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Delivering Six Retail Projects with Rapid Team Scaling

How ELEKS helped Blackboard to develop a set of POS and store management solutions
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About the client

Blackboard is a leading US provider of technology solutions for learners and educational institutions

Industry: Retail
Location: USA
Client since: 2016
 
Quick team scaling from two to 30 experts
 
Six projects with flexible delivery models
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The Situation
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 UI/UX 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 UX 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.

The solution
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 a 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:

  • An 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.
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The Results
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 UI/UX 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.

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The breadth of knowledge and understanding that ELEKS has within its walls allows us to leverage that expertise to make superior deliverables for our customers. When you work with ELEKS, you are working with the top 1% of the aptitude and engineering excellence of the whole country.

sam fleming
Sam Fleming
President, Fleming-AOD

Right from the start, we really liked ELEKS’ commitment and engagement. They came to us with their best people to try to understand our context, our business idea, and developed the first prototype with us. They were very professional and very customer oriented. I think, without ELEKS it probably would not have been possible to have such a successful product in such a short period of time.

Caroline Aumeran
Caroline Aumeran
Head of Product Development, appygas

ELEKS has been involved in the development of a number of our consumer-facing websites and mobile applications that allow our customers to easily track their shipments, get the information they need as well as stay in touch with us. We’ve appreciated the level of ELEKS’ expertise, responsiveness and attention to details.

Samer Awajan
Samer Awajan
CTO, Aramex