Higher employee adoption
Figure annual savings
Stores adopted mobile-first
strategy
OUR APPROACH
THE IDEA
Customize a Front-End Solution for a More User-Friendly and Less Expensive mPOS System
The Fortune 500 retailer serves a variety of customers with different retail needs and wanted to ensure they could improve the customer experience across their stores. With the nature of who they serve, customers often need to check out anywhere within or outside of the store. However, each store only had three mPOS devices. As part of their mobile-first strategy, our client wanted to increase the number of devices to 20,000. But the subscription model of their legacy system was costly, with expenses set to increase 2.5x to execute their mobile strategy. Further, the technology was outdated, making it challenging and expensive to manage and update. As they looked to modernize their mPOS system, they wanted to align operational needs with business savings and boost how everyone works.
They aimed to create the following benefits:
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Greatly increase mPOS system savings. By designing their own user interface (UI), they could avoid more than doubling their licensing costs per year for getting new devices through their legacy system.
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Increase how many store associates adopt the tool by designing an intuitive, easy-to-use user interface (UI). The goal was to make checking out customers on mobile as easy as at the front counter.
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Be more agile in their ability to quickly make changes and enhancements. An improved UI that they could control would allow them to update the system in parallel with POS changes the moment they need them.
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Replace the front end without interruptions to their retail operations. With the legacy POS platform, they needed to modernize their UI seamlessly and avoid shutting down the whole system. By merging their systems, they could update their mPOS while keeping operations running.
THE PROCESS
A 10-Month Engagement That’s On Time and Under Budget
Our client had to act quickly to develop a solution before their next mPOS device subscription renewal, and we were ready for the challenge. We got to work understanding how to design their custom UI specifically to meet their unique business needs and mobile-first strategy.
Key highlights of our strategy included:
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Discovery: Before we started, we first engaged our client with discovery meetings to help ensure we deeply understood how they needed the mPOS solution to work for them. At first, our client thought they’d need a 1:1 solution that worked in the same manner as their legacy mPOS system. Through our discussions, we were able to identify the true features they needed and how the custom solution would better serve their priorities. By starting with this step, we initiated the project with proper planning and proactively set everyone up for success.
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Team Integration: To design for our client’s goals, we had to see the business through their eyes. So, we integrated with their team to further understand how they worked. We visited their stores, used their legacy system and documented their processes, and talked to their quality assurance (QA) team. This effort deepened our awareness around their unique needs and helped to streamline our project timeline.
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Collaboration: We aligned ourselves closely with their team. Throughout the project, we orchestrated various priorities and brought everyone together over united efforts. Further, we worked closely with backend engineers to make sure we’re delivering core features and testing them as we build.
As we worked, we remained nimble and could easily pivot to improve and adjust the solution for different needs:
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Highly customized to their retail experience: Their legacy mPOS system was an off-the-self solution with minimal customization options. So, we worked to improve how the system worked for their teams by customizing the entire system to their unique needs. Doing so enabled them to do more with the solution then they ever could with the legacy system.
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Build the prototype into the timeline: We needed to ensure that how we designed the mPOS solution successfully met their goals. We did a successful pilot in a store with the minimum viable product (MVP). Using this insight, were able to expand features to rollout across stores when launching the system.
THE IMPACT
With our client’s new mPOS front-end, the sales process across their 2,300 stores has become more efficient and faster. This improvement has resulted in employees using the mPOS 40% more than they did the year before. As a result, more employees can help more customers pay wherever they are in the store, streamlining and boosting the customer experience and sales. Further, our client was able to replace their expensive mPOS subscription and quickly breakeven with the new solution within one year, creating vast long-term savings that were close to seven figures annually. This foundational step in replacing their overall POS system has catapulted them into successfully adopting their mobile-first strategy across all 2,300 stores and set them up for future business growth.
