Invenco: partnering petrol forecourts on their transformation journeys
Invenco, a global provider of secure self-service payment terminals and convenience store solutions, is a game-changer in modern convenience and forecourt retailing.
The global business, whose suite of products includes pay-at-pump terminals, IoT retail microservices solutions and a cloud-based management platform, has an open platform approach that is modernizing the forecourt with increased customer engagement opportunities facilitated by agile infrastructure implementations.
Dan Harrell
For retailers in the process of, or thinking about starting a digital transformation journey, Dan Harrell, Chief Innovations Office of Invenco, notes: “How you define your infrastructure will govern what business opportunities you [can then] go out and accomplish.” Invenco believes in laying a strong foundation first, with flexibility, agility, open APIs and ease of ongoing management key factors in getting there. The right system will improve a site immediately in available offerings and operational efficiency, while positioning that site for ongoing success with easy adaptation or implementations to address future compliance regulations and consumer trends.
Business versus tech concept
The mention of APIs can sound daunting for those not working in the IT sector. But for business to move forward in the right direction, Invenco believes it’s important that retailers ditch the ‘tech speak’ and consider APIs as a business concept that can bring new opportunities to the convenience retail ‘party’ rather than a technical item.
“Retailers don’t need to be intimidated by technical concepts and don’t have to talk in technical terms,” Harrell maintains. He explains APIs are the platform for communication between each function that takes place at a retailer site. Ideally communication is a simple, clear channel. However, proprietary systems often have communication channels which overlap across several areas of function or are blocked from communicating with third-party systems, which makes it difficult for sites to add to or update existing systems. When an API is set up correctly, it should provide more data and more opportunities for retailers to make improvements to their customer journeys now and in the future.
Payments opportunities
Craig Panter
According to Invenco, outdoor payments, the company’s heartland, is undoubtedly the “elephant in the room” and the most complex piece of a site’s infrastructure to address. This is because outdoor payments are often coupled to a Point-of-Sale system (PoS). Craig Panter, Chief Business Development Officer of Invenco, says: “These systems are typically run and certified by monolithic IT providers with long-standing industry influence.
“As a result, retailers can be held hostage by providers who chose closed API systems, which are not able to integrate with third-party solutions. Many retailers with long-standing partnerships with these providers end up ‘sticking with what they know’, not realizing the difference between their Point-of-Sale provider not being able to do something, versus not being willing to do something. In the end, the PoS provider is the end beneficiary of a system that is difficult to challenge, while the retailer is missing out on valuable revenue-generating opportunities.”
With payments as a microcosm of what goes on with system-wide, closed-platform API infrastructures; Invenco’s approach to developing site-wide platforms is focused on setting retailers up to get the most out of their solutions through third-party integrations, simplified system adjustments and the ability to connect with any Point-of-Sale on the market that is willing to do so.
Invenco product breakdown
While Invenco is known for its outdoor payment technology at the petrol pump, it is also one of the first providers to offer certified and secure, cloud-based and cloud-managed products and services to the global retail fuel market. With expertise rooted in the forecourt payment structure, Harrell notes: “Our approach to solving the challenges, which retailers have with their store systems is common to their challenges with outdoor payment systems. Invenco is building a single platform for the whole world, which is extendable and meets the needs of different retailers and different countries, [as] the patterns of solving the problem is pretty much the same.”
In the industry’s current state, “a lot of systems that retailers are running are 15-20 years old. They are highly coupled, and monolithic,” states Harrell. “You have to make a lot of changes to the entire system if you want to introduce something new.”
Invenco’s iNFX solution addresses these issues with a system that is set up as individual but connected building blocks rather than a spider web. Each ‘block’ is a piece of light software that solves one piece of functionality at a time. All iNFX microservices (blocks) have open APIs for communication back and forth between any additional blocks needed for that function to take place, with blocks that don’t need to be included left out of the process. By disconnecting functionality into separate microservice ‘blocks’, site infrastructure becomes more clean, clear and easy to manage.
With communication paths clearly defined and not overlapping into unneeded ‘blocks’, the iNFX set up also means that when something needs to be changed within one block, that block is easy to access, and the changes do not need to affect any additional blocks which are not related to that functionality.
When it comes to installing additional capabilities (think loyalty, media, data collection) each component of iNFX functionality uses industry-standardized API (remember, communication) protocols, so the information needed to establish communication between internal system functionality blocks and third-party functionality blocks is readily available and easy to set up.
Actionable data for better business
An open platform provides better accessibility to data, too. According to Panter, this is critical when it comes to convenience store inventory. “Many retailer systems today are closed and don’t provide access to itemised inventory for third parties,” he says. As a result, inventories for delivery or ordering will be out of kilter with those for store-based customers, which becomes a challenge for retailers to manage. Invenco’s open API structure provides the ability for systems to communicate and share that type of information be it for the c-store environment, fuel sales or new customer flows.
“The approach also provides clear data benefits relative to customer engagements,” says Harrell. Cloud systems with open APIs integrate with data collection services that gather a variety of information to better understand how the convenience experience influences different customer flows. A forward-facing example of this will be in seeing how providing electricity (versus fuel) to vehicles impacts a retailer’s overall business.
With the data now available, retailers will need to be able to quickly adjust their systems to encourage repeat purchases and persuade customers to buy new things. “Retailers should be looking for their infrastructure to provide different experiences to meet data, without a need for new code,” Harrell says. Invenco is perfectly placed to intervene and help retailers accomplish these new business opportunities.
Getting there
For retailers embarking on their transformation journey, the prospect of a technology overhaul may seem daunting, but it doesn’t have to be. According to Panter, strategic decision makers need not be afraid of change. “Implementation does not have to be ‘rip and replace’,” he says. Instead, retailers can identify the areas they are currently having the most trouble with and replace those systems with the relevant iNFX microservice solution as needed. This is crucial and enables retailers to manage their digital transformation and migrate at their own pace, allowing them to implement one element successfully before moving onto the next. Additionally, each set of microservice software is agile enough that, if the provider of an existing piece of functionality is blocking integrations, the iNFX solution is set up to be able to adapt and evolve to connect with that system when possible.
With so much changing across the retail fuel market at a rapid pace, Invenco advises retailers to start their digital transformation as soon as possible. “There’s a huge problem with waiting at this point in time because they risk disintermediation,” Harrell says. “If retailers don’t act and start to change their business offerings there will be companies that come along and take away the world of convenience from them.”
Those companies are likely to be already set up with system interfaces that have converted from the one-complex-system-for-all-business-functions approach to an agile, open system; structured with separate but integrated microservice softwares. In this recent Shop Talk LIVE episode, Harrell and Panter dive a bit deeper into this subject and engage with two companies leading the way for digital transformation, MOL Group and Jiffy Grocery.
Live examples
For retailers looking for further evidence that a strong digital foundation yields success, Invenco tips Jiffy Grocery, an ultra-fast food and household essential delivery service, and MOL Group, the international, integrated oil and gas company from Hungary.
Jiffy Grocery is a disruptor in the convenience store space and one to watch, according to Invenco. “Delivery is a form of convenience,” states Harrell. “[Jiffy] is a different business model but the challenges that need to be met in terms of storing the right merchandise and addressing delivery within a 2m/3km radius are identical. Convenience already owns the retail estate, so how do they participate in the future? They already have the geographical area but how do they take their systems into that area? If delivery is going to be crucial but their store stems do not allow them to participate, then they will miss that business opportunity.”
Similarly, in the provision of new energy consumption mechanisms, such as EV charging, convenience and forecourt retailers need to be able to participate; just like Mol Group, which has a mission to become a digitally-driven consumer goods retailer and integrated, complex mobility service provider by 2030. The business began building its mobility services capability back in Central Eastern Europe in 2016 with both B2C and B2B customer brands. It has launched the Limo car sharing service in Hungary and now boasts 75,000 car sharing users.
There is also a Fleet Solution, offering 4,000 fleet cars; a public transport offer, serviced by 300 buses; plus 2,000 share bikes. In addition to shared mobility, MOL Group has been quick out of the blocks in terms of EV charging, building its e-mobility capability and knowledge. Between 2016-2020 the business installed close to 200 EV chargers in the region and launched the MOL Plugee brand and app in order to deliver a seamless consumer experience. Now it is building its EV charging presence in order to increase network density with the aim of becoming the leader in EV chargers and connected services in 2025 and beyond.
Jiffy Grocery and Mol Group are two examples of businesses with varying end goals, who are set up to reach those goals by an infrastructure that can pivot and adjust, based on evolving market trends. “Businesses are evolving but the concepts are the same – it’s about having the locations and being in the right location,” states Harrell. “There’s no reason a forecourt could not be a facility that offered EV charging, a drive-in service and delivery,” he says.
Summary
As with investment in the mobile application space, new systems are designed to enable new engagement opportunities, which make it easy for customers to get what they need in a convenient way for them; be that delivery to their door, having an order ready when they drive up to the shop or being in the right geographic location for customers to stop and get what they need, when they need it.
“It is an exciting time to be in the convenience space,” says Panter. “Consumer habits are changing all the time. With the right infrastructure, retailers will be able to quickly implement the technology needed to increase offerings across channels, while collecting the data necessary to develop actionable insights for better business intelligence.”
For Invenco, it is about providing solutions proven to generate ongoing value from the pay-at-pump interface though to site-wide platforms. With a solution set that is ahead of its time now and set to stay that way moving forward, Invenco is perfectly slotted to do just that.
