In-store experience and universal basket checkout platform

The challenges of omnichannel are now a well-understood set of issues for retailers, but even within the past two years, in-store habits have changed dramatically. While consumers now expect retailers to offer a frictionless, omnichannel experience, the range of channels has expanded greatly.

Modern consumers can be as equally inspired by an Instagram post or friends’ recommendation, which leads them to find a product by browsing e-commerce but then subsequently purchase in-store. Alternatively, they may be moved by an in-store experience to purchase online. Alternatively, they may be moved by an in-store experience to purchase online. Delivering consistency across these omnichannel experiences is vital. The challenge is that retailers rely on silos that split customer-facing e-commerce from backend systems. The gap leads to poor customer experiences that lose revenue.

Mercaux is transforming legacy Point of Sale (PoS) into a suite of composable ‘Points Of Service’ solutions that supports a customer’s entire in-store path-to-purchase, from product discovery and personalisation through to checkout. In-store transaction capabilities are critical, making legacy PoS irrelevant in the modern retail environment. Basic functionality, high cost of ownership and slow upgrade schedules are prohibitive to an industry that needs to transform quickly. Consequently, retailers are turning to best-in-class composable architectures to deliver a better in-store experience and additional business benefits with speed and agility through Self-Service, Assisted-Service and Checkout-as-a-Service solutions. A composable, API-first architecture is at the heart of Mercaux’s Next Generation Composable Platform.

This technology connects stores with e-commerce, customer data platforms (CDP), order management systems (OMS), product information management (PIM) tools, payment systems, and other technologies. Mercaux provides the lens through which retailers can leverage the wealth of customer data in-store, creating a more personalised experience. The platform is built around three layers. The Experience layer redefines how customers interact with the physical store through assisted selling and self-service solutions. Universal Baskets follow the customer wherever they continue their omnichannel experience. Finally, Next-Gen POS allows customers to complete the transaction anywhere, using any payment method. Mercaux tools go live in as little as two weeks, with clients seeing an immediate increase in conversion, and units per transaction (UPT). On average, customers experience a sales uplift of 8% and a five fold return on investment (ROI).

Mercaux joined the MACH Alliance in May 2022, citing the shared vision of delivering a connected and frictionless retail experience for the customer. Building on these shared values, Mercaux recently joined forces with two fellow MACH Alliance members – commercetools and Fluent Commerce.

The partnership with commercetools has focused on improving the fluidity of the omnichannel journey, fusing the online and offline worlds to provide consumers with flexibility in their chosen path-to-purchase. Fluent Commerce’s Headless OMS and Mercaux’s Composable In-Store Platform came together to turn “fulfilment into an experience” by facilitating a frictionless omnichannel fulfilment and checkout experience for customers. Based on this disruption, Mercaux has already claimed that legacy PoS technology is set to reach the end of its useful life, as retailers opt for fully digitized experiences that can exploit any integrations that the customer demands, all the way through to checkout.

For further detail on MACH at Mercaux, please contact the team.