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Foodservice AI platform first launched in Europe further expands in the US market by launching POS integrations via LINK

Foodservice AI platform first launched in Europe further expands in the US market by launching POS integrations via LINK

by | Jun 7, 2024 | Case Studies

Overview

An innovative European Foodservice AI Platform used for streamlining restaurants’ kitchen operations is expanding its US footprint via an integration with Toast – one of the top restaurant POS systems in the US. Their goal is twofold: gain new customers in North America and provide simple and fast data integration for existing and future customers. The restaurant types covered by the Foodservice AI Platform use a variety of POS systems, and hence further POS integrations are critical for their long-term success.

The Challenge

The Foodservice AI Platform’s current and prospective clients required an integration with Toast to streamline their kitchen operations. Additionally, considering the variety of POS systems globally and the potential number of customers, the Foodservice AI Platform needed a partner that could develop, scale, and maintain multiple integrations across geographies. They did a targeted market evaluation and chose LINK as the best fit for their needs.

The Solution

LINK went from an introductory call to delivering a robust, white-labeled solution in production within 5 weeks. Additionally, LINK provided multiple hosting options to comply with privacy requirements in the US and Europe. This gives flexibility and speed to the Foodservice AI Platform to expand deployments across the US and EU in parallel.

LINK built an order sync integration that would push order details from the POS system to the Foodservice AI Platform, which is needed for the Platform’s prediction/analytics engine to provide useful insights to the restaurants for managing their kitchens’ operations.
The solution will be available to hundreds of the Foodservice AI Platform’s new customers. Additionally, integrations with two more large-scale POS systems are underway.

The Result

The Foodservice AI Platform can now offer its current and prospective customers a fully seamless integration with their Toast POS systems. The quick build, agile maintenance, and industry-specific expert experience that LINK offers have opened the doors to begin building several other integrations the Foodservice AI Platform can offer to their merchants globally.

Testimonial

“As we expanded in the US market with our Foodservice AI Platform, used to manage restaurant kitchens, the decision for a POS middleware was made rather quickly. We needed to target different POS Systems and a large number of potential customers. We talked with LINK at length about our integration needs, the way we wanted the integration built, and how we envisioned maintenance and support to take place. After learning about the flexibility in service that LINK provides we decided that LINK was the best fit for us.
Once the roadmap and timeline were established with LINK, everything worked as planned and delivered on time or faster than originally estimated. Toast was the very first POS integration into our system and it spearheaded our initiative to add direct integrations to our platform. There have never been any blockers from the LINK development side and we are on our planned production timeline to go live and enter the US market. Based on this early success, we are looking forward to scaling our POS integrations both in the US and Europe with LINK.”

– Foodservice AI Platform

Food tech platform integrates with dozens of POS and OFO systems via LINK

Food tech platform integrates with dozens of POS and OFO systems via LINK

by | Apr 8, 2024 | Case Studies

Overview

A well funded market leader in the food tech segment wanted to rapidly sign up restaurants as customers to streamline restaurant order management, off-premise food prep, and delivery. The rate of customer acquisition was critical for this Company to establish a first-mover advantage over the competition. Target restaurants included multiple brands and concepts.

The Challenge

To attract restaurants and go to market, the Company faced an almost insurmountable challenge of integrating with a large, technically diverse, international as well as niche portfolio of Online Food Ordering (OFO) and Point of Sale (POS) systems – 100 plus and growing exponentially. The Company’s in-house integration effort was in the nascent stage and they needed a rapid and cost-effective way of integrating with POS, OFO, and delivery systems.

The Solution

LINK delivered 56 (and counting) POS and OFO integrations for the Company, which included not only the international systems with bulk of the restaurant volume, but also local players that are well-established in their markets. Within the first 11 months, LINK’s team rolled out 18+ integrations with a rapid velocity, letting the Company take its tech platform to over 5000 restaurants globally.

Admin view to manage all integrations

LINK’s white-labeled integration platform enabled the Company’s customer onboarding team to sign up new restaurants and activate the necessary integrations within minutes. Leading POS systems that LINK integrated included Toast, Square, Clover, Lightspeed, Oracle Simphony, Shopify, and many others. One key value proposition was LINK’s public API, which allowed any small or local app that didn’t have their own API to be able to sync with the Company’s platform.
Interface to activate a new restaurant
All active restaurants filtered by integration connector

Additionally, restaurants acquired by the Company were able to use a broader range of LINK’s integration connectors, including but not limited to, accounting, marketing, inventory management, and loyalty systems. Thus further enabling automation and saving tens of thousands of hours otherwise spent by restaurants in manual data entry and reconciliation.

The Result

With thousands of new restaurants being on-boarded monthly onto its tech platform, the Company has established itself as the market leader in North America, and has gained a strong presence in LATAM, Middle East, and Europe. It has also capitalized on the cost-efficiency and integration velocity brought about by its partnership with LINK to identify the most critical integrations that are vital to the Company’s long-term success.

LINK’s platform can also be used by geographically diverse multi-restaurant and multi-brand companies to integrate their operations for analytics, supply chain optimization, and many other use cases.

Multi-outlet Retail Chain: POS & Inventory Management Integration

Multi-outlet Retail Chain: POS & Inventory Management Integration

by | Apr 8, 2024 | Case Studies

Overview

A 16 chain specialty retail store (now expanding to 80 locations) needed to integrate their operations with their Cloud Point of Sale devices and enable the automation of their replenishment and supply chain model. They approached ShoppinPal for solution architecture and building out the necessary integrations.

The Challenge

They had a complex supply chain process with two central warehouses and a large number of SKUs being ordered by the stores. The manual process of ordering was time consuming and the fulfillment process was subject to human errors as there was no systematic tracking process in place.

From the store managers’ perspective, the time spent on the manual ordering/receiving process, trying to track discrepancies, and account for missing stock was taking away from their primary responsibility of providing their customers a great in-store experience.

The Solution

We built an automated fulfillment system that automatically created orders for the store managers based on the in-store sales and current inventory. The app also tracks the orders from the stores to the warehouses where the person can use the app to record their shipments.

The app makes the entire process easier and trackable and seamlessly syncs with the Point of Sale system so all inventory changes are up to date.

The Result

We enabled the client to plan, document, implement, and optimize the operational process and customized it to provide the client with a flow that mirrors their physical process. The alternate options that the clients had considered ranged between $80,000 and $120,000 per year. The homegrown solution built via integrations was accomplished for $45,000 in Year 1 with running costs of $6000 from Year 2 on. ShoppinPal also provides ongoing technical support and hosting to clients.

A top-rated e-commerce platform based in Canada specializing in the wines and spirits vertical

A top-rated e-commerce platform based in Canada specializing in the wines and spirits vertical

by | Apr 8, 2024 | Case Studies

Overview

The Client is one of the world’s top-rated e-commerce platforms specializing in the wines and spirits vertical. They power some of the most popular wineries and have an impressive global customer base that is growing at 50% YoY. 

The Challenge

Many of their existing and potential customers were using Vend as their Point of Sale solution at the cash registers in their stores and expressed a need for an integration between the two systems in order to better manage inventory. While product subscription, shipping, and other information were being maintained by the client, the inventory, customer information, and sales data were being collected at the POS. Having an easy way to synchronise the data between the two systems would ensure that the POS has the most up-to-date product and inventory data and the e-com backend gets all the relevant inventory, sales, and customer data required for many of its functions. The lack of such integration was resulting in mismatched information, inventory stockouts, unfulfilled orders, and many hours of manual effort to reconcile the two systems. 

The Solution

The client engaged with link to scope, architect, and build a working, scalable, two-way integration between its own systems and Vend. We delivered the first version of the solution in 30 days with a budget of $2000 and helped on-board the first two clients. A few features for error detection were later added based on the customer feedback in order to help them catch mismatches.

The Result

The client has on-boarded 7 large Wineries since introducing the integration. We also provide full support and hosting services so that Blackboxx can focus on its core product while still providing its customers with the data sync service they really need. This has helped in increasing customer loyalty and preventing churn as the end customers are able to use their POS with their Blackboxx platform without having to make wholesale changes to their operations or migrate to a new system.

Retail Conglomerate: POS & ERP System Integration

Retail Conglomerate: POS & ERP System Integration

by | Apr 8, 2024 | Case Studies

Overview

The client is a group of companies specializing in the distribution of internationally renowned premium brands in apparel, footwear, accessories, jewelry, and cosmetics across different markets in Europe. With a network of over 80 self owned & operated stores and 12 brand partnerships, the client is a leader in retail and distribution.

The Challenge

The group wanted to upgrade their ERP Software and install Netsuite Oneworld to streamline and manage their Wholesale and Retail businesses. They have 12 stores across the UK and Ireland that currently utilize Vend, a cloud-based point-of-sale(POS) and retail management software. They were looking for a way to integrate their POS & its related Accounting systems with Netsuite. All the sales & accounting data such as transactions, refunds, returns and store transfers from the point-of-sale needed to flow into Netsuite while the ERP would act as the master repository for product and inventory information. The integration also needed to support multiple subsidiaries and currencies(such as GBP, EURO) used by the stores in different geographies

The Solution

We implemented an integration between Netsuite and Vend which allows data to move seamlessly between the two systems. Our team worked in collaboration with the customer and the Netsuite implementation specialists to customise mappings and ensure that product, customer, sales, payments data from Vend were reflected real-time & with 100 % accuracy in Netsuite. On the Netsuite accounting front, we worked on ensuring that all data went into the correct accounts & that the General Ledger was correctly maintained, COGS were correctly reflected and P&L data was accurate

The Result

The integration is successfully functioning across the 12 stores in UK & Ireland  and has ensured smooth and seamless functioning of their Wholesale and Retail businesses resulting in significant improvements in process efficiencies, cost & time savings