Sainsbury's multichannel platform

Sainsbury’s completes roll out of a multichannel platform that could take it to £2bn in sales

By Chloe Rigby

June 23, 2014 - 4:02 pm

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Sainsbury’s [IRDX RSBR] has completed the roll out of a new multichannel grocery platform that has the capacity to see it double its annual online sales from £1bn.

The new site, phased in for customers across regions, is now being used to trial click and collect operations via more than 1,000 stores.

“It’s taken Sainsbury’s 14 years to reach £1bn annual sales online and this new platform gives us the capacity to double this,” said Jon Rudoe, Sainsbury’s digital and technology director.

The project, overseen by digital agency Salmon and involving more than 10 third parties, saw the supermarket’s ecommerce platform move to IBM WebSphere Commerce. Eight further systems were added with the aim of delivering an extended customer experience. Rudoe said that behind-the-screen’ improvements meant customers could look forward to “exciting developments on the horizon,” powered by “new and exciting functionality”.

Data from the new platform is shared across channels, whether it’s from in-store, online or mobile. That helps Sainsbury’s tailor individual offers and rewards, based on what customers are buying – and when they’re buying it.

New features include recipes whose ingredients can be added to the trolley at a click and in-store integration at some 225 stores across the UK. There are also sites optimised for mobile and tablet.

Neil Stewart [IRDX INST], chief executive of Salmon ??, said: “This programme marks a landmark for Salmon; it’s one of the first and largest grocery implementations on IBM WebSphere Commerce anywhere in the world. Technically challenging – taking into consideration the performance implications of the large number of items in the average shopping trolley, the sheer abundance and complexity of grocery promotions, tight coupling to legacy systems and data migration of eight million customer accounts, four million credit cards and 12 million orders – by any standards the launch has been a resounding success.”