Mobile POS pilot: store hardware and network

Lacoste's stores ran on Cegid POS. Lacoste had been one of Cegid's first clients, but the application's performance, features and user experience were ageing, especially for mobility. After a global upgrade of its Manhattan Associates order management system, Lacoste IT decided to trial the mobile POS included in the new version: an iPhone app for sales, multichannel orders, stock, transfers and replenishment, so that each sales associate could transact anywhere in the store. The pilot ran in two US stores with Cegid kept in parallel; if it succeeded, the solution would be rolled out across more than 60 US stores and then worldwide, replacing Cegid, with a global horizon to 2025. Manhattan's teams built the solution itself; responsible for the Lacoste side, starting with peripherals and networks.

The challenge

The mobile POS was fully cloud-based and every associate would carry an iPhone connected over Wi-Fi. That raised three problems the stores were not ready for:

• Connectivity. Store internet links were old and low-bandwidth, and selling would now depend entirely on the connection. An outage meant a store unable to sell, frustrated customers and real business impact.
• Security. Because the solution was hosted in the cloud, it could in principle be reached from anywhere. Lacoste did not want employees accessing sales and stock data from outside the store, all the more because store teams turn over often and some associates are temporary.
• Peripherals. Each iPhone had to work with a receipt printer, an office printer for transfer and receiving documents, the cash drawer and the payment terminal, all on the same secured Lacoste network, each with a fixed address configured in the POS. The receipt printer and cash drawer sit on a mobile cart shared by all associates.

On top of that, Cegid stayed the master database during the pilot, so it had to receive the mobile POS data in real time through a set of interfaces built on the iPaaS (integration platform as a service).

Solution design

Hardware. With Lacoste purchasing I obtained the supplier list and selected the devices: an iPhone as the mobile device, a payment terminal, a receipt printer and a custom mobile cart designed by Lacoste. I warned the client to also buy Wi-Fi connectivity for the printer and a battery system to power it, because the cart had to move around the store.

Costs. I built a tracking file covering both the peripherals needed to renovate the existing Cegid POS and those for the new mobile desk, and presented the costs for approval before anything was bought.

Internet. Connection costs are borne by the stores, but I proposed a solution for the new demand. After workshops with the POS vendor on sizing, I recommended a primary connection plus a backup line from a different provider to cover outages. Once approved, Lacoste purchasing took the contracts over.

Network. My participation in a related network-renovation sub-project in France let me draw up the network hardware list (routers, switches, access points, hubs) and plan the professional installation of routers and cabling. I contributed to a new dedicated mobile POS network, separate from the existing store network for security, so that iPhones, printers and payment terminals can reach the POS and each other over Wi-Fi. The design included a local back-office service that handles print jobs and an offline mode in which the iPhones connect to that local server when the internet is down.

Technical implementation

Access control. With the architecture teams in France I designed a check that keeps the mobile POS usable only on the store's dedicated network.

Why it mattered

The stores had to be ready before the new software could be installed. Their network architectures were very old and users already complained about slowness, so the mobile POS could not go in without a major upgrade, and the network configuration was needed both for the POS to work and to protect sales and stock data.

What I learned

Networking was not my speciality. I learned device configuration, IP and MAC addressing and router setup on the job, and quickly became a go-to person on a solution that was new to me. Every project has a network architecture behind it, and this experience is directly reusable for store IT renovations, especially in fashion retail.