Endless aisles

In retail, endless aisles is a concept that enables physical stores to offer customers a greater selection of articles that what's available in the stores themselves. This is convenient for both customers and stores because it helps prevent lost sales and wasted time, for example if:

  • an article is sold out in the store

  • an article isn't available in the quantity that the customer wants to buy

  • an article is too bulky to sell in the store

In such cases, the customer can simply order the non-available articles in-store, through an API-facilitated integration between the chain's POS and eCommerce solutions. They can then have the articles delivered to their doorstep, to the store for pickup, or to another pickup point of their choice.

With endless aisles, customers typically use in-store tablets or kiosks, mobile apps, or simply speak to their friendly shop assistant, to order any articles that aren't physically available in the store.

When customers order, they're typically also able to pay for any articles that they did find on the store's shelves, using any payment method, loyalty program, etc. that the store supports.

In other words: With endless aisles, customers can effortlessly mix physical and digital purchases and pay in one go.

52ViKING is a fast and stable POS solution. 52ViKING is widely used, with more than three million transactions seamlessly going through the system every day.

The solution is built with a modern tech stack that compiles data and makes the translation to machine code up to 50 percent faster than other programming languages, leading to a low average scan time. The speed of 52ViKING brings benefits to both customers and retailers. Low scan times and fast transactions support the good customer experience and can prevent loss of sales.

52ViKING plays a very important role if your organization wants to offer endless aisles:

From an administration perspective, the speed and accuracy of pushing prices, discounts, and campaigns to multiple stores, and – with integrations – multiple sales channels, not only provides peace of mind to retailers. It ensures that customers can trust prices – no matter where or how they shop with you.

The 52ViKING service platform is the cornerstone of our headless POS offering:

The service platform consists of services and APIs that together enable smooth and seamless retail operations on all levels from individual POSs across stores and chains to full-fledged unified commerce.

The service platform uses the same logic and pricing engine across channels to support endless aisles and seamless, highly flexible customer journeys across all touchpoints.

All services under the service platform can run in the cloud or on-premise (edge computing) as well as in any required combination.

Running unified commerce with physical and online stores is often associated with difficulties in correct pricing across channels. Discounts, personal offers, and loyalty points are just some parameters that provide complexity.

All parameters need to be taken into account with lightning speed to ensure that customers always get the correct prices no matter where and when they shop. But how does that work?

The answer is the Fiftytwo suite of APIs (Application Programming Interfaces) that help integrate different systems.

It facilitates lightning-fast handling of master data about articles, campaigns, customers, stores, etc. This includes continuous ingestion into your POS solution of master data from your organization’s ERP system.

Such continuous ingestion is paramount to keep article information, prices, and discounts incessantly aligned across every sales channel in a unified commerce ecosystem that may include eCommerce, Scan&Go solutions, Click&Collect, loyalty programs, customer apps, etc.

Fiftytwo offers two series of powerful APIs that let you work intelligently and flexibly with all aspects of your unified commerce environment:

If you don't have software development skills in your organization, reach out to us and a Fiftytwo consultant can help your organization use the APIs.

Related: 52ViKING

Related: Understand 52ViKING architecture

Related: Unified commerce

Related: Order handling for click & collect

Related: Fiftytwo cloud-based APIs

Related: Fiftytwo on-premise APIs