Chris Quin (Foodstuffs North Island)
Cooperative grocer Foodstuffs North Island is nearing the end of a multi-year effort to shift all of its Pak 'n Save, New World and Four Square stores onto SAP.
The company's annual report to 31 March says the enterprise resource planning software is now in use across Pak 'n Save and New World while it has also been rolled out at many of its generally smaller Four Square stores.
"As part of our journey to become digital grocers, we introduced SAP to 49 Four Square stores, the cooperative reported.
"We also moved 20 Lower North Island stores across to our 'Cheeky Charlie' system, which means all our stores not on SAP are now using the same system to manage tickets, inventory, receipts and orders."
Ordering app Cheeky Charlie, named after Four Square's iconic grocer cartoon character, was launched in 2016 to help smaller stores to simplify and speed up their ordering process.
Foodstuffs North Island has been rolling SAP out for several years in a series of projects dubbed "Lightning" (to cover all stores in the group before the merger of the North Island and the separate Wellington cooperative in 2013.
At that point a new project, "Bolt" was added to roll SAP out to stores in the lower North Island, formerly part of the Wellington cooperative.
As part of the process, new standard store and inventory data definitions had to be created to enable another project called "One Data".
"With SAP now live in all Pak ’n Save and New World stores and 49 Four Square stores, our business is smarter than ever, and we are focused on using data and insight to improve the customer experience," chief executive Chris Quin said.
"Our new stores have been designed based on data and insight and are using it to inform our store flow and ranging decisions."
The coop's commercial operations team has been focused on evolving how members are supported through new technology, including robotic process automation, and leveraging the data and simplification opportunities from SAP in stores.
"Finding ways for processing tasks to be done effectively and efficiently will mean we can redeploy our people to work on higher value activities," the report said.
It also notes Foodstuffs North Island achieved a successful SAP technical upgrade "on time and on budget".
A new e-commerce platform was rolled out for the coops Gilmours brand while online shopping New World and Pak ’n Save gained online shopping websites
Foodstuffs also moved its Rotorua and CTD Nesdale distribution centres onto a new warehouse management system.
Support and distribution centres also moved to "living in the clouds", a new way of working with Office 365.
Datacom was known to be a key partner on the project, providing datacentre and development services, including a new Procure system for seafood.
Foodstuffs South Island has not been idle either. It reported a "major milestone" achieved during 2019 of moving all stores onto the SAP Module 2 system, which will provide more detailed and accurate store reporting.
