Like many retail stores, this customer wanted to achieve two things.

Problem

The current ERP requires a customer before generating a quote. This means that a customer that is just browsing would have to commit to giving you a lot of personal information, if all they want is a list of items that they were interested in.

Solution

We built an application that leveraged our existing API from a previous project, to capture a light weight “quote” which was like an Amazon Wishlist. The user could walk around the store scanning products and before leaving could have it printed out. We also offered the option to email the customer a PDF, which would then get that customer into the company’s CDP (Customer Data Platform).

With the shopping intent captured, a customer could come back with the “quote” number, and we could pick back up on the shopping trip. If the customer, had it emailed to them, then we could look it up by email address too.

A unique feature of this system was that it leveraged a physical scanning device like you might have used during a gift registry trip. A customer could walk around, anonymous and build a shopping cart of sorts. They could then get a print out of the items they scanned, and if they so wanted it could be emailed to this. Capturing this email was a key goal, which helped retail stores track customer behavior.

    graph LR
    UI --- API
    Scanner --- Desktop --- API
    API --- ERP

    

If the email address was a known email address, the customer could then take that order and checkout at a later time. There were also future goals of creating a universal cart that would let you shop in store, and checkout on the web later.

Towards the end of my engagement on the project, we were even successful in executing a zero downtime migration to the company’s new ERP system, maintaining quotes, customers, and other reference data.

This project was a fun challenge because it blended together mulitple business systems including ERPs, E-Commerce systems, and marketing tools.