A complete makeover for Collect&Go
Every day, 10,000 customers place an order with Colruyt Group’s online shopping service Collect&Go. From now on, they can do so using a revamped website and a brand-new app. Kris Sergooris, programme manager at Colruyt Group, gives us a peek behind the scenes.
What has changed, Kris?
Both the website and the app had a thorough face-lift and we are proud to present some new functionalities. From now on, customers can still change their reservation after they sent it and they can find products, actions and discounts faster. Handy changes, but requiring many adaptations behind the scenes.
Can you give us an example?
Customers can now adapt their order until 9 am on the day before they will pick it up, which has an impact on the IT side of course. Indeed, as soon as a customer selects his pick-up point and slot on the website, an underlying management system starts configuring times. In concrete terms, we freeze all orders — about 10,000 a day — until 9 am before sending them in batch to the stores and e-warehouses where the products are picked. Previously, the system used to transmit them little by little throughout the day. Our IT department made great efforts to restrict the processing time of these orders — from the website through the order management system to the picking systems in stores and distribution centres — to maximum one hour.
More time to change the order, customised banners and an optimised checkout, many changes for the customer
Can customers find more inspiration online?
Indeed, we inspire them with new content pages for example. People looking for ‘bbq’ will not only see products but interesting recipes and tips & tricks as well. Our marketing colleagues are also experiencing many advantages from the new website and app. They are now managing most of the content without the help of webmasters and developers — a big step forward in terms of efficiency, flexibility and speed. In addition, there is much more room for targeted marketing, with personalised banners for instance. And based on the history of your purchases, we optimised the checkout process. If you regularly buy Jonagold apples, but they are not in your shopping basket today, during checkout you will see an overview with your ‘missed favourites’: ‘Did you not forget your apples?’.
You also developed a smart ‘calculation engine’?
Whereas promotions used to be taken into account when you picked up and paid for your order, the new ‘calculation engine’ now makes sure that the promotions that will apply when you pick up your order, are automatically calculated when you place your order. We developed this ‘calculation engine’ with an external party.
This is so much more than just a website and an app: we overhauled the entire application landscape.
Why is this new website so important to our IT department?
The site launch is an important milestone because it includes much more than a website and an app: during this transition, we tackled the entire application landscape. From streamlining master data (locations, assortment, prices and promotions, …) to adding Collect&Go-specific things (pick-up allocations and slots): the website is but the top of the iceberg. Direct integration with the calculation engine is also part of it. And additional important steps will follow …
