New in Infinity – April 2022

Here’s new functionality across the Infinity platform that will help you unify your physical and digital channels, increase your team’s operational effectiveness and differentiate the customer experience.

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


INFINITY API

Access real-time order data

Order information is now available in real-time to streamline fulfilment execution. Infinity now allows services to subscribe to changes in order status, such as dispatch or voiding. The updates can be used to integrate order data with other systems, such as ecommerce sites to provide dispatch or cancellation email updates to customers, ERP systems and buy-now-pay-later financing schemes.


PRODUCT INFORMATION MANAGEMENT

Increase accuracy of data capture during complex sales

Infinity now gives you the ability to capture extra information for highly complex sales transactions, with validation during the process to ensure data accuracy. Businesses with complex item data requirements can configure rules and validations to capture specific information before a product can be added to the sale. Extended rules can also be configured for payment processing, receipt printing and exclusive selling rules.

Using this new functionality, a business might decide to take payment on behalf of other businesses (such as power companies and local authorities), requiring highly accurate information to be captured at the time of payment. By configuring the rules required by those other businesses, you can be confident that all information is being captured and all necessary business processes are being followed.


INVENTORY

Faster adjustments of non-stock products

Head Office and branch users can now easily find non-stock products with negative stock on hand and correct the stock automatically to zero. Instead of having to identify items manually and create a stock adjustment for each one, users can now save time by finding all non-stock products with negative inventory and set them all to zero at once.

Give branches more local purchasing flexibility

If your stores have multiple regional supplier contacts, your staff can now directly email their local sales rep rather than having to go through a centralised contact for all stores. Branches can also now create customised supplier email addresses for sending purchase orders, giving them even greater control over the local purchasing process.

Increase accuracy of cost updates

Branch users can now update the cost of an item on the master data automatically during the invoice matching process, allowing them to avoid the pitfalls that come with manually inputting cost updates and ensure data integrity.


ORDER MANAGEMENT

Automate store notifications when branches re-assign orders

Infinity will now prompt your store staff when an order line has been re-assigned to them from another branch and is awaiting processing (for customer collection in store or ship-from-store), ensuring that all parts of a customer order are processed and fulfilled in a timely way.


PRICING & PROMOTIONS

Assess profitability of promotions

When you create a pricing promotion using Infinity’s pricing wizard, you can now see the worst-case scenario for gross profit percentage. This allows you to easily gauge whether promotions are financially viable and gives you greater control over profit margins in your business.


REPORTS & ANALYTICS

Give store staff more returns visibility

You can now provide your branches with more information on returns. If goods are returned to your store but originally sold at another store, store staff can now see details of the return transaction, and not the details of the original sale transaction.

If the goods were both sold and returned at the store, they will see a range of details about the transaction, such as the date the goods were sold and returned, the return price and quantity, the reason for the return, the store operator who processed the sale and the return, and the receipt number.


POINT OF SALE

Increase stock visibility during sales process

Infinity’s Advanced Item Search now allows you to see stock levels and pricing at nearby branches. This gives better visibility during the sales process to businesses who source inventory from other branches. For those businesses that capture sales orders through a call centre, the inventory and pricing will default to the branch that the current customer belongs to.

Easily adjust your returns policy

If your business uses Infinity’s extended returns function, you now have greater flexibility over your return policy. You can choose to allow goods to be returned to any store. Alternatively, you can simplify the return process by only allowing customers to return goods at the store they made the original purchase.


TECHNOLOGY

Increase email security

Infinity now supports the use of TLS 1.2 and a wide number of common SMTP ports to send emails. TLS 1.2 allows for better encryption and, in turn, improved security when sending emails via Infinity.

Support for Microsoft Edge browser

Infinity now supports using the Microsoft Edge browser engine technology to display external websites where support for Internet Explorer 11 has been removed.


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.

NPD modernises its retail experience with Triquestra

Fuel and convenience retailer, NPD, has selected Triquestra to transform its retail system and provide a hub for future innovation. Triquestra’s Infinity unified commerce solution will be installed as NPD’s point of sale in stores to improve the customer experience and support retail operations excellence and profitable growth.

Following rapid New Zealand expansion over recent years – including the launch into the North Island market in 2021 – NPD has 95 sites nationwide. With ambitious growth plans to launch 32 new sites over the next three years, the company prides itself on offering an exceptional customer experience.


“We have a strong focus on innovation as we grow our network and expand our retail offering to meet changing consumer needs,” says Lewis Preston, Retail Operations Manager at NPD. “Our architecturally-designed cafes are inviting and spacious, and we offer a forecourt service to ensure customers are being looked after as soon as they arrive. What really sets us apart is our incredibly popular range of café products which are all freshly prepared on site.” 

According to Louise Mitchell, NPD’s Senior Category Manager, the team are looking forward to the move to a modern technology platform that will streamline processes, gather deeper insights and provide great customer experiences.

“Infinity will play a key role in delivering a fast and efficient service to customers, while also helping to better manage our pricing and promotions and operate our business in a more profitable, data-driven manner.” 

It was important to NPD to partner with another New Zealand-based company. “As a Kiwi owned and operated business, we really pride ourselves on supporting local businesses and communities,” says Louise. “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.” 

Infinity’s analytics capability was another key factor in the decision. “We wanted to eliminate labour-intensive manual reporting and give our management fast and easy access to real-time business intelligence to support their decision-making,” explains Lewis. 

NPD is looking forward to better inventory and order management to increase stock accuracy and reduce admin time spent on sales, transactions, stocktakes, receipting, cash balancing and reordering. 

 “Right now, we have one retail price point for all of our sites nationwide,” says Lewis. “With surging inflation and rising costs, this negatively impacts the profitability of our sites in expensive regions.  

 “We pride ourselves on bringing genuine price and service competition to the fuel market. With Infinity’s ability to customise products, prices and promotions by site and region, we can provide our customers with even more value,” he adds. 

 “And we expect Infinity’s user-friendly interface to speed up our service at the till,” says Louise. “That will be amazing for both our staff and our customers.” 

 “There is tremendous pressure on fuel retailers to create new business models and revenue streams to replace traditional sources of revenue,” says Triquestra CEO Kelly Brown. “Retailers that become destination stores with more of what customers want are best positioned for long-term profitability and customer loyalty. We’re proud to partner with an award-winning convenience retail leader like NPD that is innovating to differentiate the customer experience.” 

Infinity will be implemented in a phased approach starting in mid-2022, with deployment and support provided by Triquestra’s implementation partner, ECL Group.

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.


New in Infinity – February 2022

Here are the latest enhancements added to the Infinity platform to help you and your team work more efficiently and create fast, omnichannel experiences your customers expect.

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


INFINITY API

Incentivise loyalty members to buy

A new API lets your online customers see potential loyalty points earned on items, giving them an additional incentive to make a purchase.

Easier retrieval and display of alternate prices

The Products API now allows you to retrieve an item’s standard selling price and alternate selling price, per store. This is useful if you want to display information such as ‘was/now prices’ on your ecommerce portal or any other system that consumes the Infinity APIs.

Give customers real-time RRP prices

The new Product Price List API enables you to display comprehensive, accurate RRP prices to customers by retrieving from Infinity a real-time view of a full price list for one item in all branches, all items in all branches or a combination of both.

Easier access and display of custom data on debtors

The Accounts Receivable API now enables you to retrieve, manage and create business-specific information about your debtors that is contained in custom fields. You can use this custom data for either display or functional purposes within your system.

Retrieve and identify more pricing information

The Products API now includes more pricing data in responses, so you can retrieve and identify more pricing and unit information relating to products.


ORDER MANAGEMENT

Improve mobile user experience when creating purchase orders 

Staff creating purchase orders on a mobile device can now receive additional notifications when finalising the order to help minimise potential errors, saving your business time and admin costs.


CUSTOMERS & LOYALTY

Easier access to loyalty point movements for marketing

You can now access information on loyalty points earned or consumed on sales transactions, offering additional marketing communications triggers and data analytics around loyalty point movements.

Give customers and staff access to historical loyalty balance transfers

You can now see where a customer’s loyalty balance was transferred from or to in their transaction history, helping customers understand how their balance has been consumed and making it easier for your support office to understand historical transactions when resolving issues.

Faster retrieval of refund transaction details

Line description details for refund transactions are now included on debtor statements, letting you quickly and easily see which items were refunded.

Easier access to product refund or replacement details

The Sales and Credits function has been enhanced with additional fields to give you more options when searching for customer transactions. This interactive function lets you search for historical transactions and can help resolve post-sale queries such as determining whether a product is eligible for a refund or replacement.


REPORTS & ANALYTICS

Increase visibility of stock value at each location

The Item Location Report has been enhanced with additional information to allow you to understand the dollar value of goods at each location, giving your finance team greater visibility over your stock.


POINT OF SALE

Remove the risk of illegal age-restricted sales transactions

You can now configure Infinity so that age-restricted items can only be sold by store staff above a certain age, protecting your business from the risk of illegal transactions. 

Faster access to ePay gift card details

ePay gift cards can now be swiped through Vault EFTPOS terminals, giving your store staff a quick alternative to scanning or manually entering the card number when selling a gift card or checking a gift card’s balance.


TECHNOLOGY

Reduce the time to install new back-office and PoS terminals

The Infinity setup process now allows for bulk copying of certain tables when building a branch linked to the Head Office. This will reduce the amount of time it takes to perform the first linking cycle after Infinity has been installed on a new machine in businesses that have a large amount of data in those tables.


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.

Turbocharging delivery: why you start with unified inventory

As supply chain disruptions and logistics issues kick in over the critical holiday trading period, how well is your business geared to deliver the fast omnichannel experiences consumers expect? Retailers with a single view of inventory across all locations can slash delivery times, profitably.

During two years of extraordinary change, retailers have adapted to changing consumer demands, evolving channels and rising customer expectations around convenience, choice and speed.

And now they’re in a race to turbocharge their digital and physical fulfilment.

Why is delivery speed so important? Research shows that when delivery times are too long, almost half of omnichannel consumers will shop elsewhere. As for how long is too long, they reveal that over 90 percent of consumers see 2- to 3-day delivery as the baseline, and 30 percent expect same-day delivery.

And retailers know speed matters: over 75 percent of specialty retail leaders have made 2-day delivery a priority and 42 percent are aiming for same-day delivery by 2022.


The challenges of omnichannel delivery

Compressing delivery times requires great execution across all parts of the supply chain.

However, with the explosion in online shopping during lockdown restrictions it has been a challenge for supply and delivery networks to keep up with accelerating customer demand. Ongoing pandemic restrictions will continue to disrupt last mile services in 2022 and beyond.

And while courier and delivery companies are taking a lot of heat for slow deliveries, many of the delays are due to retailers’ own dispatch times.

Services such as ship-from-store, click-and-collect, endless aisle and returns anywhere are all just table stakes today. Yet many retailers can only access rudimentary sales and inventory positions, and have complex systems that are fragile, inefficient and costly to integrate.

While retailer innovators have raised the bar for best-in-class omnichannel operations - our client Cue Clothing fulfils click-and-collect orders within 30 minutes - it’s not unusual for items to take 1 to 2 weeks just to be picked and packed.

So how can technology help compress delivery times?


Unlock the value in your inventory

To provide the speed and convenience consumers expect, retailers are moving from multichannel silos to unified commerce platforms that provide a unified view of inventory across all stores and DCs. This means they can quickly see where inventory is and therefore the fastest place to fulfil from.

Real-time data on stock levels can benefit your business in many other ways too:

  • Reduce inventory costs by ensuring you’ve got the right inventory available in each location, without carrying the cost of overstocking or ‘buffers’

  • Optimise your product range by matching stock to each store’s location, community and demographics

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

  • React to trends quickly and forecast demand based on historical data, sales forecasts and seasonal variations

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


Become omnipotent in omnichannel

And that’s just the start. Once your inventory is under control, you’re free to blend physical and digital channels to create seamless experiences for customers across all channels and touchpoints.

By using your stores for fulfilment or pick-up, you can increase the amount of inventory for sale while reducing inventory cost and slashing delivery times. The return on investment can be spectacular. With endless aisle fulfilment, our clients are achieving at least 200 to 300% growth in online revenue.

You can also build genuinely meaningful customer experiences. With a single view of customer, order and inventory data, you can deliver each customer a powerful, tailored, one-of-a-kind experience across all channels and touchpoints. That will create rich emotional connections, drive up conversions and send your transaction values soaring.


If you’re urgently revamping your omnichannel delivery capabilities and want advice on which projects to tackle first, our checklist could help. It will let you assess where you are at against retail leaders and decide what you need to improve. Download it here.


Video: GAS optimises inventory for improved profitability

Many retailers struggle to create a single, accurate and up-to-date view of inventory, but fuel retailer GAS has cracked it. Following its record 10 week implementation of Infinity point of sale software, the retailer now has a unified view of inventory to grow sales and drive profits.

Nahid Ali, GAS General Manager, says that achieving profitable growth starts with better inventory management.

“The Infinity point of sale system has got some fantastic features,” explains Nahid. “The key for us is the stock control and the inventory management.

“Infinity POS allows GAS retailers to do business better … and grow their profitability.”


Interested in how GAS only took 10 weeks to deploy Infinity POS nationwide?

Watch GAS modernises fuel retail through fast point of sale deployment.


Want help to unify your inventory? Contact us to find out more about how Infinity can give your business an accurate and single view of inventory.


New video series explores why retail is moving to cloud edge for frictionless commerce

If it’s time to make the store your focus to deliver the fast, fluid and personalised experiences that consumers now expect, then our new video series can help you understand how cloud edge ensures the experience is truly ‘zero-friction’. 

Our videos have been prepared for technical and non-technical audiences to answer the most common questions that arise when we use the terms edge and cloud computing. 

Join me as we share how cloud edge is creating buying opportunities that are seamless and lightning-quick. 

Video 1: What is edge computing and why does it matter?   

Video 2: The trends driving retail’s move to edge computing 

Video 3: The top benefits of cloud edge for retail 

 Video 4: 3 reasons retailers need edge computing 


To achieve frictionless commerce, you need cloud edge 

See how cloud edge can help you create hybrid customer experiences across the entire buying journey. 

New in Infinity – November 2021

Check out the latest enhancements across the Infinity platform designed to help you and your team work more efficiently and create the fast, frictionless experiences customers expect.

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


INFINITY APIs

Easily validate customer addresses

Infinity is now integrated with the Addressify and NZ Post address validation services. This prevents customers from providing inaccurate or incomplete address details, giving you the confidence that web and store orders are linked to the correct customer address. It includes validation of addresses for loyalty customers, orders and quotes, and customers stored in Infinity Loyalty. To use this feature, you’ll need a service agreement with Addressify and/or NZ Post.

Increase efficiency when receipting multiple POs

A new API allows your external suppliers to create a group of purchase orders (or purchase order lines) to make it easier for you to receipt multiple purchase orders at once. Suppliers can generate an Advanced Shipment Notice to provide information about the items included, and their related purchase order lines, so you can be prepared to check and accept delivery.


INVENTORY

Increase accuracy of inter-branch stock transfers

Your stores can use the new Inter-branch Transfers Report to check for any variances between stock sent to them from another store and the stock that arrives. The report helps reduce inventory leakage between branches and force better stock management practices. It’s particularly useful for retailers who sell high-value items that are routinely transferred between branches. Stores will only see stock movements to or from their own branch.

Simplify stock receipting

You can now configure Infinity so that whole numbers (1,2,3) rather than decimals (1.00, 2.4) must be used in stock receipting. This simplifies stock receipting if you only use whole numbers in stock management and reduces the opportunity for time-wasting errors and confusion. 

Comply with AGDC data requirements

North American cigarette retailers can now use Infinity to meet AGDC (Altria Group Distribution Company) scan data requirements. You can report sales to tobacco companies directly, and then receive reimbursement from them, using an automated process that identifies eligible sales transactions and generates weekly reports in a AGDC compliant format.


ORDER MANAGEMENT

Full visibility of orders

The Click and Collect Dashboard has been renamed the Orders Orchestration Dashboard to better reflect the wide range of customer order scenarios that it manages, including collection and delivery via store-to-door, drop shipping and click and collect.

Email customers order information

If you capture transaction data in the TH_FieldText fields, you can now include that data in the email that is sent to customers with their transaction receipt.  This allows you to include additional, business-specific information in the email that your customers receive.


REPORTS

Give fuel sites better AA Smartfuel loyalty reporting

Fuel stores have three new reports that enable them to see transactional details for the  AA Smartfuel program, more easily gauge how the program is performing and assess ways to improve its productivity. The reports include analysis of fuel discounts accumulated by customers, fuel discounts redeemed by customers and non-fuel product sales that qualified for shop-sponsored cents-per-litre discounts.


POINT OF SALE

Give your customers a single receipt

If your business uses PC EFTPOS NZ, you can now take advantage of the ability to only print one receipt, saving on paper and giving your customers the option to make a more sustainable shopping choice.

And if you want to go paperless and eliminate all paper receipts, Australian retailers can use Slyp Smart Receipts to send digital receipts direct to the customer’s banking app.

Let customers mix and match their loyalty accounts

Fuel retailers who use Infinity Loyalty to offer cents-per-litre discounts via an app can now allow their customers to group together loyalty accounts using the app and redeem saved cents-per-litre discounts from any of these accounts during a fuel purchase. This allows fuel customers who have multiple accounts amongst family members to mix and match how they use their accounts, reducing potential confusion about where their saved cents-per-litre discounts have gone.

Analyse historic foot traffic in stores

You can now record the foot traffic in your stores retrospectively, instead of just on the current day, giving your staff greater flexibility in record-keeping and providing a more comprehensive, reliable picture of the numbers of customers entering your stores. The foot traffic functionality is also now available in Restricted Back Office.  

Allow customers to change their minds during refunds

Your store staff can now cancel out of a refund to Afterpay and Zip, giving customers the opportunity to reverse their decision and preventing unintentional refunds to these two payment methods.


TECHNOLOGY

  • Stock information can be shared throughout your solution infrastructure more readily and seamlessly. The Cloud Events Service now publishes notifications about purchase orders, goods receipts and goods receipt cancellations, in addition to sales invoices. That means external systems, such as ERPs, use near real-time stock management information from Infinity rather than having to use custom integrations, flat files or pulling information using API.

  • We’ve renewed Infinity’s certification with Quest Payment Systems in New Zealand, giving users of the Quest pinpad configured for use with Paymark the ability to integrate their EFTPOS solution with Infinity POS.

  • Infinity now allows you to proactively prevent accidental mass data updates which can impact the Linker performance and reduce the real-time accuracy of information. Additional protection on the AKPOS database triggers blocks if updates to more than 20,000 rows are attempted within a single update. Block triggers can be removed as well as added.  

  • To help retailers improve their security compliance, Infinity Web Integration and Infinity Loyalty now support the ability to work with TLS 1.0 disabled. This enables businesses to disable the now obsolete TLS 1.0 protocol and reduce their security risk profile. 

  • Infinity Quickfire has been modified so that you can now automate upgrades by performing a silent upgrade of Infinity ETL and the Infinity Cloud Events Service using the Command line.

  • The Infinity Gift Card API has been converted to a REST API for easier integration.


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.

Video: GAS crafts personalised customer experiences to grow loyalty

GAS is one of New Zealand’s largest independent fuel retail networks. Following its blistering-fast implementation of Infinity point of sale software, the retailer is now capturing customer data to develop a distinctive experience and boost loyalty.

Watch Nahid Ali, GAS General Manager, describe how GAS can now develop cluster- or even site-specific offers that let site owners take advantage of opportunities in their local areas.

Nahid explains:

Pumping-Fuel-1280px.jpg

“Infinity has opened the door for GAS head office and GAS retailers to a wide variety of marketing tools that we've never enjoyed before.”


Interested in how GAS only took 10 weeks to deploy Infinity POS nationwide?

Watch GAS modernises fuel retail through fast point of sale deployment.


If you’d like help to create tailored customer experiences that boost loyalty, get in touch. We can help you seamlessly integrate physical and digital channels to create a unified customer journey.


New guide: Why cloud edge is the new battleground for retailers

Retailers have turned their attention to the store to create the unified commerce experiences consumers now expect across the entire buying journey.

They’re blending physical locations with digital channels and using technologies such as AI, AR, VR and IoT to create new value through frictionless and dynamic interactions. 

However, it’s a challenge to give these latency-sensitive, data-intensive applications the performance and speed they need with a traditional central cloud or data centre. Uploading and downloading data takes too long. And it requires expensive infrastructure and network bandwidth. 

That’s why cloud edge is a game changer. By enabling connected devices to process data closer to where it’s created, on the edge, it ensures the customer experience is truly ‘zero-friction’. 


Our new guide, The retailer’s guide to cloud edge: Why cloud edge is the new battleground for retailers, explains what edge computing is and why it matters, what’s driving adoption and the benefits it delivers, with retail use cases and architecture considerations.

It’s been written for technical and non-technical audiences who want to create lightning-quick ‘phygital’ experiences that cut costs, delight customers and grow revenue. 


Want a taste of what’s inside?  

Watch Mike Baxter, Triquestra’s CTO, as he explains how edge computing works and why it’s important for rich retail experiences.


3 ways Liquorland is crushing inventory management

Liquorland is one of New Zealand’s most successful, sustainable and responsible liquor retailers. With Infinity providing unified inventory, POS and fulfilment, the retailer has added over $100 million in sales in only four years and grown its market share 5 percent - a massive result in a mature market. 

We interviewed Brett O’Hanlon, Liquorland’s Finance and IT Manager, and Andrew Barr, Owner Operator, for insights into how strong inventory management helps to drive profit and sales. 

logo-liquorland.png

Many retailers struggle to create a single view of inventory across all locations, but Liquorland is one of the few that has mastered it. Watch the retailer explain how it uses Infinity to reduce costs and optimise its range, delighting customers with personalised experiences that convert.


1. Optimising store ordering, merchandising and marketing 

How do Liquorland stores achieve results four times ahead of industry average growth? Brett and Andrew describe how unified commerce helps ensure Liquorland is “match fit” to pursue its ambitious growth strategy. 

Andrew explains:

“Infinity has helped us manage inventory by letting us understand what's selling when and where. This allows us to access cash to invest in products that will help enhance the customer experience.”


2. Flexible pricing and promotions 

Brett explains how Liquorland now gives all 130-odd stores “sovereignty” over their own local promotions, while also participating in powerful nationwide offers.   

And to ensure a unified customer experience, all the promotions are available on the ecommerce site:  

Video: Unifying the CX via flexible pricing & promotions


3. Forecasting demand to match customer needs 

Andrew says that delivering better cashflow starts with better demand forecasting. 

By having data available across the business, he can build heat maps to predict how much of a specific product customers will want to purchase during key periods of the day or week. That ensures he has the right stock on hand and the right specialist staffing for his customers’ needs. 

Video: Liquorland improves cashflow through better inventory management


For more on how Infinity supports Liquorland to offer new omnichannel services, read: Infinity helps Liquorland get click-and-collect ready for lockdown in less than a week

Want help to unify your inventory? Contact us to find out more about how Infinity can give your business an accurate and single view of inventory.