Upgrade Success for Costa Stores

Upgrading POS solutions can often be a testing time, but necessary for any retail or hospitality business that looks to benefit from advances in technology and strides to enhance customer experience.

The effectiveness of planning for success was recently demonstrated across 259 Costa Coffee Stores by leading POS solutions company WRS, working closely with delivery partner Celestra.

The requirement from Costa was to undertake the upgrade of existing terminals to new Oxhoo Indigo units running software from Datasym UK. Importantly all new terminals had to be implemented and old terminals decommissioned without any disruption to trading. Added to this, the whole project had to be completed within a reduced timeframe, at some of Costa’s busiest stores and in the run-up to the important festive trading period.

The outcome was summed up by Phil Scully, Group CIO at Costa who commented:

“Great job, thank you so much to everyone involved. Great team effort in a short timescale and very well executed. This will make a massive difference to our stores.”

WRS are recognised as the sole POS provider to Costa Coffee, supporting over 4,000 terminals across the Costa estate. The project was led by WRS IT Director Chris Jackson and Richard Hawkins, Implementation Manager with support from WRS Operations and Logistics teams.

The approach adopted by WRS pre-planned all stages, including equipment testing and ‘hot staging’ at the companies dedicated facilities on the Isle of Wight. This enabled systems imaging and advanced system set-up, including store specific configuration to be completed prior to equipment being delivered to the 259 stores covered under the upgrade programme. Importantly, the team from WRS worked closely and in full collaboration with Costa and Celestra throughout the project and supported installation in the field remotely, through their professional technical and support service teams.

An approach which ensured the delivery teams from Celestra and WRS could complete installation of each new terminal at each store in as little as 5-minutes. This approach, coupled with all work being undertaken outside normal trading hours eliminating any potential disruption to trading or business operations. A result reflected in the fact that up to 18 stores were upgraded each evening, with the project being completed in a little over 30 days and ahead of schedule.

The Head of Store Solutions at Costa added:

“Many thanks to you all for completing the upgrade to the last stores this evening. It has been a truly successful project and reflects the planning and coordination from all those involved at WRS, Celestra and Costa, including the engineers in store and the store teams during their busiest period of the year. A job well done by everyone.”

The new, future-proof terminals are part of Costa’s ongoing programme of investment in its stores. Improving the reliability, security and functionality of its POS terminals. Something that further enhances customer experience through both the accuracy and speed of each transaction, where speed of transaction is improved by as much as 50% over the terminals being replaced.

Richard Hawkins, WRS’ Associate Technical Director concludes:

“WRS, Costa and Celestra worked tirelessly to achieve the successes seen with this rollout, it is from this hard work and commitment that we completed the project ahead of schedule and ensured all stores were operating at maximum capacity in time for Christmas. Something that also reflects the confidence any retail or hospitality outlet can have in our abilities to deliver.”