As more consumers rely on the Internet to purchase groceries, online supermarkets must keep up with increased demand, quickly fill customers’ orders, and anticipate change and growth. Tesco, the largest grocery supermarket in the United Kingdom and the third largest retail company in the world, sought an innovative technological solution that would fulfil grocery orders placed through Tesco.com, Tesco’s online website, while continuing to provide exceptional value and choice for Tesco customers.

The Challenge

Since its launch in 2000, Tesco.com has become the world’s leading online grocery chain. Each week, Tesco.com’s personal shoppers handle well over 100,000 on-line orders at Tesco’s network of stores. With a steady increase in demand, the original process for filling orders became cumbersome and inefficient. The existing platform did not support the changes Tesco.com wanted to make to their orderfulfilment procedures. The devices had poor battery life and were not ruggedised and the screens were difficult to read under fluorescent lights. Tesco.com was looking to improve and expand in-store operations to accelerate their lead in market share, maximise efficiency in delivery and enhance customer service.

The Solution

Working with Xperience... a customised solution with Tesco was developed to improve in-store order fulfilment and simplify the process. By employing the web tablet, a full function wireless smart display, Tesco.com personal shoppers are able to attach it to their shopping trolleys or carts and receive accurate customer information as they work. With a touch screen and customised mounting, this system facilitates quick access to product location and customer shopping lists. Xperience... worked closely with Tesco to understand the current technologies employed, situational lighting and work processes of the shoppers. The wireless display works anywhere the personal shopper needs to go, through every aspect of delivery. The unit is always connected through a wireless LAN card, potentially enabling real-time customer updates in the future.

“Of all the solutions we considered when looking to upgrade our picking process, the Xperience offering was by far the most powerful and convenient. Our personal shoppers like it because it is fast, compatible with existing systems, and has a clear, bright screen display. From an IT point of view it suits our needs perfectly in that it is tough and intelligent and can easily be integrated into our existing technology”
Mike Yorwerth, Lead Architect, Technology, Tesco

In addition to the web tablet, Xperience…™ also provided integration/build services to Tesco, giving them a customised build and installation process. After customers complete orders on the Tesco.com website, the central server relays the information to the shop nearest the customers’ postal code where they are downloaded for order fulfilment. Individual stores download customer orders to the individual trolley-mounted WebDT 360 units according to customers’ requested delivery times. Intelligent enough to coordinate several customers’ shopping lists at once, the WebDT system allows Tesco personal shoppers to fulfil multiple orders simultaneously. Tesco’s personal shoppers are guided through the store following on screen prompts for the location of items, and they use the attached barcode reader to scan selected items into the system. Xperience... customised the system to interface seamlessly with Tesco’s exist-ing software.

These trolley-mounted smart tablets feature a ruggedised shell, clear all-light readable displays, long battery life, high memory and a barcode reader.

Results

Today, Tesco.com’s personal shoppers use the WebDT 360 to achieve:
• Faster order fulfilment and delivery
• Improved work productivity
• Time savings with more orders filled per personal shopper
• Fewer errors, reduced downtime

Tesco.com remains the leading on-line grocery retailer because of its innovation leadership and other technological initiatives.

Seamless integration
Xperience...solutions match software functionality to existing work processes. The web tablets wireless display’s rugged, all-light touch screen is perfectly suited to running the Windows XPe, Microsoft .NET applications at Tesco.com.
Improved productivity, tracking, and accuracy Tesco.com personal shoppers carry out and communicate order fulfilment in real-time. Everything needed to fulfil the order accurately is integrated into the WebDT 360 wireless
display.

Improved customer satisfaction
By using Xperience... technology, Tesco is realizing significant increases in productivity and savings while enhancing customer service and efficiency in delivering groceries.

For more information about Xperience...

visit: www.xperience-group.com or
contact: mobile@xperience-group.com