Retail technology innovation of the week: PMC Graphene bridges digital and physical commerce gap

Retail Technology Innovation of the Week is a new series brought to you by RTIH and sponsored by 3D Cloud by Marxent, highlighting stand out deployments, launches, and initiatives by retailers and tech suppliers.

Every week, we will showcase forward thinking tech plays that have impressed our Editor and the Retail Technology Innovations Report judging panel, in the run up to the publication of the 2024 report early next year.

So far, we’ve showcased work being done by Ocado Retail, Decathlon, Lacoste, Downtown Spirits, TalkShopLive, Huck’s, Rovertown, Wing, McDonald’s, Nobody’s Child, IKI, Pixevia, Walmart, A.L.C., Archive, Therabody, Outform, and Kingfisher.

And now we’re focusing on PMC.

The UK-based technology services provider for retail and B2C has announced the launch of its composable commerce platform Graphene.

Graphene is pitched as a flexible, rapid and robust platform environment designed for commerce.

The platform is built on the fundamentals of a microservices, API led approach, cloud architecture, and a headless structure.

PMC says that the offering “allows retailers to generate business value with composite technology at scale and low cost…from lightning fast checkouts and enhanced customer loyalty using personalised campaigns, to optimised inventory operations and improved product availability in-store”.

Retailers can now customise applications to meet business needs and deploy cutting-edge solutions, which then readily scale as required, the company adds.

Elliot Winskill, Head of Solutions at PMC, says: “Graphene is already supporting multiple retail use cases, such as e-Basket checkout systems with online and offline functionality and ‘Direct to Shopper’ tools that span multiple channels to provide integration and flexibility between online and in-store systems.”

“With Graphene we are offering enhanced in-store inventory tooling for better visibility of product availability, and a channel integration layer that can solve issues with data conversion, legacy integration and fiscal compliance.”

Crew Clothing Head of IT, Richard Surman, comments: “We selected PMC to deliver a fully mobile trading platform, enabling Crew to have a vastly improved technical retail proposition and customer experience.”

“The solution design and integration has been made exceptionally straightforward, allowing for employees of any technical level to pick up and use the solution with minimal training.”