How our clients made the top 25 of Australian CIOs

Two of our amazing clients have been recognised in the latest CIO50. Shane Lenton of Cue Clothing is ranked #8 and Rohan Penman formerly of T2 Tea is ranked #23 on the list of Australia’s most innovative technology and digital leaders.

We’re very proud of the partnerships we’ve built and how Infinity supports each retailer to deliver frictionless customer experiences that are driving engagement and growing revenue. And we feel very fortunate to work with such inspiring leaders and their talented teams to deliver game-changing customer experiences.

Here’s why Shane and Rohan made the cut:

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Shane Lenton – the innovator

Shane is among the first retailers globally to pioneer unified commerce to create immersive and “zero-friction” experiences for customers across all channels and touchpoints.

That meant that Cue was able to find entirely new and now bursting pockets of opportunity during the pandemic, with the CIO50 judges saying: 

“The results have been spectacular, with Cue establishing itself as a true innovator in transforming the retail experience at a time when most companies in the sector were on their knees if they hadn’t yet closed their doors.”

Read Shane’s CIO50 story where he shares his approach to delivering award-winning customer experiences.

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Rohan Penman – the change agent

Rohan’s ranking is fantastic recognition of his success driving a major digital transformation over the past 24 months, revamping enterprise systems including the implementation of our Infinity unified commerce platform.

Rohan and his team also managed the global rollout of Infinity point of sale, saying: “This has transformed inventory management as well as customer loyalty and voucher tracking, giving customers more immersive and frictionless experiences.”

Read Rohan’s CIO50 story where he shares his milestones over the past year, and approach to leadership and agile working.

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If you’d like help to develop a unified customer journey, get in touch. We’d love to explore how Infinity can help you give customers more personalised and frictionless experiences across all channels.

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Find out how a move to a unified commerce strategy gives you the flexibility and agility to keep ahead of consumers’ changing needs. Download our ebook.

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University of Canterbury selects Infinity to improve customer experience and keep data secure

University modernises its retail operations to give staff and students seamless experiences using Infinity unified commerce platform

We’re delighted to announce that the University of Canterbury has chosen Infinity for the standardisation of its point of sale systems.

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In 2019, the University kicked off a wide-ranging programme of work to upgrade its technology infrastructure and transform the student experience. This included a project to unify its disparate, legacy point of sale systems across the campus onto a single retail platform.

Toni O'Donohue, Finance Shared Services Manager at the University, says that a key driver for the project was to eliminate security risks and ensure the University met the payment card industry (PCI) security standard. “By upgrading our retail system we would not only ensure that our customer information was protected, but we could also provide our staff, students and stakeholders with a seamless customer experience, now and in the future.”

Deloitte was appointed to manage the project and, after evaluating a wide range of retail solutions and conducting a competitive RFP, the contract was awarded to Triquestra.

Toni says the University needed a partner with strong retail sector knowledge and experience to support the University’s growth and reduce the administration burden.  A key factor in their decision was Infinity’s maturity and support for a broad range of retail environments.

“We needed a proven solution that could seamlessly integrate with our enterprise finance system and technology stack spanning a large number of apps, data and business systems. Infinity was the best solution to meet that need.”

During August 2020, Triquestra’s support partner ECL Group deployed Infinity across six Business Units providing a diverse range of online and on-site offerings, from parking permits, cashiers, accommodation, lockers and printing centres, through to products and services sold by the Schools and Colleges.

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Fast, easy and accurate

The University now has a modern retail management system that will adapt and evolve to the University’s future technology, business and regulatory requirements.

“We've had really positive feedback from users about how easy the system is to use and how it's made the whole sales process a lot quicker and more efficient for them,” says Anne Campbell, the University’s Team Leader at Finance Shared Services.

“Many of the Business Units previously grappled with multiple systems that didn’t easily integrate and were taking a lot of time and effort to maintain. They now have a single system with a consistent process that saves time, reduces errors and frees them up to focus on the customer rather than the transaction.”

Their users can now see sales data in a more timely way, with Infinity giving them accurate, up-to-the-minute reporting on transactions to help them improve their forecasting and purchasing.

“And, of course, we’re now PCI compliant,” says Toni. “This is critical for our customers’ security and peace of mind, and protects our operations and business reputation.”

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If it’s time to upgrade your point of sale to one that will scale and adapt to shifting consumer expectations and new technologies, contact us.

How a unified commerce platform solves retail inventory problems

This post was originally published January 2020 and updated on 15 October 2020

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Many retailers have launched new contactless delivery and self-serve options but can only access rudimentary sales and inventory positions. That prevents them from offering the ‘buy anywhere, fulfil anywhere’ services that are best for customers and most profitable for them.

Managing inventory is one of the most challenging processes for retailers – no matter their size. It’s also the largest cost. It’s a balancing act to strike the right stock levels and 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. 

Some retailers struggle with the fundamentals of inventory control, such as stock taking, demand forecasting, planning and receipting. And in a world where online and offline channels are blending into a single brand experience, customers expect access to products wherever and whenever they want.

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Unify your inventory 

To provide the purchasing and fulfilment options you need for frictionless experiences that delight customers and reduce costs, you first need to get tight control of your inventory. 

A unified commerce platform gives you a single, accurate and up-to-date view of inventory 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 make it available in your physical, mobile, online stores and call centres. 

 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

• Create dark stores for online order fulfilment, turning physical locations into temporary or permanent fulfilment nodes to enable faster delivery and keep retail staff working

• Turn locations on and off for endless aisle fulfilment based on the stock mix and quantities, store closures due to the pandemic or surges in online shopping

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

• 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.

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Retailers reaping inventory benefits with the Infinity unified commerce platform

T2 Tea makes shopping contactless

We partnered with T2 Tea to quickly offer a new click-and-collect service in its 20 Australian stores. After achieving a massive 350% increase in click-and-collect orders, it has been turned on in New Zealand, Singapore, the UK and US.

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.

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If you’ve put in place some quick-fixes to get new capabilities up-and-running and are now looking at how to build a foundation for frictionless customer experiences, talk to us about how to start with a single view of inventory.

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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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New in Infinity – September 2020

We’ve added new features and made enhancements across the Infinity platform to help you and your team work more efficiently and offer better experiences to your customers.

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

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CUSTOMERS & LOYALTY

Let customers add items to their wishlist in stores

When a customer visiting a store is undecided about purchasing an item, your staff can now add the item to their personal wishlist. This gives the customer a convenient collection of items that acts as a reminder for future purchases and can be easily shared with family and friends. When they make a purchase, the item is automatically removed from the wishlist.

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PAYMENTS

Give customers frictionless payments with Adyen

You can now take advantage of the Adyen global payments platform for both online and in-store payments. Infinity’s new integration with Adyen’s global payments platform lets you accept local payment methods from customers around the world, and gives you the benefit of consolidating all your payment provider costs into one bill. When customers shop in your stores, they can use their credit or debit card to make the payment, no matter where they are from. The transaction details are automatically displayed in their language and currency, making the checkout process fast and easy. Adyen supports all popular payment methods, including payment wallets such as Alipay, WeChat Pay and Google Pay.

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PRODUCT INFORMATION MANAGEMENT

Provide customers with more details on product prices and stock availability

If you use the Infinity Product Price Lists API, your customers’ shopping experience across online and physical channels can be enhanced by exposing additional pricing and stock availability information. You can now show alternate pricing for a product, such as promotional pricing, country-specific pricing and loyalty pricing. If they want to buy a product that is not currently in stock, they can see when it is likely to be available. They can also see if a product is available as an individual product or in a box. 

Search for stock items is faster and easier 

You can now quickly search for stock items by product code, alternate product code and SKU at the same time. We’ve created a new Any Code filter on the Stock item screen at both Back Office and Head Office. 

Regulate your minimum and maximum stock levels 

If you use Infinity to regulate your stock levels, you can be confident that the minimum and maximum quantities you enter will work together correctly for all items and all branches. Validation has been added to the quantity fields on branch-specific items, so Infinity will let you know if the minimum amount is higher than the maximum amount, and vice versa.

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ORDER MANAGEMENT

Stores can now select the best delivery option for each customer using Shippit’s shipping platform

When an order is created at a point of sale and the customer wants their goods to be delivered, your store can now send a quote request to Shippit. Once they’ve selected the delivery option that best suits the customer, they can book the delivery and print a shipping label. Using Shippit not only automates the quote and booking processes, it reduces keying errors and removes the need to enter information into multiple systems. Shippit is only available for orders created using Infinity Order and Quotes.

Better visibility of items on pick list

Your store staff can now more easily see what needs to be picked as part of an online order. The full details of items with long descriptions can now wrap over multiple lines on the pick list, meaning team members can see items at-a-glance.  

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INVENTORY  

Easier product returns to suppliers

You can now search for items to be returned to a supplier using the supplier’s product code. This is helpful in situations where the simplest way to find items that need to be returned is by looking at the documentation that has been sent with the goods. 

Faster identification of stock source

It’s now easier to tell where stock has come from when you receipt a stock transfer. The name of the transferring branch has been added to the Receipt screen so that you can see the source of the stock at-a-glance.

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POINT OF SALE

Infinity is now accredited for Samoa’s new Tax Invoice Monitoring System

Samoan retailers can now use Infinity to give their customers instantly verifiable invoices required by the government’s Tax Invoice Monitoring System, introduced to ramp up tax collection and reduce tax evasion. Sales completed at the POS are sent to the Sales Data Controller which transmits a fiscal invoice back to the POS so the receipt can be printed. 

More accurate stock levels

Your POS operators will now be warned if they add an item with a zero or negative count to a sale using the Advanced Item Search. This will act as a reminder to staff to process stock receipts so that your stock levels are correct.

Faster collection of Goody loyalty points during customer purchases

The Infinity integration with Goody loyalty cards has been made more seamless by allowing card numbers and fuel coupons to be scanned straight into the product search box at the point of sale. 

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TECHNOLOGY

As part of our continual improvement, we’ve made a number of technology enhancements 

The AKPOS database can now be installed and upgraded in a cloud environment. This option is available to clients who host their HOS database on a supported SQL Server environment where full admin access to the SQL instance and the file system is not possible eg a SQL PaaS platform.  The supported SQL Server installations include:

• Microsoft Azure: SQL Managed Instance 

• Amazon Web Services: RDS 

• Google Cloud Platform: Cloud SQL 

• Plus any on-premise deployment using SQL Fail Over Clustering Services. 

There’s more:

• Infinity APIs have been upgraded to use .NET Core 3.1. 

• Infinity Cloud installer now supports SQL Server 2019.

• Multiple instances of the Infinity Identity API can now be run on multiple servers, removing the possibility of a single point of failure in high-availability environments.

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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.

Webinar: How we’ve improved software quality and accelerated delivery with Smartbear

Watch our Head of Delivery, Greg Cantlon, explain how we quickly innovate and introduce new products for our clients, while ensuring high quality.

To ensure that our Infinity unified commerce platform supports retailers and brands to provide frictionless shopping experiences, we developed an API- and design-first approach to our product development.  

This helps us to quickly adapt to changing market demands and shifting consumer expectations, and deliver higher quality products with valuable features, faster.

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In this webinar our Head of Delivery, Greg Cantlon, describes our development journey and shares how adopting Smartbear tools has enabled us to:

• Automate UI testing and shorten our regression cycles from days to just hours using TestComplete, helping to ensure a seamless customer experience

• Adopt a design-first approach with SwaggerHub to provide clear API documentation to consumers

• Automate API functional and performance testing to reduce testing cycles with ReadyAPI.

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If you’re interested in how we’ve increased the quality and speed of our product development.

Frictionless payments with Adyen – now integrated with Infinity

Infinity’s new integration with Adyen’s global payments platform lets you accept local payment methods from customers around the world. 

Adyen is an all-in-one payments solution that offers your customers local payment options and alternative payment methods at checkout in over 145 currencies.

When customers shop with you in stores, they can use their credit or debit card to make the payment, no matter where they are from. When they swipe their card, the transaction details are automatically displayed in their language and currency, making the checkout process fast and easy.

Adyen supports all popular payment methods, including payment wallets such as Alipay, WeChat Pay and Google Pay. Adyen can also help your management of product refunds. Website or mobile orders can be returned in stores for a refund if the customer originally paid with Adyen.

Our integration with Adyen is another way that Infinity helps you offer new services that improve the customer experience and simplify your technology landscape. 

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To find out more about Adyen and how to add it to your payment options:

Infinity is now accredited for Samoa’s new Tax Invoice Monitoring System

The Samoan Government has introduced an electronic invoicing system to ramp up its tax collection and reduce tax evasion. 

As a local APAC solution provider, we’re committed to the Pacific Island region’s digital transformation and are pleased to provide early support for Infinity users’ peace of mind. 

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Called the Tax Invoice Monitoring System (TIMS), the rollout has started with large retailers and hospitality providers and will eventually expand to smaller stores throughout Samoa.

All registered retailers are required to use Electronic Fiscal Devices and provide customers with instantly verifiable invoices. Sales completed at the point-of-sale (POS) are sent to the Sales Data Controller, which transmits a fiscal invoice back to the POS so the receipt can be printed.

We’re pleased to announce that Infinity has been accredited by the Samoan Ministry of Customs and Revenue. Here’s more detail about the requirements:

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If you’d like to find out more about how Infinity can help you meet the new TIMS’ requirements, please contact us.

Three things to consider when implementing click–­and–collect

This story was originally posted April 3rd and updated September 1st 2020

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Global COVID-19 restrictions have brought forward e-commerce growth by up to ten years and mandated focus on health and safety.

Whether you’re improving your existing service or introducing it as new, click-and-collect is a smart addition to every retailer’s fulfilment toolkit as consumers move online and demand contact-less fulfilment options.

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Click-and-collect lets you continue selling and getting your in-store goods into consumers hands, and it takes the pressure off warehouse deliveries. 

In the current environment, click-and-collect can also help ensure staff safety because you can set things up to be contactless. 

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Here are our top three things to consider if you’re thinking about implementing click-and-collect:  

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1. Business process and social distancing

To optimise physical distance between your team and customers, set up an alert and collection system. For instance, when an order is ready, contact the customer with a specific time to collect - a good platform will enable you to automate this process. And set up a designated safe zone where customers can wait for store staff to bring their purchases to them with minimal contact. 

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2. Keep a check on service levels

Choose a unified commerce platform so you have a click-and-collect dashboard that updates in real time and can be monitored from anywhere, including while your sales manager is working from home. It should provide an all-of-business view of sales and fulfilment and automatically alert the right people when a sale may not be able to be fulfilled. So you can tell customers right away, arrange for stock to be transferred from another store, or offer delivery instead. 

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3. Make it consistent and easy across all channels

There’s so much changing for retail reps right now, including different processes that are mandated by retailers and by the government. Keeping the in-store process consistent and easy will reduce stress and errors.

In Infinity, orders from any channel are processed in the same simple way by your in-store team – whether the sale is made through your call centre, a mobile app or your ecommerce site. One consistent process saves time, reduces errors and frees your team up to focus on your customer rather than the transaction.

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I’d be happy to discuss click-and-collect in more detail and answer any questions you have about getting it up and running. Contact me here or through LinkedIn.

Keep a record of store visitors with Infinity Check In

We have restarted Infinity Check In, our free, contactless visitor register for retailers.

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Infinity Check In lets customers scan a QR code or give their details to store staff, so that you can keep a record of who has visited your stores or sites.

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First developed in April as a tool for contactless store visits, we closed it in June when retailers weren’t required to keep customer records for contact tracing.

The New Zealand Government now requires all businesses to display a NZ COVID Tracer QR code at each location. They also ask retailers to keep a contact tracing register at their sites for people who cannot use the NZ COVID Tracer app.

In Australia, some States and Territories require businesses to collect information about customers and visitors to their premises.

As a result, some of our clients asked us to restart Infinity Check In. We’re pleased to offer it again for any retailer that might want to offer an additional level of reassurance for customers and employees.

You can start using it here or talk to us for more information.

If you’re thinking of introducing a click-and-collect service to customers, here are our top three things to consider. 

New in Infinity – August 2020

We’ve added new features and made enhancements across the Infinity platform. Here are some of the main improvements so you can offer better experiences to your customers. Scroll down for the complete list.

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

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INVENTORY  

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Mark the lines on a purchase order as ‘Done’

Infinity users can now mark the lines on a purchase order that have been ‘Done’ when the purchase order is receipted. This feature helps prevent confusion about which lines have been processed and which still need to be actioned. 

Numeric stock entry for improved user experience

The Cloud Inventory Stock Take field that’s used to input counted quantities now displays the numeric keypad instead of the full keyboard to make it quicker to enter stock counts.

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ORDER MANAGEMENT 

Local stores can now determine the best supplier for orders from any channel

If you manage orders from multiple locations or channels, your stores can now determine the supplier, instead of the supplier being automatically assigned. This change is useful for retail call centres and businesses that use an endless aisle model and distributed supply chain because it enables staff to capture customer orders, and then lets the local store determine the best supplier to source the products from.    

Infinity EDI Service now uses SFTP & SSL certificates

The Infinity EDI Service can now use SFTP (SSH File Transfer Protocol) with a shared SSL certificate, as well as the existing shared key and secret option. This enhancement allows the EDI system to connect to suppliers’ SFTP servers to send purchase orders.

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CUSTOMERS & LOYALTY 

See a live summary of a customer’s reward accumulator balance

Infinity Loyalty users can now see a live summary of customers’ reward accumulator balances on Infinity Cloud Membership screens. For instance, if customers get a free coffee with every tenth coffee purchase, you can see how many more coffees a customer has to buy before they qualify for the free drink. 

Fraud prevention has been improved

Prepay accounts were being locked sooner than they should because pre-authorised debit transaction activities were being counted towards standard debit transactions. Now only debits that aren’t related to pre-authorisations contribute to the fraud protection lock-out feature. 

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PRICING & PROMOTIONS

The promotional cycle is now retained when a promotion for a cluster or a branch is created.

Previously, the promotional cycle was set to 'None' when a user created a new cluster or branch promotion, even if a promotional cycle had been selected. 

We’ve fixed an issue where the internal ID field on pricing rules was overwritten when updating data through the Infinity screens.

Integrated systems can now synchronise pricing data, including rules that have been edited in Infinity.

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REPORTING & ANALYTICS

Identify potentially fraudulent use of fuel CPL discount coupons

Enhancements have been made to the Fuel CPL Multiple Transaction Report to help you identify potentially fraudulent use of CPL discount coupons. The report also shows which identifiers were used for various transactions to help isolate exceptions and reveal high-use identifiers that require further investigation.   

A new report lets you see one-off payments to customers

A new Till Adjustment/Paid Out Report lists till adjustment transactions where money is paid out of the till only. This report can help you identify when POS operators have made one-off payments to customers for items such as scratch cards, and gives you better information for cash reconciliation.

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POINT OF SALE

Improved POS process for customers using the Infinity Loyalty prepay account and check-in

This workflow has been improved to let a customer check in again after deciding not to use the prepay account, without needing to generate a new check-in. Previously the customer needed to start the process from the beginning. This makes the POS process faster and simplifies the customer experience.  

Fuel pump number is now included in Digitfort DVR information

Fuel sale information that’s sent to the Digifort DVR system will now include the fuel pump number that was used for the transaction. This improvement makes it easy for auditors to investigate any issues relating to a specific fuel pump.   

You can now prevent payment types from being used to pay debtor accounts 

This feature means you can restrict the use of payment types for which financial, contractual or legal risks or issues may apply.  

The advanced cash management functions at POS can now prompt the POS operator to go immediately into the cash drawer and safe at the end of the shift. This enhancement helps speed up end-of-shift and end-of-day processes where the operator does not count the cash separately in the back office. If the operator does count the cash separately, they can cancel the prompt and return at a later time to add the counted values as per the original workflow.  

We have modernised the look and feel of some POS screens in micro-modules so they look like the main POS and give you consistency across all POS screens.   

The POS messaging for customers eligible for fuel CPL discounts from exclusive CPL rules has been improved. When a customer is configured as spend-only, the POS now displays ‘Customer cannot Stack daily offer as only Spend is allowed’. This message will be displayed regardless of the minimum spend configured against the rule. Previously, the POS would show ‘Customer cannot Stack daily offer as fuel purchase is less than {fuel minimum limit}’, even if the customer could only spend CPL discounts. This wording could be difficult for the operator to explain to the customer.

The message that the POS operator sees when the fuel CPL API is offline can now be customised, so the operator sees information and messages in a context relevant to them.  

Non-printable characters in the Dangerous Goods handler field were causing issues with integrated systems and reports. They will no longer be accepted and the user will receive a prompt showing the validation error.

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ADMINISTRATION

The Infinity branch cluster functionality has been extended to include Infinity customers 

All customer types can be assigned to clusters – debtor, normal (other account), layby and open account customers.

Branch specific button editing now with preview

When a head office user edits branch-specific buttons, the preview screen now shows the correct layout for the selected branch instead of the default master branch, so the user previews the correct layout.

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TECHNOLOGY

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Infinity now supports installations using Microsoft SQL Server 2019

Infinity still has support for SQL 2012, 2014, 2016, and 2017, and ships with SQL 2014 as standard.  

Now you can send all sales transactions to a cloud-hosted API in Azure Event Hubs

The new Infinity Sales Invoice Notification Service lets the back office (or head office) send all completed sales transactions to a cloud-hosted API in Azure Event Hubs using the CloudEvents v1.0 standard. This feature lets you have a single central repository of all Infinity-completed sales transaction events that sit within the Azure Event Hubs platform. Sales transaction data can be provided to any client application that works with CloudEvents 1.0 standard event information, including analytics, electronic marketing systems, financial applications, and alerting systems.

Logging within the fuel CPL API has been extended

Now to include more information about requests received from the External Loyalty Fuel CPL Discounts API. This enhancement will make it easier for IT support to determine communication issues between these APIs.    

Enhanced the speed and performance of a number of GET endpoints

As part of continual improvement, we have enhanced the speed and performance of a number of GET endpoints in loyalty-related APIs when data is retrieved from the databases. These improvements provide faster API processing times and allow systems to accommodate a greater workload. 

New POS lanes ready faster

New POS lanes will be ready for use more quickly after Infinity is installed. The Point of Sale installer now bulk copies extended data and loyalty balances, which will make the initial data replication process much faster so you can use new POS lanes sooner.  

Flybuys loyalty caching

Caching has been added to the Fly Buys loyalty customer search function at the POS for speedier customer transactions. 

Daily database fix

We’ve resolved an issue with the automated daily database maintenance, so where configured, the daily tasks keep the system tuned for optimal operation. 

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There’s much more that’s new in Infinity – see all the new features and enhancements.

To discuss any of these enhancements and add them to your Infinity platform, contact us.