Blog: Embrace an Open and Flexible Self-Service Customer Journey

The rapidly evolving consumer journey is pressuring retailers to be more flexible and faster in their innovation. In the past two decades, the retail environment has expanded from traditional point of sale (POS) to digital interactions across self-checkout, kiosks, and mobile devices.

In this fast-changing landscape, retailers must stay ahead of the game and continually adopt new technologies and channels as they come to market and get quickly adopted by shoppers. However, many retailers remain tied to legacy systems, making changes and new integrations costly and time-consuming.

To thrive in this competitive environment, retailers must break free from their legacy systems and adopt an open-platform approach that streamlines processes, supports faster innovation, and enables quick adoption of new features.

Consumers Demand a Fast and Flexible Experience
An easy and convenient user experience is at the core of every successful customer journey, whether it's a staffed traditional checkout, self-service kiosk, or mobile device. New technologies are continually coming to market, and retailers have increasingly moved to digital channels in the past few years. Many have since adopted mobile ordering systems and kiosks with peripherals like scanners, monitors, and cameras. According to McKinsey, 125 million new U.S. and European consumers have adopted digital channels since the pandemic.

Yet retailers face several challenges when integrating new technologies. The biggest problem is many operate with inflexible legacy systems built from multiple providers or a single provider that locks them into a closed ecosystem. The complexity and cost of these systems lead to long implementation times that can hinder competitiveness and the customer experience. McKinsey notes while retailers with legacy systems often miss out on opportunities, digital leaders generate up to 3.3 times the total shareholder return of laggards.

To meet the growing needs of the modern retail market, retailers need self-service software that enables them to quickly align with the consumer journey. These systems should be able to easily integrate with legacy systems and support a modern user experience with full uptime and availability and an identifiable return on investment.


Supporting Flexibility and Customization with an Open Platform
As they can't keep pace when chained to the cycle of dependence on a single vendor, retailers now need a platform that enables them to choose the best vendor for each application. A flexible, vendor-agnostic platform with open APIs and modular hardware enables retailers to easily integrate new technologies to support a unified customer experience.

This offers several advantages over a traditional solution:

• It supports greater flexibility with one stack for all checkout points and a common core code for enhanced functionality. It can support everything from mobile shopping to kiosks and cash racks with a single software.
• It is agnostic to POS software and can integrate with dozens of solutions through a POS Adapter.
• It offers optional modules with a suite of staff operation and enterprise management tools with open APIs for third-party integrations.
• It is configurable within multiple frameworks for service, process management, and UX.
• It opens the path for next-generation, AI-based solutions and journeys.

Adding Agility and Flexibility to Your POS Software
In the age of continuous technological advancement, retailers need an open platform with the flexibility to meet their needs. DN puts the customer journey at the center of all hardware and software deployments with a team to support the needs of today and tomorrow.

Vynamic® Self-Service is a POS-agnostic software that enables retailers to easily add and configure new modules to their environment. It can integrate with over 80 POS systems with a suite of tools and one standard core code for enhanced functionality. Vynamic Self-Service breaks down the barriers to rapid integrations with a single stack for all checkout touchpoints that can be configured for UX, workflow, and device management.

This enables retailers to quickly adopt new technologies according to their innovation roadmap and keep pace with the latest trends and customer behaviors.
In an era of high consumer demands and fast-paced innovation, retailers can no longer afford to fall behind with cumbersome systems. Now is the time to break free with an open platform to stay at the forefront of retail interactions and the customer journey.