Believe it or not: a 64% Increase in Picking Efficiency is not a Fairy Tale

Read how ICA Maxi Lindhagen improved efficiency and customer service with a better picking solution.

The Challenge

When ICA, the leading grocery retailer in Sweden, launched its e-commerce platform in 2014, the picking and delivery of orders was supposed to be handled by each respective ICA store separately. At the time, the picking solutions included paper-based and electronic terminals that did not integrate with the POS or back-office systems.

ICA Maxi Lindhagen in Stockholm originally offered their service only to business customers but aimed to extend the offer to private customers as well. In order to meet increased consumer demand with the current solution, more personnel would have to be hired, driving workforce costs up significantly. Instead, the store decided to look for a better, more efficient solution.

The Solution

StrongPoint offers a Order Picking solution that integrates ICA’s e-commerce platform with the back-office systems. Together with a user-friendly application in hand-held terminals, this makes the process much more efficient.

Today, Pick & Collect is the predominant picking solution for food in the Swedish market. Pick & Collect simplifies the management of an e-commerce offering by using a web-based centralized system that allows users to manage and pick orders locally in stores or separate storage facilities. Through its unique systematic design, every individual store or storage unit where items are picked can create a handling process tailored to the store’s own layout, conditions, size, local variations, or assortment.

The Result

“Since the implementation of StrongPoint’s system, the staff works faster than expected and picks an average of 295 products per man hour. Through order statistics, the employees can face the demands of high order frequencies.”, says Lisa Rister, Head of Online Sales at ICA, and continues, “Now they can also pick groceries in three different zones. Frozen products, chilled products or dry food items, and even different orders at the same time – all of this is possible now”

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