Many convenience-store retailers are reaching end-of-life technology deadlines for systems in their stores. Terrible’s, Las Vegas, is developing technology to enhance the customer experience, while Circle K, owned by Alimentation Couche-Tard, Laval, Quebec, is working toward a more robust network infrastructure to keep up with evolving tech.
- Alimentation Couche-Tard is No. 2 on CSP’s Top 40 Update to the Top 202. Watch for the full list in June. Terrible’s is No. 46 on CSP’s 2024 Top 202 ranking of c-store chains by size.
The next stage of technology needs to be future proof and able to address the needs that are coming in the next five to 10 years, said Maribel Nowak, senior manager at Accenture, a consulting company based in New York, on a panel discussion at Invenco by GVR’s Retail Technology Conference on Tuesday.
“I’ve never witnessed a more significant pivot in the industry around technology today like we have in the last decade,” said Nowak.
Future proofing means transitioning from a monolithic architecture to a micro-based architecture, where retailers leverage services from multiple vendors separately, she said.
Leveraging microservices allows a retailer to deploy faster services, features and functions within minutes instead of a system having to be down for hours.
“The ripple effect of that is it helps you bring new services and offers to market faster,” Nowak said.
With microservices architecture, all the different software functions needed to run a c-store are compartmentalized, so issue troubleshooting is simpler because a retailer can point to an issue sooner without touching the other functions.
A lot of vendors are tapping into microservices, said panelist Gilles Raymond, director of retail systems at Alimentation Couche-Tard, Circle K’s parent company. He values having multiple integration points and relying on different partners for services in a compartmentalized way.
At Terrible’s, to achieve more operational efficiency, a shared microservices functionality crosses all of its systems, said panelist Brad Sexton, chief information officer.
That way, operational leadership, whether it's a site level manager or an executive, can make decisions about how to create better a customer experience for all customers, and then drive growth across multiple different verticals, he said.
“It really drives that personalization and convenience for our customers,” Sexton said.
Circle K is working to achieve a more robust network infrastructure and power management system to make sure its tech stands the test of time, said Raymond.
“There's a big shift happening. … I think the next time we [modernize], it's going to be for the next five years or four years,” he said. “Technology keeps changing.”
With Circle K’s 7,800 stores across North America, rolling out new technology across every location is going to take time, he said.
“By the time you're done rolling it out, the technology has probably skipped ahead of you,” he said. “You’re off to a new start to try to find the next thing.”
Raymond faces this challenge by focusing on what he can do at Circle K in the short term, like making payment seamless and unremembered and ensuring 100% of technology works in the store for customers.
“It's not perfect, but how do we get it near perfect? And we believe putting some real-time monitoring systems as well as tools to look at what's happening in the stores here and there is how you can at least predict, start acting on, quickly fixing issues and then, eventually, get to self-healing,” Raymond said.
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