3 ways Liquorland is crushing inventory management

Liquorland is one of New Zealand’s most successful, sustainable and responsible liquor retailers. With Infinity providing unified inventory, POS and fulfilment, the retailer has added over $100 million in sales in only four years and grown its market share 5 percent - a massive result in a mature market. 

We interviewed Brett O’Hanlon, Liquorland’s Finance and IT Manager, and Andrew Barr, Owner Operator, for insights into how strong inventory management helps to drive profit and sales. 

Many retailers struggle to create a single view of inventory across all locations, but Liquorland is one of the few that has mastered it. Watch the retailer explain how it uses Infinity to reduce costs and optimise its range, delighting customers with personalised experiences that convert.

---

1. Optimising store ordering, merchandising and marketing 

How do Liquorland stores achieve results four times ahead of industry average growth? Brett and Andrew describe how unified commerce helps ensure Liquorland is “match fit” to pursue its ambitious growth strategy. 

Andrew explains:

“Infinity has helped us manage inventory by letting us understand what's selling when and where. This allows us to access cash to invest in products that will help enhance the customer experience.”

---

2. Flexible pricing and promotions 

Brett explains how Liquorland now gives all 130-odd stores “sovereignty” over their own local promotions, while also participating in powerful nationwide offers.   

And to ensure a unified customer experience, all the promotions are available on the ecommerce site:  

Video: Unifying the CX via flexible pricing & promotions

---

3. Forecasting demand to match customer needs 

Andrew says that delivering better cashflow starts with better demand forecasting. 

By having data available across the business, he can build heat maps to predict how much of a specific product customers will want to purchase during key periods of the day or week. That ensures he has the right stock on hand and the right specialist staffing for his customers’ needs. 

Video: Liquorland improves cashflow through better inventory management

---

For more on how Infinity supports Liquorland to offer new omnichannel services, read: Infinity helps Liquorland get click-and-collect ready for lockdown in less than a week

Want help to unify your inventory? Contact us to find out more about how Infinity can give your business an accurate and single view of inventory.

---

Connecting, engaging and delivering: unified commerce’s top benefits

A single retail management platform positively impacts your entire business in so many ways.

1. Simplify your technology

A single commerce platform gives you a leaner and more flexible architecture to deliver greater agility, increased efficiency and more control. By centralising data and systems you can expect many IT efficiency improvements, including:

• Scalability: third parties can easily plug in, building the ecosystem of retail software, tools, resources and devices you can add and change to match your business needs.

• Accuracy: exposing data and functions (rather than moving and replicating them) reduces integration - improving efficiency, decreasing errors and increasing accuracy.

• Easier to maintain: the single centralised platform reduces the need for reconciliation and manual processes to maintain and manage data and functions, and there is only one system to secure.

• Reduced costs: reduced maintenance, management and integration of data and systems decrease your overheads.

---

2. Accelerate speed to market

These improvements in IT efficiency and flexibility let you meet business demands faster and innovate much more quickly. There’s less work required to plug in and implement new functions across channels, test cycles are reduced, and you’ll use development capacity more effectively. Teams currently tied up in building and checking integrations can be moved onto more innovative, customer-centric initiatives.

---

3. Optimise inventory and availability

Your most significant benefit will be increased sales generated by ranging and fulfilment capabilities that enable you to sell products across channels (and even sell products not normally stocked within any channels).

With a single view of stock across all locations, plus the ability to easily move it around the business, you’ll reduce your inventory costs and overall stock requirement. And by giving customers a range of purchasing and fulfilment options, you’ll enhance your service and increase customer satisfaction.

---

4. Boost in-store productivity and sales

You’ll benefit from lower shipping costs and increased sales when your ‘click-and-collect’ customers pick up their purchases at stores, with research showing nearly 50% of users bought additional items when picking up purchases.

Foot traffic has declined, and store closures are increasing. By arming your staff with extensive product details and providing shoppers with experiences that entertain and entice them to linger, you’ll enhance customer interactions, improve staff productivity and ultimately increase conversion.

---

5. Mobilise and personalise your customer experiences

The ability to see each customer’s shopping preferences and history across all channels is critical for building personalised shopping experiences.

With a holistic view of your customers, you’ll be able to better plan your pricing and promotion strategies and get the right offer or message to the right customer, at the right time and right place.

---

6. Use data for business insights

One of the most compelling benefits of unified commerce is the value that comes from using all the centralised data to obtain insightful or actionable information and have it available when and where it’s needed.

A single, unified platform gives you the ability to view all customer touchpoints and react to potential issues in real time. With a single source of truth and powerful analytics, you can turn large amounts of data from disparate sources into insights that help you to attract and engage customers in new ways, and improve your bottom line.

---

For more on unified commerce and why it’s the future of retail, download this free ebook. 

GET THE FREE EBOOK

---

Start your journey to unified commerce. Get in touch

---

Video: Z drives customer loyalty with Infinity

Z Energy’s digital-first approach is unifying the customer experience across every touchpoint.

Watch Z’s Chief Digital Officer, Mandy Simpson, and Head of Site Systems, Andy Stewart, describe how its Pumped loyalty programme delivers the personalised experiences its customers expect. With Infinity providing a real-time view of customers, Z can understand and predict what customers want and develop the experiences they need. 

Mandy explains that Pumped helps Z develop personalised relationships and enhance the customer journey. 

“Customers want quite different things from Z depending on where they are, both in their day and also in their life. Because we can identify those customers and get to know their habits better, it allows us to predict what they're going to want and better help them to achieve their goals.”

Andy explains why Z chose Infinity for its loyalty platform. 

“We knew that Infinity had a loyalty module, we proved very early on that it was the right technology for us and was going to fit very nicely into our point-of-sale landscape. It was a no-brainer for us to make the decision to include that as part of our overall platform.” 

---

For more on how Z Energy is using Infinity Loyalty to create seamless and engaging experiences that are fuelling sales and repeat visits, read our case study.

---

If you’d like to get a real-time view of customers for more personalised experiences, contact us. We’d love to help you develop a unified customer journey.

---

Video: Cue creates award-winning customer experiences with Infinity

Cue Clothing is a retail disruptor. Recently awarded the ORIAS ‘Best Multichannel Retailer’ for the second year running, Cue is unleashing innovations that are building a disruptive competitive advantage.

Watch Shane Lenton, Cue’s Chief Information & Digital Officer, and Lauren Cantwell, Cue’s eCommerce Manager, talk about how the retailer is blending digital and physical channels to reduce friction from every aspect of the customer experience.

With the Infinity unified commerce platform as its core, Cue is creating rich emotional connections, driving up conversions and sending transaction values soaring.

Shane Lenton describes why Cue moved to unified commerce, how he uses Infinity to deliver frictionless commerce across all of Cue’s channels and the business outcomes achieved, saying: 

“It's the nirvana that a retailer looks for - a single view of inventory, a single view of customer and harmonised pricing across channels. And for us, it's become a real game changer.”

---

For more on how Infinity is enabling Cue to create industry-first innovations,  
read the full case study.

---

If you’d like help to reduce friction from your customer experience, get in touch. We’d love to explore how Infinity can help you develop a unified customer journey.

New Zealand Post chooses Triquestra as its strategic partner for transformation of its retail system

NZ Post has signed a multi-year agreement with Triquestra to support its retail transformation. The national delivery provider’s goal is to accelerate its digital transformation and provide richer, more seamless omnichannel customer experiences.

Triquestra’s Infinity unified commerce platform will be installed as NZ Post’s point of sale system in 244 outlets across New Zealand and create a central hub for omnichannel excellence and innovation in the future.

NZ Post will benefit from a modern retail management system that will keep pace with shifting customer expectations and new technologies, and offer more flexibility in how NZ Post engages with its customers.

“We required a modern, scalable and highly available retail management solution to replace our aging POS and create a platform for innovation,” says Mark Yagmich, NZ Post GM Physical Channels.

“After a thorough tender process, we chose Triquestra to help achieve that vision,” adds Mark. “Triquestra has a referenceable track-record of success supporting multi-store retailers at the forefront of omnichannel innovation, with a broad product capability and experience, and the right people and processes to move fast.”

Infinity will replace NZ Post’s legacy POS solution and support its retail operations and management, including point of sale, inventory, customer data, order management, analytics and loyalty.

NZ Post’s transition to Infinity’s point of sale in stores will be a phased approach that starts in August 2021, with deployment and support provided by Triquestra’s implementation partner, ECL Group.

---

Are you looking for ways to keep pace with shifting customer expectations? 

Contact us to see how Infinity can help you merge physical and digital channels to deliver the seamless omnichannel experiences consumers now expect.

Video: Z creates world-first customer experiences with Infinity

With Infinity providing a single customer view, Z is elevating expectations of the fuel retail experience.

Z Energy is New Zealand’s largest fuel retailer with more than 500 Z and Caltex sites. 

With Infinity, Z is pursuing growth opportunities and delivering award-winning customer experiences, including a world-first innovation – Sharetank, a virtual fuel tank.

Z’s Chief Digital Officer, Mandy Simpson, and Head of Site Systems, Andy Stewart, share how the fuel retailer is digitising its business to deliver the unified experiences its customers expect and how Infinity and Triquestra has helped.

Mandy explains that Z is transforming for a digital future where they can predict what customers are going to want and then deliver the experiences they need, saying: “That is the heart of the digitisation goal, which is producing really amazing experiences for our customers, for our employees, and for everybody who works with us.”

Andy describes how Z’s use of Infinity has evolved from point of sale through to enabling a truly unified experience.

“We're now able to get complete visibility of our customers by virtue of the fact that every transaction that a customer does at a Z site comes through one of the Infinity products, whether that's point of sale or whether that's via our app channel. 

“We're able to use that data now,” adds Andy. “We know when our customers are shopping with us, we know when they're not shopping with us, and we're able to harness that data to enhance our loyalty experience for those people.”

---

If you’d like help to develop your unified customer journey, get in touch. We’d love to explore how Infinity can help you give customers more personalised and frictionless experiences across all channels.

How our clients made the top 25 of Australian CIOs

Two of our amazing clients have been recognised in the latest CIO50. Shane Lenton of Cue Clothing is ranked #8 and Rohan Penman formerly of T2 Tea is ranked #23 on the list of Australia’s most innovative technology and digital leaders.

We’re very proud of the partnerships we’ve built and how Infinity supports each retailer to deliver frictionless customer experiences that are driving engagement and growing revenue. And we feel very fortunate to work with such inspiring leaders and their talented teams to deliver game-changing customer experiences.

Here’s why Shane and Rohan made the cut:

---

Shane Lenton – the innovator

Shane is among the first retailers globally to pioneer unified commerce to create immersive and “zero-friction” experiences for customers across all channels and touchpoints.

That meant that Cue was able to find entirely new and now bursting pockets of opportunity during the pandemic, with the CIO50 judges saying: 

“The results have been spectacular, with Cue establishing itself as a true innovator in transforming the retail experience at a time when most companies in the sector were on their knees if they hadn’t yet closed their doors.”

Read Shane’s CIO50 story where he shares his approach to delivering award-winning customer experiences.

---

Rohan Penman – the change agent

Rohan’s ranking is fantastic recognition of his success driving a major digital transformation over the past 24 months, revamping enterprise systems including the implementation of our Infinity unified commerce platform.

Rohan and his team also managed the global rollout of Infinity point of sale, saying: “This has transformed inventory management as well as customer loyalty and voucher tracking, giving customers more immersive and frictionless experiences.”

Read Rohan’s CIO50 story where he shares his milestones over the past year, and approach to leadership and agile working.

---

If you’d like help to develop a unified customer journey, get in touch. We’d love to explore how Infinity can help you give customers more personalised and frictionless experiences across all channels.

---

Find out how a move to a unified commerce strategy gives you the flexibility and agility to keep ahead of consumers’ changing needs. Download our ebook.

GET THE EBOOK

How a unified commerce platform solves retail inventory problems

This post was originally published January 2020 and updated on 15 October 2020

---

Many retailers have launched new contactless delivery and self-serve options but can only access rudimentary sales and inventory positions. That prevents them from offering the ‘buy anywhere, fulfil anywhere’ services that are best for customers and most profitable for them.

Managing inventory is one of the most challenging processes for retailers – no matter their size. It’s also the largest cost. It’s a balancing act to strike the right stock levels and adjust those levels as your business changes. Understocks lead to missed sales and dissatisfied customers, and overstocks tie up your capital and result in markdowns that can hurt your margins. 

Some retailers struggle with the fundamentals of inventory control, such as stock taking, demand forecasting, planning and receipting. And in a world where online and offline channels are blending into a single brand experience, customers expect access to products wherever and whenever they want.

---

Unify your inventory 

To provide the purchasing and fulfilment options you need for frictionless experiences that delight customers and reduce costs, you first need to get tight control of your inventory. 

A unified commerce platform gives you a single, accurate and up-to-date view of inventory so you can be sure that you have the right product at the right place at the right time.

With unified inventory management across all locations, you can make better decisions about what stock to order and how to make it available in your physical, mobile, online stores and call centres. 

 You can react to trends quickly, and forecast demand based on historical data, sales forecasts and seasonal variations. And with the platform’s open architecture and APIs, you’re free to add new features, channels, apps and services that will increase customer satisfaction and benefit your business in many ways:

• Increase sales with ‘endless aisle’ capabilities that let you sell products stocked in any location and have them delivered direct or collected by the customer

• Reduce inventory costs by moving stock to the right location when it’s needed and cutting your overall stock requirements

• Create dark stores for online order fulfilment, turning physical locations into temporary or permanent fulfilment nodes to enable faster delivery and keep retail staff working

• Turn locations on and off for endless aisle fulfilment based on the stock mix and quantities, store closures due to the pandemic or surges in online shopping

• Lower fulfilment costs by delivering direct to the customer using store-to-door, warehouse-to-door, click-and-collect, kerbside pickup or optimised sourcing

• Offer more purchasing and fulfilment options to customers so they can locate items in-store, buy online, collect in-store, reserve online, receive the same day or at a time and location of their choice

• Optimise your product range by matching stock to each store’s location, community and demographics while still giving access to your complete range via endless aisle

• Extend your range across more sales channels such as in-store kiosks, shoppable screens, pop-up stores, concessions and mobile devices.

---

Retailers reaping inventory benefits with the Infinity unified commerce platform

T2 Tea makes shopping contactless

We partnered with T2 Tea to quickly offer a new click-and-collect service in its 20 Australian stores. After achieving a massive 350% increase in click-and-collect orders, it has been turned on in New Zealand, Singapore, the UK and US.

Cue delivers anywhere, anyhow

With a ‘buy anywhere, fulfil anywhere’ strategy and Infinity’s centralised hub providing the inventory and fulfilment smarts, Cue Clothing is using its 240+ stores across Australasia to take on online giants like Amazon and changing the way customers shop.

Night ‘n Day gets tight control of inventory

By simplifying inventory management with Infinity, convenience grocery retailer Night ‘n Day is cutting costs, freeing up time and increasing net profit to around $12,000 per store each year.

---

If you’ve put in place some quick-fixes to get new capabilities up-and-running and are now looking at how to build a foundation for frictionless customer experiences, talk to us about how to start with a single view of inventory.

---

For more on unified commerce and why it’s the future of retail, download this free ebook.

GET YOUR FREE GUIDE

Why unified commerce is the nirvana of omnichannel

This post was originally published on 3 March 2020 and updated on 21 July 2020

---

We’ve seen a dramatic shift to digital channels during the pandemic. Many retailers had to take a  ‘just get something done’ approach to creating seamless customer experiences that span channels.

Now they’re struggling with omnichannel set-ups that simply link digital and physical systems together, and they don’t have the ability to keep pace with changing consumer behaviours.

But omnichannel should not be the end goal. It’s just one approach to getting a single view of your customers that will help you deliver unified experiences. 

Instead, a unified commerce platform will break down your channel silos and move your retail business toward the holy grail of holistic, real-time, personalised customer experiences spanning in-store, online and everywhere in between.

To help explain why unified commerce is the nirvana of omnichannel, here’s a look at where we are now and where we’re going.

---

Multi-channel

To meet customer expectations for safety and convenience, retailers are giving customers access to new mobile and online channels. Each touchpoint and channel operates independently, with separate people, processes and technologies existing in functional silos.

But when you only add and don’t actually integrate new channels with the rest of your organisation, you create bad service experiences that frustrate internal teams and customers.

Silos mean that your customers have to deal with inconsistencies and gaps, such as incomplete sales histories, different tones of voice or having to start conversations afresh in each channel. These silos inevitably lead to disappointment and frustration, a lack of trust and even a sense that your organisation is incompetent.

---

Omnichannel

With an omnichannel approach, customers can access different channels to interact with your brand, and you finally have a single view of the customer, however, your channels are still operating in functional silos.

That means most attempts to offer unified experiences fall short. 

You could be struggling with legacy technologies that have been customised and are infrequently updated, and then you try to bolt-on new digital solutions that don’t easily integrate. These omnichannel systems are fragile, inefficient and costly to maintain.

And things can easily unravel. Adding new channels, faster fulfilment and new payment options can lead to a torrent of inconsistent and inaccurate data which cannot be shared without significant investments in data integration.

---

Unified commerce 

With a unified commerce retail management system (RMS), you can achieve retail nirvana by creating immersive and frictionless experiences for customers across all channels.

A unified commerce platform gives you a single source of truth for inventory and customer data. With this one view of the customer, and all customer channels and engagement points connected in real-time, you can deliver a personalised and consistent customer experience. 

This capability has been a game changer for our clients.

It eliminates the customer journey pain points and amplifies the ‘wow’ moments. Now you can treat each customer as an individual, all the time – one person with one account, interacting with one brand.  

Unified commerce can benefit your business in many ways:

• It provides a stable backbone by acting as the hub for all your channels, reducing integration and operating costs, while increasing efficiency and accuracy. 

• It’s also your platform for innovating – a springboard for adding new channels and services, giving you the ability to take advantage of new capabilities and deliver results at a speed and scale that unachievable within a traditional omnichannel model.

• It gives you total control over all your inventory and lets you create seamless and personalised purchasing, payment and fulfilment options across ‘endless aisle’ shopping, fast (eg 30-minute) click-and-collect, kerbside pickup, store-to-door, shoppable screens, kiosks and hyper-personalised loyalty offers.

• You can deliver frictionless experiences and let customers access your entire product range from any location, including stores, online, mobile, shoppable screens, pop-ups, stores within stores, virtual showrooms, social channels, call centres and more.

• And our savviest clients are now investing in new customer-facing technologies, like chatbots, mobile apps and AI. Some are pioneering contextual commerce – the ability to seamlessly implement purchase opportunities into everyday activities (such as Shoppable Instagram and Facebook). 

The end result is the ability to deliver the personal, ubiquitous and unified experiences your customers expect, fostering loyalty, driving growth and improving profitability.

---

Your next step

We’d love to support your journey to unified commerce nirvana. Get in touch and let’s chat about your retail future.

---

For more on unified commerce and why it’s the future of retail, download this free guide to unified commerce.

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

Nutrien Ag Solutions selects Triquestra to provide premium retail experiences

Leading Australian agriculture retailer will standardise its retail operations to give customers seamless experiences using Infinity 

We’re thrilled to announce that Nutrien Ag Solutions has chosen Triquestra as its strategic partner for the standardisation of its point of sale systems.

---

Nutrien Ag Solutions has a goal of being Australia’s ag retailer of the future and is committed to creating a consistent brand experience to meet the changing needs of customers, with a focus on digital solutions and ecommerce initiatives that support its network of stores and growers.

Formed from the merger of the Landmark and Ruralco businesses in late 2019, Nutrien Ag Solutions is a subsidiary of Nutrien, the world’s largest provider of crop inputs and services. The combined operation has a network of 290 corporate-owned stores, 165 joint ventures and other retail, plus 320 independent rural supplies retailers and a suite of other businesses.

Triquestra’s Infinity unified commerce platform will be Nutrien Ag Solutions’ point of sale system in all of its retail stores across Australia.

Nutrien will benefit from a modern retail management system that will keep pace with shifting customer expectations and new technologies, and offer the flexibility to quickly add new stores, channels and touchpoints when needed. Infinity will integrate with Nutrien’s other technology solutions, including SAP ERP.

---

Are you looking for ways to keep pace with shifting customer expectations?

Contact us and see how a unified commerce platform can help you merge physical and digital channels to deliver the safe, convenient and localised services consumers now expect.