer at our fuel retailer client, Z Energy, for his insights on how to explore, identify and build inspiring customer experiences. At that time, Scott led Z’s Innovation Refinery which has produced many new experiences for customers, including two world firsts in only two years – Fastlane and Sharetank.

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You have an impressive background leading innovation efforts at Amazon, Air New Zealand and now Z Energy. What is the Innovation Refinery and why was it set up?   

SB: The Innovation Refinery team is our catalyst for innovation at Z Energy. We’re a small team of designers, researchers, creatives and builders tasked with identifying customer pain points from across the business, building solutions and iterating with our customers.   

The Refinery is also our creativity space. It’s a physical area in our Auckland office accessible to everyone at Z and has five distinct zones that provide the space necessary to inspire, create and involve customers in our ongoing customer experience experiments.

We set it up because we're at a crossroads within our industry and believe demand will slowly fall over the next 20 years. This fall in consumption is driven by a number of trends, including New Zealand's commitment to a carbon-free future and new choices being made by consumers, such as the move to fuel-efficient cars and electric vehicles.

We don't want to wait for that to happen. Our goal is to be a long-term, sustainable Kiwi company. So participating in a declining market doesn't fit that definition of long-term and sustainable.

We also realise that we're no smarter than anyone else and it will take us a while to figure out how we can get out of transport fuels. And so we're going to start now and experiment our way to the future.

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What are your goals for the Refinery and how does it support Z’s transformation?

SB: We have two main roles at Z: coach and build.

We spend around 50% of our time coaching and mentoring across the company because we believe innovation isn’t just done by one team, it should be done by everyone. We help to accelerate new products and services, as well as process and productivity enhancements by showing and encouraging people towards new ways of working. 

The other half of our time is spent building next generation products and services. They can be internal, external and even small things, like innovating a process or even a spreadsheet. It also includes supporting our key investments including electric company Flick and transport company Mevo. 

These new products and services also help us demonstrate this new way of working. Having artefacts, stories and actual products and services we can point to helps reinforce the ongoing coaching and mentoring we do.

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Why is a dedicated physical space for innovation so important?

SB: Creativity requires space. And creativity also requires movement. 

If you think about a traditional corporate environment, every time you finish a session you have to clear the meeting room and all that momentum and all those ideas are lost. It just kills the process.

And it’s scientifically proven that your brain changes with movement and you unlock more creativity. 

So we have a dedicated area designed with space for movement and space for people to keep artefacts up and return to over the weeks or months they work on a concept or idea.

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What are some examples of innovation projects you’ve led?

SB: We take a portfolio approach to our investigations. We've got five different time horizons, or categories, that our innovation projects fall into: Fix, accelerate, incubate, investigate and challenge.

Two of the most recent acceleration projects we’ve launched are Fastlane and Sharetank – both we believe to be world firsts in our industry. 

Fastlane lets our customers buy petrol using their number plate. They never need to touch their phone, wallet or credit card. Our computer vision technology uses our existing on-site cameras combined with payment technology to allow customers to simply arrive, fill up and leave as quickly as possible.

We launched Fastlane in 2017 with nine trial sites, and now we've got 42 across Auckland and are expanding to other major metros across Aotearoa. We’re also experimenting at four sites with pay-by-plate across all lanes to determine the best customer experience.

Sharetank, a virtual fuel tank for New Zealanders to pre-purchase fuel, is another first. Launched last October with our partners Triquestra, Rush Digital and Invenco, customers can now prepay for fuel when the price is right for them. This fuel is stored in their virtual tank that they can access any time they like and even share with up to five friends and family.

We believe it is a competitive differentiator and there is intellectual property in this so we have applied for patent protection in New Zealand and the US. If the patents are granted, then we’re able to license the patent to other companies and generate incremental revenue for Z.

Both projects aren’t ‘done’. They’re in market and we’re getting customer feedback to help us keep enhancing them.

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You mentioned that Z is looking for new markets beyond fossil fuels. What are some of your projects in this space?

SB: Our future market projects are all in the ‘investigate’ and ‘challenge’ portfolio categories and focus on three areas: Future fuels, mobility and last mile services.

Future fuels include bio-diesel, electricity and hydrogen. Mobility is about the electrification of existing and new transport options. And last mile is all about how we use our proximity to customers as an asset. With our nationwide network of over 350 Z and Caltex sites, 82% of New Zealand’s population lives within five kilometres of one of our locations.

Last mile is about leveraging the proximity to our customers. It may have nothing to do with selling fuel, such as click-and-collect hubs, co-working facilities and micro-warehousing. Courier companies are very inefficient, with vans making multiple trips each day from warehouses or airports to deliver items in CBDs or communities. It’s not efficient from a time perspective, not good from a carbon perspective and not economical from a fuel cost perspective. So we could potentially provide 350 micro-warehouses in every community across the country.

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How do you generate your ideas? 

SB: All of the ideas already exist in the business or in our conversations with customers so my team doesn't need any domain experience. We're just about identifying, prioritising and accelerating them.

Each of our three core lines of business – commercial, retail and supply – has a strategy lead. We stay connected to them as the subject matter experts in the business and they feed ideas from their sets of customers into the process.

In addition, we do a significant amount of research on consumer trends. How are consumers changing, how is technology changing, how are attitudes and behaviours changing? We then figure out if those changes are relevant to our business. 

Thirdly, we keep a finger on the pulse of our customers and employees, partners and retailers. Anyone can submit an idea into the process to be prioritised.

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With so many great ideas from so many sources, how do you prioritise them?

SB: We do an ongoing analysis of all these opportunities using three core criteria: Economic value, strategic value and customer experience value. 

So, for example, one idea might have a significant amount of strategic value. It could be good to help build our brand or support one of our core businesses or, for example, leap-frog our competition. So it might be selected even if it doesn’t have any economic value.

It’s a very different approach to most corporates where you just take the economic numbers, stack and rank, then take the top three and go after them. It’s about focus on lifetime value of customers, not near-term business performance.

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What’s your advice for retailers wanting to embed innovation in their business? 

SB: There's nothing really ‘new’ in anything that we’ve created, even from an ideas perspective. We focus on our own interpretation of Design Thinking, Lean, and Agile. It’s really just about three things: Customer centricity, experimentation and iteration. 

Having said that, there's no company that we're aware of that does it quite like we do. We’ve taken the best of what we’ve seen that's most applicable to Z and created something that is unique for us.

A lot of innovation labs are semi-independent. They hire or free up people to work in a decentralised operation and only integrate them back into the business once the idea is fully executed. 

Whether it’s internal or external is a philosophical question and there’s no right or wrong model. I'm personally not keen on the external model because of the difficulties it creates bringing it back in, with many ventures having a lack of accountability, ownership and clear transition paths. 

We believe in a centralised model. You've got to solve the challenges of internal antibodies or process problems that stifle or kill off ideas. That's why we spend 50 percent of our time actually working alongside the business, not just building new products and services.

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Want to find out how Infinity can provide you with a platform for faster experimentation and iteration of new customer experiences? Contact Victoria Crossfield at victoria.crossfield@triquestra.com

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More Infinity innovation stories 

How a unified commerce platform solves retail inventory problems

To provide the purchasing and fulfilment options you need for seamless experiences that delight customers and minimise costs, consider a unified commerce approach to get tight control of your inventory within your retail management system (RMS). 

Managing inventory is a retailer’s biggest challenge – no matter their size. It’s also the biggest cost. It’s a balancing act to strike the right stock levels and easily adjust those levels as your business changes. Understocks lead to missed sales and dissatisfied customers, and overstocks tie up your capital and result in markdowns that can hurt your margins. And in our on-demand world, customers expect access to products wherever and whenever they want.

But many retailers struggle with some of the fundamentals of inventory control, such as stock taking, demand forecasting, planning and receipting. Others launch self-serve channels that 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.

Unify your inventory 

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

With unified inventory management across all locations, you can make better decisions about what stock to order and how to distribute it amongst your warehouses, call centres, and physical, mobile and online stores. 

You can react to trends quickly, and forecast demand based on historical data, sales forecasts and seasonal variations. And with the platform’s open architecture and APIs, you’re free to add new features, channels, apps and services that will increase customer satisfaction and benefit your business in many ways:

• Increase sales with ‘endless aisle’ capabilities that let you sell products stocked in any location and have them delivered direct or collected by the customer

• Reduce inventory costs by moving stock to the right location when it’s needed and cutting your overall stock requirements

• Offer more purchasing and fulfilment options to customers so they can locate items in-store, buy online, collect in-store, reserve online, receive the same day or at a time and location of their choice

• Optimise your product range by matching stock to each store’s location, community and demographics while still giving access to your complete range via endless aisle 

• Extend your range across more sales channels such as in-store kiosks, shoppable screens, pop-up stores, concessions and mobile devices

• Lower fulfilment costs by delivering direct to the customer using store-to-door, warehouse-to-door, click-and-collect or optimised sourcing.

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Retailers reaping inventory benefits with the Infinity unified commerce platform

Cue delivers anywhere, anyhow

With a ‘buy anywhere, fulfil anywhere’ strategy and Infinity’s centralised hub providing the inventory and fulfilment smarts, Cue Clothing is using its 240+ stores across Australasia to take on online giants like Amazon and changing the way customers shop.

Night ‘n Day gets tight control of inventory

By simplifying inventory management with Infinity, convenience grocery retailer Night ‘n Day is cutting costs, freeing up time and increasing net profit to around $12,000 per store each year.

T2 Tea unifies experiences

In 2019, T2 Tea chose Triquestra to modernise its retail system. Infinity will provide a central hub for T2’s inventory, point-of-sale and customer loyalty across its concession, wholesale, marketplace and ecommerce business, plus a growing global footprint of over 100 stores.

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To see the difference that an accurate and single view of inventory can make to your business, contact us.

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For more on unified commerce and why it’s the future of retail, download this free ebook. 

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What’s the difference between unified commerce and omnichannel?

There are many terms to describe retail management systems these days. And while they are used interchangeably, there is a difference between ‘omnichannel’ and ‘unified commerce’. Unified commerce is the next progression of what’s come before and simplifies the technology you need to give customers a consistent omnichannel shopping experience.

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Omnichannel offers options, and limitations 

With an omnichannel approach, you give customers the ability to shop in-store, online, via your app, over the phone, etc. 

But there’s a good chance these systems rely on out-of-date information and old or closed integration technology. Which means you might be connecting new channels to systems that aren’t updated in real time. And you could be duplicating data and finding that interoperability with each new technology is difficult, expensive and slow. 

As a result, many seemingly omnichannel experiences are held together with manual processes and complex integration. You end up with silos across your business which negatively impact your customer because they have to deal with information gaps, fewer fulfilment options, or having to start new conversations in each channel. 

For example, an omnichannel setup might enable data sharing between physical and online stores, but the contact centre is left out. So if a customer has a question about something they like online, they call your contact centre and your rep can’t see the customer’s recent online purchasing history or whether the customer’s nearest store has the item available for collection. 

Internally, staff must duplicate tasks because there’s no single version of data that everyone shares. This day-to-day inefficiency means teams have less time to spend on innovation and giving customers the personalised experiences they expect.

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Unified commerce simplifies consistent customer experience

Natalie Berg of NBK Retail says we no longer ‘go’ shopping, we just ‘are’ shopping. The only way to give consumers this seamlessness is to move beyond omnichannel to unified commerce.

Unified commerce is a platform. It centralises your customer and inventory data for one version of truth and its open architecture (using APIs) exposes that data to all your channels. 

With this single view of your data, you can move stock, update prices, add loyalty program rewards – whatever you like – across all your channels. The data stays in sync and transactions can be viewed in near real time. So customers get a ‘one brand’ experience: one person with one account, interacting with one unified brand. No hitches, no inconsistencies.

From a business perspective, unified commerce resolves issues inherent with traditional channel integration, and offers many more benefits:

• More accurate information for decision making

• Reduced inventory holdings and increased availability

• Optimised supply chain and order management

• More payment and fulfilment options

• Efficient processes and less manual overhead

• Faster innovation and speed to get new products and services to market 

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See how unified commerce solves many more of omnichannel’s limitations and how it can set you up to create the retail future you want. Download Unified Commerce is the Future of Retail now.

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What is unified commerce and why is it so important to retail success?

If you want to be more competitive in today’s retail world, you have to give customers the purchase, payment and fulfilment options they demand across your in-store, online and mobile channels. The best way to expand your offering and improve each customer experience, while lowering costs, is to unify your retail management.

Unified commerce is the term used for a retail software system that connects all your inventory and customer data to all your sales channels. It’s also known as frictionless retail, new retail, headless commerce, digital commerce, boundaryless retail and omnichannel (though we believe unified commerce is the nirvana of omnichannel as we explain in this blog).

According to Gartner, unified commerce is one of the top 10 trends that will impact the future of digital commerce. That’s because it gives consumers consistency across channels and a continuous experience throughout their journey with you.

BRP’s annual POS/Customer Engagement Survey shows that 94% of retailers have indicated that they have or plan to implement a single unified commerce platform within the next three years. And in Australia, there’s a $92 billion opportunity for businesses that are successful in rolling out a strong unified commerce platform. 

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So what exactly is unified commerce?

Unified commerce is a retail management system (RMS) that unifies all your customer and inventory data on one open, centralised commerce platform that exposes one version of truth to all channels. 

Which means that data stays in sync – across websites, apps, stores, call centres, kiosks, concession stores, wearable devices – and transactions can be viewed in near real time. So you can give each customer the best price and experience, whether they shop with you in-store, at home, or out and about.

With all these customer touch points connected, unified commerce lets you deliver holistic and personalised customer experiences more consistently. And treat each customer as the individual they are – one person with one account, interacting with one unified brand.

A unified commerce platform also helps you and your technology partners innovate quickly, reduce integration and operating costs, maximise margin, and deploy new services – efficiently and profitably.

Here’s how unified commerce helps you retail better

Inventory management

When you’ve got a single view of your inventory, you can move it around your business quickly and react to demand changes fast. You’ll find it’s much easier to manage stock to maximise sales opportunities and reduce holding costs.

Order management (OMS)

Because your inventory is optimised and visible across channels, you can offer a range of fulfilment options like click-and-collect, ship-from-store, endless aisle, split shipments – whatever suits your customers best.

Loyalty and customer management

Capture customer details via any channel. Then analyse their purchase and browsing history to show them you know them with communications, rewards and offers that are timely and relevant. In-store teams can see this information as well to offer personalised service and encourage conversion at point of sale.

Pricing and promotions

Pricing is shared across channels so customers can trust that they’ll pay the same price whether they shop with you in-store, online or in the field. And you can try out different promotions and pricing strategies quickly when an offer succeeds or doesn’t do as well as planned.

New product, service and channel innovation 

Using APIs on an open platform, you can connect third-party services and expose data in real time. Helping you build your competitive advantage and create a world of opportunity to give customers new, faster services and personalised interactions.  

No more silos

When everyone is using the same system and seeing the same data, you’ve got better internal collaboration with fewer roadblocks, and customers are happier because they’re getting the frictionless ‘one brand’ experience they want.

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If it’s time to take the next step from omnichannel and consider a unified commerce approach for your retail business, get the ebook, Unified Commerce is the Future of Retail.

It discusses the unified commerce business case, the four stages of transitioning your business to unified commerce and much more.

DOWNLOAD YOUR FREE COPY NOW

Introduce customers to smart, digital receipts with Slyp and Infinity

Attention Australian retailers – Slyp now integrates with Infinity, giving you another option to help customers track their purchases. Slyp partners with banks and retailers to send interactive smart receipts directly to shoppers through their banking app after they make a purchase with a bank or credit card. So you can both say goodbye to paper receipts.

Consumers get itemised purchase and warranty information, and you can even include links to related products in their receipt. You get rich in-store data and can easily set and review marketing campaigns inside receipts. 

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Here’s a closer look at how Slyp works:

1. Slyp and your Infinity POS are seamlessly connected via API.

2. A customer makes a purchase with their bank card.

3. Slyp extracts the purchase data and matches it to bank transactions.

4. Transactions are sent to the customer’s bank app or by SMS text message and displayed as feature rich, intuitive smart receipts. 

5. You view analytics in real-time through your MySlyp dashboard. 

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If you want to go paperless, improve customer experience and have a new way to engage with customers when they’ve left your store, talk to us about Slyp and Infinity today.

New in Infinity – November 2019

Here’s what’s new in Infinity so you can do more to improve the experience you offer your customers. 

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

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INVENTORY MANAGEMENT

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Understand stock levels even better

The stock adjustments report has been enhanced to let you filter by reason, see subtotals by reason, show or hide item details, and sort by SKU or date. These changes will help you understand why stock levels are being adjusted and by how much. So if you’re experiencing stock losses, you can address and limit them quickly.

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ORDER MANAGEMENT

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Order and quote enhancements give your call centre and other teams more pricing and fulfilment flexibility

• Transactions can be repriced using the Cart API so if you have variable pricing across your store network, call centre staff or those in another branch can price items based on where the order will be fulfilled.

• The ‘Pick up from another branch’ screen now includes a saleable column which shows quantity on hand for each available branch less any allocated stock. This is helpful so you don’t commit inventory that’s already been allocated to another order, such as a click-and-collect order that’s still in the store but hasn’t yet been collected.

• Several existing configurations can now have branch-specific settings. That means you can limit functionality to selected branches – for instance if you only want your customer service team to be able to use certain functionality when you’re rolling out a new business process.

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New EDI service lets you automatically send purchase orders to your suppliers

You no longer need to manually email purchase order numbers. With Infinity’s new EDI service  (electronic document interface), your purchase orders can be automatically converted into one of two supported EDI file formats and sent automatically to the supplier by email or FTP.  

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LOYALTY

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Virgin Australia’s Velocity Frequent Flyer programme now integrates with Infinity

If you use Infinity Loyalty, a customer can now associate their Velocity membership details with your Infinity loyalty programme to earn Velocity points that they can then redeem for flights and upgrades, fuel, car hire or hotel stays. It’s a valuable way to extend your loyalty programme.

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The Givex integration has been extended from gift card to loyalty

An enhanced Givex integration service now enables Infinity Loyalty customer data and purchases to be sent to Givex Loyalty for store credit and rewards. 

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Continuous performance improvements

One of Infinity’s key design principles is speed so we’re always making it work faster for you –  especially in regards to loyalty functionality when you want to make transaction and data processing time as quick as possible for your customers. 

Infinity now uses an optional read-only SQL node within an ‘always on availability group’ (AoAG) to enable the use of the secondary node to spread data processing times.

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INFINITY APIS

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Customers can now sign up to your loyalty programme using your external partner services

With the new Loyalty Import API, a customer can use the details from one of your other loyalty partners (like Fly Buys or Air New Zealand Airpoints) to join your loyalty programme.

The customer scans their partner card at the POS and Infinity can automatically validate their details with your partner’s system and then create the customer as a new member of your programme.                

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Let customers prepay for products then use their balances when they want

By using your mobile app and the Infinity Loyalty Prepay API, you can give customers the ability to pre-purchase products and then pay for them with a scan of their phone when they shop with you. 

It’s a great way to help customers buy your products in bulk, buy at a discounted rate, and budget for purchases. You can also share these prepay products with a select group of friends and family if you choose to.

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Attention fuel retailers: Give customers cents per litre discounts through Infinity 

The new Fuel CPL Discount API lets you give customers cents per litre discounts as part of your loyalty programme. You can let customers redeem discounts each time they visit or bank them for future purchases.

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Integrate Infinity with your external CRM for the best of both worlds

An enhancement to the Loyalty API means it now has an ‘external CRM ID’ identifier type.

So if you use a CRM like Salesforce, that system can share a customer’s identifier number with Infinity Loyalty. Then that number can be used by both platforms for two-directional integration. 

Infinity remains responsible for transactional functions like pricing and offers, and your CRM manages your customer segmentation, 360 degree views, journey planning and marketing campaigns. 

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The Infinity API platform now automatically monitors its own health

You’ll have even greater API peace of mind because the Infinity API orchestration service now has a health endpoint. The service will poll the endpoint of each configured API and return an ‘ok’ message for each healthy API, or automatically restart any APIs that are in an unhealthy state. 

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SETTINGS

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Manage passwords at store level

Now instead of going to head office for support, store managers can save time and effort by resetting staff member passwords themselves if they have the appropriate permission.

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

Contextual commerce: Shane Lenton on the next chapter of retail

Contextual commerce is the game changing idea that people can transact the moment they have an urge to buy, instead of forcing them into a traditional purchasing channel. It’s the future of retail with massive opportunities to capture new audiences and incremental transactions.

I spoke with Shane Lenton, CIO at Cue Clothing, to get his thoughts on contextual commerce and advice on how to make the move. Shane is a retail leader who has transformed Cue with innovation and technology to give customers personalised and frictionless experiences across physical, online, mobile, concession and call centre channels.

At Sydney’s 2019 Online Retailer conference, you won over the audience with your assertion that contextual commerce is the next big thing in  retail. What’s your definition of contextual commerce? 

SL: Contextual commerce is the idea that we can seamlessly implement purchase opportunities into everyday activities and natural environments. In other words, customers can buy anything, anytime, anywhere, with the click of a button. Or even just their voice. It’s a purchase made in the moment, with no need to stop what you were already doing.

That means thinking well beyond the boundaries of the traditional physical store and our current digital channels.

It has been talked about for quite a few years now, but few retailers have capitalised on the opportunity. As the technologies that support it have become more available and the social media platforms and messaging apps have evolved, it’s becoming more relevant in the Australasian market and there'll be far greater adoption.

It’s a game changer for retail because it creates new opportunities to create a frictionless experience for the customer and foster loyalty. Retailers that are willing to move early will benefit from higher conversions in new places and increased sales. Those who don’t keep up will be left behind very quickly.

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What’s an example of contextual commerce?   

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SL: Shopping on Instagram is one example that many people will be familiar with. It was a big moment for retail when it was introduced in early 2018. We were one of the first retailers to tag products in organic posts, which customers can then tap on to find out more information and make a purchase.

However, today customers are still required to add items to a cart and transact in the traditional way by logging onto our website to enter payment info and delivery details. With Instagram’s proposed new ‘Checkout on Instagram’ feature (currently in beta with a select group of brands in other markets), shoppers will be able to buy items without leaving the app. They will only need to enter their name, email, payment information and shipping address the first time they check out. 

This ability to allow the consumer to transact in the moment, within the context of the Instagram browsing experience, really hit home with the Online Retailer audience.

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What’s driving the adoption of contextual commerce? 

SL: There are three things triggering its growth. 

One: Consumer behaviour is constantly changing and people's attention spans are shortening. Everyone's busier and we’re being overloaded with content across every part of our lives. People now want to act on their impulses and buy at the time and place of their choice, with as little friction as possible. As the lines between shopping, buying and browsing blur, commerce is happening wherever consumers are and however they wish to interact.

Two: Contextual commerce is going to happen in retail because the social media platforms are going to ‘own’ the customer. Social networks like Facebook and WeChat know what we implicitly want and have the potential to take us from discovery to purchase in a few microseconds on their platforms. This shift to social commerce could be one of the biggest disruptions in retail, and threatens the dominance of Amazon and Google. That also means you're not going to have a direct one-to-one relationship with many of your customers, and you won’t receive insights into their needs and behaviours.

Three: The availability of new technologies that support contextual commerce. These technologies range from smart speakers and messaging apps that can be used to make a purchase by voice command, through to facial recognition such as ‘smile to pay’ and immersive VR and AR platforms with hot spots that customers can click on to purchase items.

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What are the different types of contextual commerce? 

SL: The first is conversational commerce – a way of shopping or purchasing products through chat interfaces that ‘speak’ to people in natural language. This includes the messaging platforms that people already use every day, such as SMS, Facebook Messenger, WhatsApp, Apple Business Chat and WeChat, along with messaging services on your brand’s website or mobile app, like live chat.

Voice commerce is still in its early stages but over 25% of US adults already own a smart speaker that they can use to make purchases by voice command. And smart speakers will soon outnumber tablets, with one study predicting that they will grow by 82 percent, from 114 million units globally in 2018 to 207.9 million in 2019.

Even though smart speaker adoption has been slow in Australasia, the opportunity is massive. An Adyen and 451 Research global study says that while more than half (53 percent) of smart speaker owners have used these devices to shop, only 13 percent of retailers currently enable purchases on them. 

The second big opportunity is ‘click to buy’, which removes the shopping cart form and allows people to purchase with one click. It’s included in digital wallets with ‘buy now’ capabilities using common payment apps such as Apple Pay and Google Pay, and social media platforms where users can purchase within the app itself (and not on the retailer’s website), like shoppable Instagram. 

Today, 44 percent of consumers already use social media to shop, however, only 18 percent of retailers currently enable purchases on social media (according to the Adyen and 451 Research study). And two in five consumers aged 18-24 say the ability to make purchases via social media would increase their online shopping frequency.

The third opportunity centres on the immersive VR and AR platforms that enable consumers to make a purchase from within the virtual experience. The technologies supporting this include search engines that offer reverse image capability such as Google and TinEye, image recognition technology such as Google Lens, and mobile devices with native support for AR and VR.

AR and VR also improve the online and offline shopping experience, from the pre-purchase phase where people are looking for information, through to purchasing in the store or online, and post-sales services where augmented reality can become an ‘immersive’ assistance service for the user. 

Finally, there’s the Internet of Things (IoT), where consumers can shop through connected devices like smart appliances and smart TVs. 

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Have you introduced any other contextual commerce services at Cue?  

SL: While it’s still early days for Instagram shopping, the opportunity is massive. We’ll add the new ‘checkout’ feature when it becomes available.

Instagram reports that over 130 million consumers tap on a shopping post to learn more about products each month, up from 90 million in September 2018.

We’ve led the market with digital wallets and will continue to add new options as they become available. Cue was the first brand globally to launch Afterpay in stores and one of the first online. We were also the first fashion brand to accept mobile payment platforms Alipay and WeChat Pay in stores, and now accept ApplePay online. 

Style Finder is another example of how we are making commerce fast and easy. We worked with Alibaba Cloud to become the first Australasian fashion brand to give customers a visual search tool using images uploaded from their phone.

The uptake and response to all the new options has exceeded expectations. And the customers who use these new services are spending more and shopping more frequently.

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What are the implementation challenges retailers can expect? 

SL: Contextual commerce is all about getting your retail fundamentals right. Make sure your inventory, feeds, connections and data are all in good shape when you're connecting to these upstream platforms. Create a single source of customer data and inventory, and automate as much as possible.

You’ll need to use APIs to expose data and functions and easily plug in and deploy new services, channels and devices. That will let you implement the new payment options and capabilities as soon as they become available.

And you always have to be thinking about how to provide the best customer experience. It’ll require new processes and solutions to manage the end-to-end process, particularly in a complex, multichannel environment, with services like endless aisle, same day delivery, 30 minute click-and-collect and multiple shipping options.

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What tools or technologies do you recommend?

SL: Fortunately, many of the tools retailers need to create a contextual commerce strategy already exist. The contextual commerce ecosystem ranges from payments across different platforms and new delivery service partnerships through to smart device integrations and geolocation capabilities.

For example, there are conversational commerce platforms (such as Live Person) that can speed up your deployment and ensure you can connect to a growing mesh of customer touchpoints, now and in the future.

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What’s your advice for retailers wanting to know where to start?

SL: You first need to understand how and where your customers want to shop so that you can give them the tools to engage and transact anytime, anywhere.

Look for where you can seamlessly implement purchase opportunities into your customers’ everyday activities, keeping them on their existing devices and touchpoints as they go about their daily activities.

I suggest you start off by focusing on social and conversational commerce, such as live chat, messenger apps, digital wallets and social media platforms to complete the purchase.

If you start now, you’ll capture incremental customers and revenue, generate conversions in new channels and establish a competitive early mover advantage. 

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Cue Clothing is a leader in retail innovation. Read the Cue case study to find out how they’re unleashing seamless new services that deliver extraordinary business outcomes.

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