Improved functionality and customer experience supports growth of online business
Woolworths Limited is one of Australia's largest retailers. With
their head office in Sydney, they have more than 3,000 stores and
employ around 190,000 people making them the largest private sector
employer in Australia. In New Zealand Woolworths Limited owns
Progressive Enterprises Ltd who manages the Countdown brand.
Woolworths online is Woolworth's supermarket on the web that
allows users to purchase their groceries online and have them
delivered to their doorstep. After learning of the successful
ecommerce solution that Olympic had helped the Countdown brand
with, Woolworths approached Olympic to assist with an enhanced
solution for their site.
The Challenge:
Geoff Haddrill, Senior Project Manager at Woolworths said,
"Woolworths' current online platform did not have the functionality
or capacity to support the growth planned for our online business;
therefore we were looking for a platform that would add
functionality; be scalable and provide a better overall shopping
experience for our customers.
Woolworths chose Olympic due to its track record working with
Woolworths' New Zealand operation Countdown Supermarkets. Over time
Countdown had worked closely with Olympic to develop an end-to-end
online platform that would meet the needs of our customers."
The Solution:
The team at Olympic was led by Simon Chapman, Solution
Architect. The requirement was to modify the platform that was
previously built with Countdown over a number of years to
seamlessly integrate with the Australian systems. Woolworths also
required additional functionality along with adding some legal
requirements such as CUP (Comparative Unit Pricing).
The Result:
The result included improved search features, item-level
substitution, and the ability to enable customers to reserve a
particular delivery time before the order was placed.
Roger Steele, Woolworths' National Online Manager said, "There
were a number of key objectives such as capacity on the website,
basket size in both units and dollars, functionality and the
customer experience that we had set measures; all of these have
been met or exceeded."
When asked for comment on how the team at Woolworths found
working with Olympic staff, Geoff Haddrill said, "It was a pleasure
to work with the team at Olympic, their knowledge, retail
understanding and ability to provide an online solution to our
requirements was fantastic. All achieved professionally and in a
very timely manner."
Today the two companies enjoy a collaborative partnership that
seeks to continually improve the Woolworth's online offering.
Working together to evolve the product and the client's business
goals is proving to be an incredibly satisfying journey.
