How a Focus on Simplicity Paid Off for Søstrene Grene 

If you want to escape into a world of creativity, practicality, and stylish home décor, a visit to a Søstrene Grene store is a must. Whether online or in-store, it’s an opportunity to be surrounded by ideas and inspiration to make your home more beautiful in an effortless way. Søstrene Grene has diligently incorporated the values of its founding sisters, Anna and Clara, into every aspect of the customer journey, resulting in a meticulously designed customer experience. 

Now imagine having this amazing customer experience browsing and selecting the items you wish to purchase, only to get to the checkout and experience problems because the system is slow and unresponsive, and worse, takes 13 minutes to reboot. Even if you were willing to wait patiently, it still would have tainted the otherwise very pleasant shopping experience.  You might even think twice about returning to shop there or recommending the store to a friend.  

This example highlights the importance of having a robust and reliable system that supports the basic functions of a retail store, especially at the point of sale (POS). Most POS systems require ongoing maintenance, but when faulty systems start to have a negative impact on the customer experience and ultimately revenue, it’s time to upgrade.    

Seeking out a simpler and more efficient POS solution 

Søstrene Grene recognized that the legacy POS system they were using was becoming too expensive and tedious to maintain. When a breakdown occurred, a call would have to be logged and there’d be a delay until a service technician could come out to make repairs. This was negatively affecting the store’s ability to operate efficiently.  

An upgrade wasn’t going to solve the problem. Instead, they decided to completely redesign their POS by creating a modular system that was more robust, operated at a greater speed and efficiency, and most importantly, was affordable and easy to maintain.  

This was the specification given to Simply NUC, a challenge that was eagerly accepted by the leading provider of customized mini PC solutions. Søstrene Grene already used NUCs in their back-office systems. As an Intel Titanium Partner, Simply NUC was easily able to acquire stock of a variety of mini PC devices. They believed that by customizing Intel NUCs as the core of the modular system, it would provide them with the flexibility and performance they wanted.  

The fun part for the development team was putting the breakability aspect to the test. The NUCs needed to be able to withstand coffee spills, accidental shutdowns, and even physical damage. The components proved to be up to the task, even childproof. Customizations were then added to unit to ensure that additional connections wouldn’t affect the performance of the overall system.  

The implementation of the new modular POS system has been so successful that in most cases it’s processing 30% more transactions. Shop assistants require minimal training and love the system so much that they’re even posing for selfies with it. But most importantly, the simple implementation has enabled Søstrene Grene to move quickly on their growth and expansion plans because they can provide their partners with a fast, robust, and reliable system. 

To read more about how the system was designed and implemented, read the full case study here.