UK Supermarket fulfilment system case study

The challenge

As the UK’s largest grocery retailer, our client was also the first UK retailer to launch an online business, and the first to fulfil one million online grocery orders within a single week.

Fulfilment plays a key role in its ability to grow profitably, minimise costs, and ensure operational efficiency.

After all, any issue can create a ripple effect that impacts people and performance. And every fulfilment workflow involves real-time change and decision-making.

There’s even more room for error when your operations are as large and complex as our client’s. The firm has 5,000 stores, 10 click and collect models, and four types of fulfilment centres.

The scale and requirements across these locations vary massively. And over time, this created siloed fulfilment systems and inconsistent workflows.

Manual. Some fulfilment systems relied on manual input from order pickers, managers, or delivery drivers. This added time, effort, and room for error. One example was vehicle safety checks – a legal requirement in the fulfilment journey. The legacy process was slow, paper-based, and prone to error. It also required oversight from a manager. This made it difficult for drivers to hit the road quickly.
Disconnected. The grocery retailer has multiple backend systems. These handle everything from vehicle allocation to traffic routing. But many were not connected to each other. This made it hard for managers to proactively manage workflows. And solve potential issues in real time.
Difficult to scale. The lack of an open, flexible system made it difficult to innovate and scale processes using data and automation.

The retail organisation therefore wanted a single, streamlined fulfilment system to drive operational efficiencies. The system needed to unify, simplify, and improve fulfilment management processes.

supermarket shopping trolleys lined up in their bay outside a grocery store

two ladies in a supermarket with shopping trolly having a chat

What we did

Our collaboration spans multiple digital products within the fulfilment space, which work together to support the retailer’s objectives.

The partnership kicked off with a series of workshops to align stakeholders on objectives for the new system design. These sessions also helped clarify current processes and compliance requirements.

We then ran in-field ethnographic research and interviews to observe staff in their work environment, and document their experiences and behaviours.

This qualitative research allowed us to scrutinise the end-to-end fulfilment journey. We gained deep insights into key workflows and pain points – and how to meet diverse user needs. These insights informed the Design Sprints and digital prototyping.

We tested incremental system improvements with staff to see how they impacted behaviours and operations.

Collaboration was key to this agility. We embedded ourselves in the organisation and acted as an extension of the grocer’s product and development teams. This allowed us to grow the supermarket giant’s capabilities and prime teams for future success without us.

Highlights of the new system design

Working closely with the retailer’s data science teams, we designed Infinity – a fulfilment system that better meets user and business needs.

Infinity increases efficiency and simplifies user journeys using algorithms, automation, data-driven decision making, and just-in-time support. It also works very closely with our Vehicle Checks product.

Some highlights of our partnership include:

Digital vehicle checks. The Vehicle Checks product we created streamlines and digitises the vehicle safety checks that drivers must complete. It gives them the confidence to self-serve without a manager, and get onto the road safely and quickly. Operations managers now have a centralised view of data. This makes it easy to see which stores are struggling, and to intervene and provide proactive support. Digitising tasks means that they can be completed remotely, saving time and effort.
Automated alerts. Thanks to Infinity, managers are alerted to potential issues before they escalate. Infinity pushes information that makes it easy to proactively manage teams and solve potential issues in real-time to save time and costs.
Smarter vehicle allocation and routing. Our work with several train operators gave us very transferable skills for the world of fulfilment. Last mile vehicle allocation and routing involves lots of real-time decisions and variables – just like train booking and routing systems – so we were able to adapt and scale systems from the world of transport for the retail organisation’s needs. Our approach uses real-time data insights to add flexibility and reduce problems down the line that lead to undelivered orders. It also leverages smart automation to reduce manual tasks for managers, and minimise errors and inefficiencies.

Scaling the system during COVID-19

COVID-19 had a massive and immediate impact on home deliveries. The retail giant had to rapidly scale to 1.5 million delivery slots a week. MVP click and collect offerings launched overnight at new locations, and home deliveries accounted for 79% of online orders.

This environment meant that the systems we were testing and rolling out incrementally were handling twice the forecast order volume.

This was the ultimate stress test. So it was hugely rewarding to see our system deliver immediate value in unpredictable and changeable conditions.

Health restrictions made it impossible to conduct further research and in-person testing in the short term. But remote practices and an agile approach allowed us to move rapidly and build scale and flexibility into the system.

The results

We helped the supermarket giant to digitise, streamline, and standardise its end-to-end fulfilment system to create better outcomes for staff and the business.

The new fulfilment system, Infinity, is designed to improve operational efficiencies by minimising error, cutting time and costs, and improving decision-making.

The new digital checklist is 40% faster, enabling quicker, more reliable customer deliveries.

Multiple backend systems and data points are unified for better dataflow and visibility of end-to-end journeys. And the open, flexible, scalable design helps our client to learn, innovate, and grow.

The deep insights we gained through observing staff in the field helped us optimise each stage in the end-to-end fulfilment journey.

A great example is the vehicle safety checks process, which we simplified and digitised in our Vehicle Checks product. The product is designed to improve driver confidence in their decision making, reduce vehicle breakdowns, and drive positive impact operationally.

The evolved system was put through its paces during the global pandemic where it demonstrated immediate value and played a key role in helping to scale operations quickly and efficiently.

Inviqa’s enhancements to the retailer’s delivery scheduling tool halved the delivery window from 30 minutes to 15 minutes, enabling twice as many customers to be served than pre-pandemic.

With the popularity of online grocery shopping set to outlive the pandemic, our partnership is enabling the supermarket to meet changing customer expectations and achieve its ambitious growth targets.

Redesigning the driver app UX helped increase delivery frequency by 100%.