The company, whose local customers include Carrefour, Kaufland, Mega Image and Cristim, is taking these steps as part of a strategic development plan intended to diversify streams of income and expand solution portfolio.
One of the new solutions it is working on, which has the potential to be implemented in the region, too, is an application for smartphones that not only allows users to pay using their phones and but also to view the content of their cash receipts on the phone screen.
“We’re taking our expertise as a provider of cash register software and integrating it with our mobile phone application,” Bojita says.
How will this work once the customer takes their shopping cart to the cash register? After the cashier scans all the products, the customer identifies the cash register by scanning a QR code and then everything on the cash receipt, items purchased, promotions and loyalty points show up on the screen of the phone. When the cash receipt shows up on the phone screen it clearly specifies which cash register issued it and the customer can pay using a card pre-registered in the system.
With sales of smartphones set to reach about 1.5 million in Romania in 2013 alone, 500,000 more than in 2012, retailers are very interested in such a solution, precisely because it provides new ways of directly communicating with customers and finding more about them.
“Retailers are very interested and we are in talks with several banks. We hope to have a solution working in three to six months. We expect customers paying cash or by card to migrate to our solution,” Andrei Bojita said.
Besides the efforts to develop this application and an acquisition conducted last year to branch out into logistics, RBC is considering expansion to other markets in the region.
“We already have operations in the Republic of Moldova and will open an office this year.”
RBC posted EUR15 million revenue in 2012, mostly from customers in the food industry and retail sector. Revenue went up 5% in the first eight months of 2013, and the company expects it to increase at the same rate by the end of the year.
(English version by Loredana Fratila-Cristescu)