Woolworths is Australia’s largest supermarket chain.
Woolworths Customer Story

How Woolworths launched a new on-demand grocery delivery offering in just four months

How Woolworths launched a new on-demand grocery delivery offering in just four months
commercetools' Customer Woolworths
Known as "Australia’s Fresh Food People," Woolworths is Australia’s largest supermarket chain with a vast range of products, including food, home and personal care goods. The company employs over 200,000 people and operates over 1,000 stores across Australia and New Zealand.
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faster checkout load time using commercetools Checkout API
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months to roll out a new channel to 30 Woolworths stores
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suburbs delivered to within 3 months of launch
  • B2C
  • Food & Grocery
  • New Project
  • APAC

The Challenge

In recent years, the on-demand grocery delivery market has expanded into a $100 billion USD per year sector. After all, consumers want the convenience of fresh food delivered fast. 

Woolworths wanted to leverage its extensive range, supply chain and market reach in the on-demand grocery market by launching a new app called MILKRUN for on-demand groceries that are delivered fast. 

This initiative required a fast and scalable technology stack to enable Woolworths to get its products to market quickly despite needing to support complex business rules and integrations with existing Woolworths store supply and fulfillment chains.

The Solution

Woolworths successfully boosted its eCommerce tech stack by strategically leveraging the capabilities of commercetools Composable Commerce (found via the Google Cloud Marketplace). Alongside Google Cloud, Algolia, Bloomreach, and Cybersource, the grocery giant enabled the swift integration of iOS and Android shopping channels within the remarkable timeframe of just four months.

Google Cloud's value in the grocery shopping space became particularly evident through its provision of a scalable and robust cloud-native infrastructure. This capability empowered Woolworths to efficiently manage the heightened demand generated by mobile shopping channels, a critical aspect of grocery shopping, where scalability is paramount.

By combining the strengths of these best-of-breed vendors and embracing the composable commerce approach, Woolworths not only expedited its entry into the mobile commerce arena but also fortified its position as an innovative force in the fast-moving eCommerce landscape.

commercetools Composable Commerce has been a game-changer for us in adding new digital touchpoints. Its modular and flexible architecture enabled the seamless addition of our new grocery app while leveraging the scalability, resilience, cost efficiency and security benefits of cloud-native architecture.
Venky Kumar

CPTO, MILKRUN

Woolwoths quote logo

Why it was a success

Woolworths not only created a viable new revenue stream that forms part of its platform renewal strategy, but its new composable commerce architecture enables the company to incorporate best-of-breed product partners. The flexibility of commercetools also empowers the company to navigate complex integrations and fulfillment chains without risk, which allows them to introduce new digital touchpoints more quickly.

In addition, Woolworths has recognized faster speeds and time-savings. After successfully completing full migration to Standalone prices, which included deleting about 12 million embedded prices from production, the company reported significantly reduced latency across the board.

Woolworths' in-house IT teams now have both the time and freedom to focus on initiatives that differentiate its offering, rather than building and maintaining commoditized capabilities.

Woolworths website

commercetools features for Woolworths

Promotions

Accommodates grocery-specific pricing models with an advanced bundling and rules-based promotion engine.

Product Catalog

Supports a rapidly growing product catalog with advanced inventory management across dozens of fulfilling stores.

Standalone Prices

Provides a more flexible way to query and manage your Prices, separately from your Products, contributing to better query performance.

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