Ascentis: Transforming the New Retail World with Ascentis Omni Channel Solutions

When businesses approach providers for loyalty solutions, they do not usually walk away with the complete package. They either get only the technical aspect of it, or the agency aspect which provides marketing or design campaigns. Ascentis , one of Singapore's leading loyalty and e-Commerce solutions providers for the hospitality and retail markets, offers both.

Ascentis started as a system integrator around 14 years ago, but on witnessing the importance of incentivizing loyal customers in building successful business environment, the firm changed its core competency to purely loyalty and rewards solutions. Until three years ago, Ascentis provided only the technology aspect of the loyalty solution. However, to build an effective loyalty program that reaches out to and connects with customers, technology alone is not sufficient. With this came another arm of Ascentis—Meet Isaac. Meet Isaac purely focuses on digital agency work, providing ideas and plans, strategizing marketing campaigns, and customer engagement campaigns. In this regard, Ascentis hopes to become a robust end-to-end solutions and service offering for their clients, providing a whole host of products and solutions, such as loyalty solutions for retail and hospitality companies, e-commerce, retail point of sales, CRM, digital engagement, customer analytics, and BPO services.

When Ascentis deals with prospective clients, the interaction begins with understanding the brand value and the market segment a client intends to target. The client could be setting up an online store, needing it to integrate seamlessly with their offline store to provide consistent customer experience. Ascentis’ pre-sales consultants meet the clients and discuss different solutions and approaches, providing the client the privilege to explore multiple options. The company has a three-month product update cycle, and every solution gets at least two releases a year. This approach allows Ascentis the ability to roll out future proof solutions while incorporating customer feedback to ensure that each product is 100 percent of what the client needs. “An important aspect of our success is to sit down and listen to customers carefully and to make sure that the feedback they give us is taken seriously, planned correctly and implemented into our product releases,” says Bryan Tan, COO of Ascentis.

Many retail players now recognize the fact that an active online presence will bolster their physical store presence. So, this omnichannel landscape gives Ascentis the ideal platform to design a solution that will best help companies optimize their revenue and how both online and offline stores can further leverage their solutions to maximize returns. Ascentis is looking to further improve the online-offline relationship by experimenting with what it calls the “Experimental Shopping Experience.” It entices customers by giving them the best in-store experience by leveraging loyalty, BRM, and mobile applications, giving customers vital information, such as manufacturing process, security, and warranty, allowing businesses to engage with their customers continuously. This will also help customers provide feedback to the businesses, enabling them to understand those customers better. To this end, Ascentis has firmly set its sights on Singapore, looking to dominate the market before expanding elsewhere.

Some of Ascentis’ customers in Singapore include Changi International Airport, Starbucks, DFS, ION Orchard, MUJI and NIKE.