Why they won a Transforming Retail Award: Zynstra

The Best Newcomer category is one of the more popular categories in the Transforming Retail Awards so Zynstra fought off stiff competition to take the accolade.

Nick Pegram of Bold360 presents Nick East of Zynstra with Most Promising Newcomer of the Year

Set up by experienced technology entrepreneurs and backed by angel investors, Zynstra has grown from a small start-up in the Bath and Bristol area to a growing business of 65 people delivering a leading software product globally. The company attracted Octopus Ventures, one of Europe’s leading investors in fast growth companies and has secured £20 million of investment since its foundation.   

Zynstra uses its patented ‘Retail Edge’ software to enable retailers to save costs while improving customer and staff experience in physical stores and in the last year Zynstra has released a retail-specific solution for virtualising every device in a retail store, from the back office to checkout, to store associate systems.

IT distributed across many stores can now be operated as though it was running in a centralised cloud. This virtualising of retail devices has helped Zynstra’s customers crack a major retail industry challenge for the first time. And lets retailers optimise their existing in-store technology to deliver enhanced customer experiences and improved operational efficiency without requiring expensive rip-and-replacement of incumbent store technology. 

 

Zynstra provided judges with several recent examples including a large private company in the US with $21 billion revenues and 750 stores across 44 states offering fuel and food services.

This company’s vision for rapid in-store innovation was being held back by existing store infrastructure. Through Zynstra’s virtualisation platform the company benefited from an instant, centralised app roll-out across every store – from loyalty to customer self-service. The in-store environment was transformed in eight weeks.