Faster, More Flexible POS Support for a Regional Service Station Retailer

A POS system can have all the essential features, and still fail to serve your retail business. A regional gas station chain realized this firsthand. This business relied on over 1100 of its 1500 stores functioning with a single POS device. While that architecture worked for the retailer’s many stores across 26 states, problems resulted during hardware breakdowns in their retail system.

The retailer relied on one company to warehouse parts for its registers. However, it needed more than 30 vendors to complete field work to resolve POS issues. When a system fails, the store is shut down until a field technician arrives. And though this chain was regional, geography did not work in the retailer’s favor for system maintenance and logistics. Availability of technicians and long distance shipping of parts often added further delays when registers failed. 

In short, acquiring timely, specialized service for their POS system was cumbersome, and its warehouse provider lacked the reach to provide the company’s support needs.

As the company began expanding and exploring different store types, their provider hasn’t grown with them. The company needed a more flexible service partner who could meet their needs now and into the future.

Here’s what we did.

 

Identifying Support Requirements Through Jobs to Be Done

Through a thorough jobs to be done process, Kitestring illuminated all the processes the company was dissatisfied with so we could develop a vision for the future. Using stakeholder interviews, we gained an understanding of pain points and success criteria. Then, we could draft a list of RFP requirements for vendors to provide warehousing and field support for the retailer.

The company needed a wider network of specialized technicians with greater access to any parts required to quickly resolve hardware issues and bring stores back online. We created a scoring system to evaluate prospective vendors to meet these criteria and created presentation requirements for vendors to deliver to the retailer. Then, after facilitating these presentations, we provided an analysis of the results along with our recommendations to narrow the list of vendors.

 

Facilitating Negotiations With a Platform-Agnostic Approach

With Kitestring, the company gained a trusted ally for documenting process flows and securing the right contracts. Our years of experience enable us to understand how processes align with systems we’ve seen in the past and plan accordingly. As the company decided on a vendor, we ensured both they and their partner secured the right protections and accountability in their contracts.

We helped the company establish KPIs for its vendor while ensuring it had data to measure outputs and generate regular reports on their work. Loose contracts lead to loose processes, and we ensured the company gained a fresh start with service boundaries that were unavailable in prior contracts. Instead of starting negotiations from what their old contract included, we encouraged the retailer to secure a fresh start.

We facilitated smooth contract negotiations and pricing exercises side-by-side with the retailer’s procurement team to ensure alignment throughout the engagement. Their contract now matches the growth the chain experienced while also being able to better support the company’s goals for the future. With the right terms in place, we then worked with stakeholders to prepare a presentation to the board to move forward with the new vendor.

 

A Service Partner Fit for a More Secure Future

The retailer identified a partner to provide the full breadth of requirements for successful POS service as well as the capabilities to allow growth moving forward. Instead of a single warehouse, the new vendor has multiple locations around the country to provide parts to each location much faster.

Additionally, the new contract includes incentives for the vendor to work faster to reduce their costs — as well as those of the retailer. Though the transition constituted an investment, the company is seeing it pay off with soft cost savings with less downtime for service outages. 

As a result of these successes, the company is working with the company to implement the transition to the new provider. We are on track to exceed the target transition date without any interruption in support to the retailer’s stores. 

What can Kitestring do to help secure a brighter future for your business? Let’s talk about it.