10% profit
on e-commerce orders
Over 100% increase
in e-commerce orders since the start in 2020 until June 2021
2000 online orders
every week from this store alone
29 minutes and 37 seconds
average fulfillment time on online orders
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About ICA
ICA Maxi Erikslund is a Swedish ICA shop located west of Stockholm that is 11,007 square meters (118,478 square feet) in size.
Since 2015, the business has been employing technology provided by StrongPoint to handle groceries e-commerce orders.
Being among the first providers in the area, ICA Maxi Erikslund started their supermarket e-commerce journey in 2015 and has been utilizing a range of StrongPoint’s grocery e-commerce solutions ever since.
Due to their early adoption strategy, they have been able to maintain and increase their market share, and they currently process more than 2,000 online orders each week for click-and-collect pickup and home delivery. According to their own statistics, they are making about 10% profit on their e-commerce orders, with recent weeks seeing a peak of 11%.
The store’s success depends on productivity improvements brought about by StrongPoint’s technology, including its Drive Thru and Order Picking systems.
“The primary challenge with grocery e-commerce is maintaining high levels of efficiency. Because we started early, we have had the time to find efficiency savings throughout the fulfillment process. Over the years we have been working in close cooperation with StrongPoint helping us find new and innovative ways to improve our operations and achieve the high efficiency rates we have today. StrongPoint has been fantastic with listening to our feedback and adapting their smart solutions to help us continuously find efficiency savings,” says Therese Kvist, owner and e-commerce sales manager at ICA Maxi Erikslund.
The order picking solution from StrongPoint offers an average of 270 items per worker hour for in-store picking.
After careful consideration and cooperation with its grocery chain customers, StrongPoint’s Order Picking system was first introduced 20 years ago and has since undergone continuous improvement and adaptation to become ever more effective.
“Our in-store pickers average 270 items per labor hour across all product categories. When it comes to zone-picking, our most productive picker is managing to pick up to 630 items per labor hour. The best thing about StrongPoint’s picking solution is that you can customize it to your store layout and adjust and optimize picking zones and routes accordingly. This has made our picking incredibly smooth and efficient.”
Therese Kvist, owner and e-commerce sales manager at ICA Maxi Erikslund.
Order Picking
With customers achieving picking speeds of 240–300 items per hour, StrongPoint Order Picking is the quickest manual picking system in the world. It’s a cloud-based system made to improve in-store employees’ accuracy and productivity. With the help of our technology, manual procedures can become up to 7 times more efficient and 99.99% precise than they would be with pen and paper.
Learn moreStrongPoint’s Drive Thru solution saves 2,000 labor hours every week.
About 85% of ICA Maxi Erikslund’s online customers prefer to pick up their orders in-store rather than have them delivered to their homes.
In order to deliver the correct order, the store initially used curbside pick-up, requesting each customer’s name and order number. However, the store decided to invest in StrongPoint’s Drive Thru solution because this one was not the most efficient.
Drive Thru
The goal of StrongPoint’s Drive Thru service, sometimes referred to as curbside pick-up, is to provide grocery stores with an efficient means of retrieving online orders from customer cars. Because they may use this option without ever getting out of the automobile, customers usually have a positive experience. Our solution can reduce wait times by informing staff of the order that will be delivered as soon as the consumer pulls up to the store by merging StrongPoint’s e-commerce software with license plate recognition.
Learn moreSWhen a customer enters the pickup area, StrongPoint’s Drive Thru solution automatically registers their car’s license plate. At the time of online ordering, customers enter their car’s license plate, and the system automatically notifies the store employees who are on duty at the curbside pickup area to bring the order to the customer’s vehicle.
“Compared to our previous solution we save at least 1 minute per order with StrongPoint’s Drive Thru solution as it has been purpose-built to make the entire workflow as fast and labor efficient as possible. When we are processing orders at scale that efficiency saving accumulates fast and means a big saving in terms of overall labor costs,” says Therese Kvist.
And right she is, 2,000 minutes saved per week is the equivalent of 33.3 labor hours saved per week. That is almost one full full-time employee equivalent labor saved every week.
Achieving 10% profitability with grocery e-commerce
The number sounds almost too good to be true, as anyone working grocery retail is fully aware of. When we drill down to the specifics, we learn that the profitability calculation is extensive.
“The profitability calculation includes everything. Rent on the building, staff, cars, royalties to the ICA corporation, depreciation of e-commerce assets, shelving, picking etc.”
Therese Kvist, owner and e-commerce sales manager at ICA Maxi Erikslund.
And yet the numbers are as high as 10% profitability. Therese says it comes from a dynamic pricing profile from ICA where they always have competitive prices combined with in-store efficiency savings. “We are actually one of the most efficient stores in all of Sweden,” Therese says proudly.
Never been more fun to come to work
An important factor in this success story is not only to be an early adopter and continuously improve on the routines and smart solutions from StrongPoint, but also to engage the staff and make it easier and less stressful to do in-store picking.
“Our staff say that it has never been more fun to go to work,” says Therese Kvist
When asked whether Therese Kvist would recommend StrongPoint’s grocery e-commerce solutions to other grocery retailers, the answer is clear.
“Absolutely – I would without doubt recommend StrongPoint to grocery retailers. Their solutions have been essential in driving our e-commerce efficiency and their service is great,” says Therese Kvist.