Flooid and Intel; inside the partnership

Flooid may be a leader in unified commerce, but we always think of our platform as an innovation base rather than a single answer. So, we partner with our customers’ in-house development teams and other external best-of-breed technology companies to create an innovation ecosystem.

One of our most important strategic partnerships is with Intel. Martyn Osborne, Flooid’s CEO – EMEA and Group Chief Product Officer, explains more about our work with Intel’s retail experts and technology.

Why has Flooid partnered with Intel?

There are three main reasons. Firstly, Intel is a leader in envisioning the future of retail, so we’re able to combine our own insights with theirs to help our customers equip themselves for how the industry is going to change. Secondly, retail is increasingly data-driven. What Intel gives us and our customers is the ability to gather massive amounts of data and turn it into very specific actionable insights that aid profitability, the customer experience and productivity — and then help us take the value of that from cloud to edge. Lastly, we get access to the Open Retail Initiative, which is full of retail pioneers working on collaborative pilot projects to solve some really complex and exciting industry issues.

What does the Intel partnership give Flooid?

Two words: added inspiration. With Intel, we’re able to tap into some great people and technology, explore tons of concepts and really get discussions going about what retail looks like in three to five years time, and what the Store of the Future looks like.

Retailers are always looking for ‘what’s next’: the next big trend, the next big experience. Working with Intel, we feel we’re at the forefront of that, and actively taking some of those concepts to our clients and saying you have our platform, Intel’s technology, and one or two subject matter experts: so how about we try these concepts and see if they work.

What are the benefits to retailers?

In the short-term: faster innovation and deployment, swifter ROI, reassurance that they are in safe hands, and access to roadmaps and insights about where retail is going. But very swiftly after that retailers also receive immense value from new capabilities. They are able to extract, sort and work with data on a scale that was previously unimaginable. They get freedom to try new concepts in-store, and really begin to see a pathway to the Store of the Future or the future of their own retail operations. With Intel and Flooid in their corner, they get foresight and flexibility built-in. They can understand their operations better, change them quicker and simplify, optimise and personalise every single interaction customers have with their retail operations.

Can you describe a specific project where Intel and Flooid have worked together?

One of the things we’re most proud of is our work with Hudson. With the help of Intel we were able to deploy our unified commerce platform across 2,000 point-of-sale (POS) systems and nearly 1,000 duty-paid shops in the US and Canada — mid-pandemic and five months ahead of schedule. It’s that ability for retailers to see rapid change, and do what we call #flextowin which shows the value of working with Flooid and partners like Intel.

Tell us about the Open Retail Initiative

The ORI was launched in January 2019 to accelerate collaboration between top retail technology companies. It’s about creating value through data-driven experiences, by destroying the interoperability issues that have in the past stalled innovation when two different businesses come together. By working on a common framework, and learning together we can innovate and go-to-market faster, and give our customers access to much better tools for their physical environments and from edge to cloud.

We were thrilled to be invited to join the ORI. Within a year we were unveiling a fantastic new loss-prevention solution at NRF, with five new technology partners. We’re working on other ORI projects as we speak – watch this space!

Watch the video below or over on our YouTube channel to learn more about Flooid’s partnership with Intel

Read more about Flooid’s work with Hudson

Read more about Flooid’s work on loss-prevention with the ORI