Experia Group — A seamless omnichannel experience for a loyalty system

Experia Group brought us in to build an advanced loyalty platform for their client, a well-known Italian jewelry brand with more than 50 stores and an e-commerce. The store management system turned out to be extensible, so that part was never the problem. The hard part was making the loyalty programme feel like one seamless experience for the customer, whether in a shop or online, with nothing breaking at the checkout.

Context

Experia Group, an IT solutions company, was delivering a fidelity card programme for their client, a well-known Italian jewelry brand with a large network of stores and an online shop. It was not a simple stamp card. It needed advanced points management and discount tiers that worked the same way in-store and online, so that the whole thing felt like one programme across every channel, all without disrupting the systems already running the business.

The challenge

The store management system was built for one thing, the cash registers. Yet it also had to back the e-commerce, a channel it was never designed for, so underneath the whole programme sat a till-centric system that was being asked to behave like an omnichannel one. It was extensible enough to link to a modern stack, which made integrating it careful but manageable work. The harder part was the mismatch it created.

That challenge was really about multichannel seen from the customer's point of view. Omnichannel is easy to say and hard to feel, because a point earned at a till has to be spendable online the same instant, the discount a customer is entitled to has to be the same in a shop and on the site, and a balance has to be the same number wherever you look. None of it can break at the moment of truth, which is the checkout.

This is where the integration got hard. A member's loyalty discount is applied directly inside the point-of-sale, so the loyalty layer has to plug into the register's own flow, and the register does not wait. The discount has to be returned within 150 milliseconds, the window the POS software allows before it stops waiting and moves on, and if you miss it the discount silently fails to apply in front of the customer. The bar was therefore not just to make it work across channels, but to make it feel like one programme every time, on every channel, without ever stalling the till.

Approach

Extending the store management system. We owned the integration, working through the SDK and API that the system's vendor provided. A modern loyalty layer talks to it without changing it, so the store system stays the source of record while the new stack carries everything it was never designed to handle. Putting new capabilities in a modern layer also reduces the business's dependency on the store system's vendor, because future features no longer have to wait on what that system can do.

A platform for the full card lifecycle. We built one place to issue cards, renew them, and manage the discount tiers that decide what each customer is entitled to. Cards are issued directly from the checkout software, so a customer can sign up at the till with no back-office step.

A tamper-evident ledger with consensus. Points are effectively money, so we managed them on a blockchain-style ledger that is append-only and fully traceable. With more than 50 stores and the e-commerce moving points at the same time, a consensus mechanism reconciles concurrent operations into one agreed balance, so there is no double-counting, no drift between channels, and no way for the same card to spend the same points twice in two places. This is what lets a customer trust the number they see, wherever they see it.

The member's discount, applied at the till within 150 ms. When a loyalty member checks out, the discount their tier entitles them to has to be applied right inside the point-of-sale, and the register does not wait. We designed the loyalty layer so a customer's entitlement is resolved at the till well within the 150 millisecond window, with nothing slow to fetch at the moment of payment. The discount is therefore always there when the checkout asks for it, in every store and online alike.

Results

• One omnichannel loyalty programme that feels the same everywhere, so that across more than 50 stores and the e-commerce the same card, points, and discounts behave identically in-store and online.
• A balance the customer can trust wherever they look, because a point earned in a shop is spendable online the same instant and every channel reads and writes the same ledger.
• The member's discount returned within the 150 millisecond checkout window, so it applies at the register instead of silently failing in front of the customer.
• The store management system extended to support a modern stack, which reduces the business's dependency on the original vendor, because new capabilities now live in a modern layer the business controls instead of being limited to what the store system can do, and all of it was delivered without disrupting the business already running on it.
• Cards issued directly at the till, so a customer can join and start earning on the spot.

What we learned

Extending the system was the easy half, and the experience was the hard one. Omnichannel only means something if the customer never feels the seams, which means the points, the discounts, and the balance have to be identical and immediate no matter where someone looks, and nothing can break at the checkout. Designing from that experience backwards, rather than from the integration forwards, is what made the difference. The store system simply needed a modern layer built around it, with the customer's experience as the real specification.