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Retail

Driving Seven-Figure Savings and 40% Higher Employee Adoption by Modernizing a Mobile Point of Sale System

Driving Seven-Figure Savings and 40% Higher Employee Adoption by Modernizing a Mobile Point of Sale System

For supporting the customer purchasing journey, many retail companies rely on off-the-shelf mobile Point of Sale (mPOS) systems for more efficient interactions. But as a company grows, these subscription-based systems can become limited in scope and expensive to use, directly impeding the customer experience and affecting the bottom line. When a Fortune 500 retailer set their sights on a mobile-first strategy to drive business growth, they envisioned replacing their legacy mPOS system with a modern, customized mobile solution. They wanted to streamline store operations and elevate the customer experience. To achieve their goals, they knew they needed a partner who could take them from idea to impact.

How We Went from Ideas to Impact

  • The Idea

    A Fortune 500 retailer sought to modernize its mobile Point of Sale (mPOS) system to enhance the customer experience and reduce escalating subscription costs. By replacing their off-the-shelf solution with a custom-built UI, they could eliminate licensing fees that were set to increase 2.5x, improve store operations, and drive long-term savings.

  • The Process

    UDig worked closely with the retailer to design and implement a custom mPOS solution that seamlessly integrated with their existing systems. By embedding ourselves in their team—visiting stores, testing the legacy system, and collaborating with their engineers—we ensured the new UI was both intuitive and scalable. Our Iterative Design Approach allowed us to refine the solution in real time, incorporating a pilot test to validate usability before full deployment.

  • The Impact

    Within the first year, the retailer will break even on their investment while eliminating recurring licensing costs, achieving long-term savings nearing seven figures annually. The new solution has led to a 40% increase in employee adoption, enhancing in-store efficiency and elevating the customer purchasing experience. By moving away from a rigid legacy system, they successfully brought their mobile-first strategy to life across all 2,300 retail stores.

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:

  • 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.
  • 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.
  • 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.
  • 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:

  • 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.
  • 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.
  • 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: 

  • 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.
  • 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

Increased Sales Efficiency, Better Customer Experience, and Impressive Business Savings

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.

  • How We Did It
    Design StrategyDevelopment & ModernizationProduct Design & ValidationPrototypingTechnology Strategy & Architecture
  • Tech Stack
    Feature-Oriented Modular ArchitectureJavaOracle XStore POSReact NativeReact NavigationRTK QueryTypeScript

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