86%
reduction in labour costs
345 items
picked per hour on average for several stores
Since starting their e-commerce journey back in 2008, Coop Sweden has consistently been at the forefront of the grocery business. Fifteen years later, the chain has more than 200 picking locations and is a market leader as a result of that vision.
The central component of such expansion? combining extremely effective last-mile solutions with extremely effective order picking. In order to process their e-grocery orders for their stores, Coop modernised its manual picking system in 2018 and chose to use StrongPoint’s Order Picking solution.
The outcome? E-groceries that are profitable. A startling 345 products are picked each hour across all product lines in several of their stores today.
A Not-So-Secret Recipe to E-Commerce Success
When asked what’s the secret ingredient in their success, Niklas Zeitlin, Head of Coop Sweden’s Online Operations, identifies multiple factors.
Chief among them is an inclusive learning culture for shoppers and staff alike, which comprises three key factors:
- A welcoming atmosphere for shoppers. Coop sought to make the online shopping experience as natural as the instore one.
- Proper onboarding of the new pickers.
- Sharing of knowledge among staff. It was vital that best practices were developed and shared so that everyone could benefit from clever solutions and key strategies.
Metrics, monitoring, and adapting comprised the second ingredient, and each has been as crucial to Coop’s development. According to Niklas, in order to meet KPIs and achieve unprecedented levels of efficiency, online actors need to be able to deal with data at all levels.
With the help of StrongPoint’s solution, Coop can evaluate the data and performance of each of its shops, reward those that attain both maximum efficiency and excellent quality, and swiftly identify and share best practices with the group.
Another component of the network’s continued effectiveness is what Niklas called an adaptive strategy. Hyper-efficiency cannot be achieved by a single strategy; rather, it depends on what each store, regardless of size, finds to be effective. Every business requires a distinct approach, which is where the StrongPoint solution comes in handy once more because every store can be configured individually based on its particular features.
For instance, small retailers might combine simultaneous two-order picking with a storewide picking strategy. In order to maximize efficiency advantages, larger stores will integrate StrongPoint technology, such as mobile units with scales, printers, and pick-by-light technologies, while operating across various zones.
Integration into a single system managed by StrongPoint software gives the sauce the last spark it requires.
“StrongPoint’s order picking solution has been a key factor for us achieving e-grocery profitability.”
Niklas Zeitlin, Head of Coop Sweden’s Online Operations
Grocery lockers are key to a flexible strategy
The flexibility of StrongPoint’s solutions and array of choices are key to Coop’s strategy, says Niklas. Grocery lockers are at the heart of that strategy, as the solution provides substantial efficiency savings.
“In addition to using StrongPoint’s order picking system, we use their other systems leveraging efficiency savings, including grocery lockers, as they provide enormous savings for the last mile.”
During the pandemic, when a sharp rise in e-commerce traffic necessitated rapid and drastic scaling, grocery lockers were an essential component of Coop’s strategy. Fortunately, it only takes 10 to 12 hours to onboard StrongPoint’s temperature-controlled grocery locker system.
Coop also established 250 click-and-collect pickup locations, many of which included grocery lockers, and expanded the number of stores that fulfill online purchases from 30 to 200. Grocery lockers ultimately resulted in the fastest and most convenient click-and-collect consumer experience while saving the grocery merchant a staggering 86% on labor costs when compared to home delivery.
“I highly recommend StrongPoint’s solutions to all grocery retailers looking to maximise profitability. StrongPoint’s world-class picking solution, combined with labor-saving grocery lockers, are two key pillars of our e-commerce strategy going forward. Thanks to StrongPoint we are making the impossible possible, profitable e-groceries.”
Read more about the solutions
Grocery Lockers
Because they can be positioned right next to your store and require no further work hours once the order has been loaded into the locker, grocery lockers are the most efficient click and collect alternative. It is an extremely practical last-mile delivery solution for both you and your customers. By default, our grocery lockers are of the best quality, having been designed in Scandinavia and built to endure even the most extreme weather conditions.
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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.
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