Delivering Six Retail Projects with Rapid Team Scaling
Blackboard wants to upgrade its retail offering with new UI and mobile solutions
Blackboard’s Transact division, which focuses on retail solutions for campus services, contracted ELEKS to upgrade their customer experience and build an API for their self-service kiosk solution — a food court ordering system for campuses. Moreover, they wanted to expand their retail offering for campus services with a mobile application suite for bookstore management.
Blackboard preferred ELEKS to other vendors due to our strong CX expertise, flexibility in terms of cooperation models and the ability to quickly ramp-up and scale the project team. Since the beginning of our cooperation, our team grew from two to 30 experts working on six different projects.
Improved user experience for self-service kiosks and three bookstore management apps
ELEKS designed an entirely new user experience for our client’s food court POS terminals. The redesigned, self-service kiosk is a multi-platform solution that fully supports the food ordering process, allows for instant order customisation and offers secure and convenient payment options. Thanks to the scalable block structure of the newly developed user interface, any type of goods can be added, allowing the offering to extend to additional products. ELEKS also developed an API to establish smooth communication between the POS and the system’s backend to boost its responsiveness and improve performance.
Additionally, the ELEKS team developed a comprehensive system for smart bookstore management. The system includes three iOS applications facilitating and automating the inventory, selling and rental return processes:
- iCount application enables easy and fast scanning of items in stock using a mobile phone camera. The solution facilitates inventory auditing procedures, such as annual physical inventories and regular cycle counts.
- iSell is a mobile POS for bookstore cashiers that offers greater mobility when scanning and selling items. iSell supports different payment methods, issues an email or print receipts, as well as generates reports on the sales history and the payment methods used.
- iReturn was designed to simplify and streamline the return process for rented books. The app displays the rental lists upon scanning a student’s ID, allows for the application of fines for lost, damaged or late items and automatically offers buyback for the non-rental options.
Satisfying the market need for flexible and customisable retail solutions
The newly developed bookstore management applications provide our client with greater flexibility, allowing for the deployment of fully functional POS at remote locations with no technical infrastructure needed. The apps eliminate the manual processing of transactions and minimise human factor errors. Moreover, the system significantly increases the mobility of salespeople and provides store management with comprehensive tools to effectively track KPIs and their employees’ performance.
A new smart digital self-service kiosk with customisable interface and streamlined purchase process allowed our customer to create a competitive advantage on the market. The solution is very flexible and easy to customise to specific market needs with no additional interface redesign needed.
