Our client is a renowned multinational retailer with a hub based in Western Europe, specializing in the fast fashion segment. With over 50 years of successful presence in the market, our client currently operates a network of 450 stores across 18 countries.
The client's primary challenge was the vendor's inability to implement required changes to the solution quickly enough to meet the needs of the business. In addition, the client faced new fiscal regulations in most of the countries where they operate, and the vendor was unable to ensure compliance with these regulations.The current solution also had shortcomings that led to long lines at the cash registers. Frequent breakdowns and downtime of the cash registers resulted in decreased customer loyalty and financial losses for the retailer.
To optimize their business processes, the client needed to perform global upgrades of their cash register and server systems in all countries where they operate. However, the slow speed and lack of flexibility of one of their contractors' IT solutions failed to meet the client's expectations. As a result, they turned to ICL Services specialists to perform the necessary service tasks.
Key Challenges
- Development, maintenance and implementation of the new solution
- Providing a comprehensive software update and rollout to over 10,000 cash registers in 18 countries, ensuring compliance with local regulations
- Installing and configuring cash registers, servers, and other business applications in new store locations
- Implementing changes to the new solution while simultaneously rolling out the solution to new countries
- Managing changes and releases of business applications in the store infrastructure
Solution
Implemented our solution
- The project began in August 2018. It was necessary to deploy a two-part commerce solution: a store server solution and a cash register solution. The cash register solution included the operating system, databases, drivers, and third-party applications.
- The project required the implementation and deployment of solutions across 18 countries where the retailer has a presence, with up to 400 people working on the development of the branded platform and its suite of applications in various areas at different times.
- At the onset of the project, the ICL Services team conducted a business process audit and proposed an IT solution architecture to the customer. Given the scope of the tasks, clear task moderation was required, and work planning was carried out according to the SAFe methodology, which provided synchronization of many teams. To ensure continuous development, testing, integration, and support of products, ICL Services specialists used the DevOps approach. By utilizing the Agile approach, they were able to ensure the high speed of IT solution delivery, taking only 4 to 6 months for the opening of sales in a new country.
- The customer had different requests depending on the geography of the stores, so in addition to the basic solution set of functions, the team developed various modules:
- ● Software for self-service cash desks;
- ● Software for automated updating of cash register software;
- ● Software for selling food and beverages;
- ● Software for salespeople working "in the field" to access inventory information from tablets and mobile devices;
- ● Software for integrating the in-store system with the online sales system;
- ● Integration modules with external data providers;
- ● Store server software for centralized management, collection, reporting, and interaction with other customer systems;
- ● Cash register (POS) application customization taking into account the peculiarities of each country of presence, such as compliance with fiscal requirements, integration of loyalty programs and translation into the language of users.
- ICL Servises specialists ensured the deployment of the new software for the customer in all stores of the company, and in some cases carried out the physical presence. Hey also organized 2nd and 3rd line support for quick troubleshooting of application and platform issues.
- The multilingual nature of the distributed development, support and management team, requests for urgent overnight weekend work and a host of other project challenges were clearly overcome by the professional staff and managers at ICL Services.
Products and technologies
- ● .Net
- ● C#
- ● MS SQL
- ● Git
- ● Azure DevOps
- ● Windows
- ● Ansible
- ● Rundeck
- ● MS Test
- ● NUnit
- ● WinAppDriver
- ● Selenium
- ● JetBrains dotMemory
- ● JetBrains dotTrace
Results
- The implementation of the merchant solution has significantly accelerated the customer's operational processes, enabling cashiers to serve more customers per day.
- The system has already processed over half a billion transactions, with a peak of more than 2 million transactions per day, thanks to timely application updates and easy management of product availability.
- The customer has been able to expand its operations to 18 countries and increase the number of cash registers to 10,000.
- We identified critical points of equipment failure and increased the fault tolerance of cash registers, minimizing business process stoppages and reducing financial and reputational losses.
- The new software's capabilities enabled the customer to launch new service formats, such as Click and Collect (advance order via the Internet) and SCO (self-service cash desks).
- The support of legislation by the new cash register software in 17 European countries and all U.S. states enabled the customer to open stores in six new countries.