Homebase is equipping its in-store staff with mobile apps in order to enable them to help customers explore the wider range and simplify customer ordering.
Staff at the home and garden retailer, ranked Top100 in IRUK Top500 research, will initially be able to find products for customers via a new dedicated app that promises highly accurate look-up functionality and is built on the Neptune low-code DX platform. Next, the retailer plans to develop an app that will help staff and customers order complex products such as kitchens, bedrooms and bathrooms, whether in-store or online, in a simpler way that incorporates delivery scheduling, warehousing and stock integration. Also on the agenda are reserve and order capabilities.
Paul Cannon, director of IT at Homebase, said: “We want to empower our teams with the right, cutting-edge technology which allows them to deliver the best possible customer service. Gone are the days of complex integration projects that take years to complete. Now we build a new experience, roll it out to a single store and if it works it can be live across the business in weeks.”
The low-code platform is designed to support the app development lifecycle by enabling IT teams to design, develop, integrate and manage enterprise-level applications and APIs in a much shorter time than traditional coding demands. It connects legacy apps using APIs.
Natalie Kouzeleas, managing director of Neptune Software UK, said: “There’s real appetite from IT leaders to integrate emerging technologies that help their companies compete, but nobody wants the headache of writing many thousands of lines of legacy code to make it happen. That’s where low-code platforms like Neptune can help, and we see significant demand from companies that want to take back control of development. In our experience companies can cut 60% of development using our solution compared to traditional coding.”
Image courtesy of Homebase
