Retail is a highly competitive industry, and to be profitable, a business must constantly improve business processes and quickly respond to new market challenges and customer needs.
The checkout counters in the client's hypermarkets and some supermarkets were running monolithic software with a foreign kernel written in the significantly outdated COBOL programming language. Maintaining and developing such software was quite challenging: the outdated architecture and technologies imposed a number of limitations regarding the transition to new hardware and operating systems, creating a dependence on foreign manufacturers and vendors.
Redesigning the architecture was impossible, and bringing new functionality to production (for major changes) could take up to nine months – unacceptable for such a dynamic retailer that constantly adapts to changing consumer preferences. Furthermore, the foreign vendor completely stopped releasing system updates to ensure product compliance with legislation, shifting the financial burden of implementing such changes to the customer.
In 2024, the company decided to modernize its cash register software, for which it turned to its long-standing technology partner, ICL Services.
Key Challenges
- Find and implement new cross-platform cash register software from a reliable Russian vendor that guarantees compliance with all Russian legislation
- The new software must be designed using modern development technologies, easy to maintain, and quickly adaptable to the customer's needs
- The cash register software must fully cover the customer's current business processes
- Ensure there is no need to replace cash register equipment or train staff to use the new software
Considering all the goals and objectives of the request, ICL Services proposed a migration to ICL.Retail, a modern POS solution designed specifically for fast-turnaround retail.
Built on web technologies and a microservices architecture, it is cross-platform, easily adaptable to the retailer's needs, and has no limitations regarding its use on various types and generations of retail equipment. ICL.Retail also provides tools for quickly and securely delivering changes to cash registers and in-store servers.
Following agreement on a common approach for migrating to the new software, work began in January 2024 to adapt ICL.Retail to the client's business processes.
To ensure the seamless transition of cashiers to the new software, experts effectively replicated the interface of the old software and completely redesigned the architectural solution for the transition to a centralized, serverless solution for supermarket stores.
In April 2024, debugging and pilot testing began. Thirteen stores with various combinations of peripheral equipment were selected for the pilot: system units, printers, scanners, and EFT terminals.
During the pilot, we continuously received feedback from stores, collected cash register usage statistics and equipment logs, and communicated directly with cashiers to obtain the fastest and most accurate feedback on the new software.
At the end of October 2024, store migration to the new software began. Stores were migrated gradually, 5-10 stores (hypermarkets and supermarkets) per night. Several teams worked around the clock, in shifts, to avoid disruption to store operations. After overnight work, the functionality of each cash register was checked before the store reopened.
By the beginning of December, 93 hypermarkets and 53 supermarkets had migrated to ICL.Retail.
The first change implemented using the new software was integration with the new loyalty platform, which was completed overnight without disrupting store operations. 9. A total of 70 ICL Services specialists (analysts, developers, QA, DevOps, and Scrum Masters) were involved in the migration project. Over 100 field engineers in various regions of Russia were involved in the project to provide support from the stores.
Products and technologies
- Angular v15
- .Net 6
- LiteDB 5
- PostgreSQL
- PowerShell
- WorkFlow Core
- Nexus
Results
- We migrated 146 stores to the new software in 1.5 months without replacing cash register equipment or retraining employees.
- Completely eliminated the use of server equipment and associated costs in supermarkets by migrating to a centralized software server.
- Increased the speed of change implementation and software release delivery thanks to access to regular system updates in compliance with legal requirements through the Russian vendor.
- Eliminated the dependence on Western vendors, including Microsoft Windows, for both servers and cash registers. The client now has the option of migrating to Russian operating systems.
- The client was pleased with the implementation of the new software and is now discussing plans with ICL Services to increase the number of stores running ICL.Retail software and implement new projects, such as the implementation of AI-based video analytics at self-checkout areas, customer age verification using digital ID in the MAX messenger, and payment for goods using the Digital Ruble.