Project Overview
A UK department store group with 18 stores and £180M online revenue needed to unify their physical and digital...
Technology Stack
Compliance & Standards
The Challenge
A UK department store group with 18 stores and £180M online revenue needed to unify their physical and digital commerce — four separate systems (online store, in-store POS, loyalty scheme, and stock management) with no real-time integration. Customers who returned online orders in-store got refunds on the wrong payment method. Click & collect orders were not always ready. Loyalty points didn't update in real-time. Budget: £210,000.
Our Approach
Unified Commerce Architecture
- Event-driven architecture: all commerce events (sale, return, stock movement, loyalty update) published to AWS EventBridge.
- Each service subscribes to relevant events.
- This eliminated the polling and batch jobs that caused the delays and inconsistencies.
- Real-
Single inventory truth
- PostgreSQL with optimistic locking for concurrent stock deductions.
- Shopify inventory webhook → EventBridge → in-store POS update within 3 seconds.
- Click &
- collect: reserved stock in real-time on order placement (no more "we don't have it in store" surprises).
Returns Across Channels
- Multi-tender returns: return an online order in-store and the system correctly identifies the original payment method and processes the refund to the same card via Stripe.
- QR code return slips generated at order (customer brings to store — no receipt needed).
- Loyalty Real-
Time
- Loyalty point calculation moved from nightly batch to real-time event (purchase event → EventBridge → loyalty service → balance updated).
- API endpoint for in-store POS to display loyalty balance at checkout.
- Points visible in customer account within 60 seconds of purchase.
The Results
Launched at 20 weeks, £198,000 — under budget.
Returns accuracy: 100% correct payment method matched (previously 23% error rate).
Click & collect: "not ready" rate 11% → 1.8%.
Loyalty point update time: overnight → 60 seconds.
Customer satisfaction: returns NPS +31 points.
Estimated annual customer service cost reduction from returns/loyalty queries: £85,000.
“The returns problem cost us more in customer service time than the entire project. Four weeks after launch, our customer service team had stopped receiving return payment complaints entirely. The loyalty real-time update removed our single biggest source of customer Twitter complaints." — Chief Digital Officer, UK Department Store Group (name withheld)”
Project Details
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