Mercatus Technologies provided e-commerce solutions that helped grocery retailers manage their digital storefronts and engage with customers. Behind the scenes, however, each retailer relied on multiple legacy systems to manage products, pricing, loyalty programs, promotions, and store operations. Mercatus Console was created to unify these disconnected systems into a single management platform, giving grocery retailers one place to manage their digital business while preserving their existing technology investments.

The project began by identifying the highest-value capabilities across the existing platforms and working with experienced grocery managers to prioritize the functions they relied on most. Discovery revealed that while grocery operations differed significantly between retailers, many of the underlying business concepts were remarkably consistent. It also highlighted the complexity of grocery pricing, where products, promotions, and flyer pricing varied by store, city, and region and were often influenced by negotiations between retailers and consumer packaged goods manufacturers.

The design challenge was to create a platform that could support many different retailers and legacy systems without becoming tailored to any one of them. Rather than designing around individual implementations, the Console introduced a common set of concepts and interactions that could be applied consistently regardless of the underlying technology.

The Outcome