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Gocery Gateway Logo

A simpler, faster, and easier experience for the grocery shopper.

9500 Products

Up to 200 updates a week

Owned by Longo’s, Grocery Gateway was originally founded in 1997 and paved the way as the first online grocery retailer in Canada. Today, Grocery Gateway serves customers across Southern Ontario and the Greater Toronto Area. On Grocery Gateway’s site, customers can select from thousands of items including organic, local and artisanal products. A steadfast devotion to delivering the freshest and highest-quality products, and treating every customer like family is what sets Grocery Gateway apart.

About the Project

Recognizing an opportunity in the Canadian grocery industry, the Grocery Gateway team made the decision to upgrade from a custom, in-house platform to a market-­leading enterprise eCommerce platform.

The goal was to deliver a best-in-class shopping experience that would surprise and delight customers through every interaction. To achieve this, Grocery Gateway implemented an SAP Hybris solution that allowed them to more efficiently manage content and showcase products, while reducing user errors and improving the team’s overall productivity.

Grocery Gateway worked with the Pivotree team to develop a revolutionary new online shopping experience designed to:

  • Improve overall user experience
  • Double online revenue over a five year period
  • Increase average order value
  • Increase customer loyalty
  • Increase new customer acquisition

Implementing an SAP Hybris Commerce Solution

The project was delivered in June 2016. Pivotree used the SAP Hybris accelerator for B2C with the Product Content Management Module (PCM), Web Content Management System (WCMS), the Customer Service Module and Advanced Personalization.

Back end integration to the Hybris Commerce platform included:

  • Tomax (ERP)
  • TD Payment (Payment Gateway)
  • Experian OAS (Validation)
  • Microsoft Dynamics (CRM)
  • Roadnet Transportation Suite
The adaptive responsive design was developed based on custom templates that were built on the Hybris WCMS platform. The result is an industry-leading online grocery shopping experience that continues to exceed customer expectations.

 

Key Metrics

  • Migrated all customers to new platform, including order history and shopping lists, product favourites and delivery addresses.
  • 9,500 active products. Catalogue updates occur every 1-3 days, with 100-200 updates made every week.
  • One dedicated “Pick Store” warehouse exclusively for Grocery Gateway website.
  • Three shifts operating 24 hours a day, picking orders and packing trucks. Deliveries start at 6 am.

Quick Summary

Challenges

  • Multiple customer groups (residential, business, non-profit) with personalized content, pricing, and ordering rules
  • Customers with as many as 250 shopping lists in the system
  • Large carts resulting in long load times as carts attempt to recalculate shipping, tax, promotional prices, etc every time a product is added or changed

Solution

  • SAP Commerce Implementation

    • SAP Hybris accelerator for B2C
    • Product Content Management Module (PCM)
    • Web Content Management System (WCMS)
    • Customer Service Module
    • Advanced Personalization
  • Back end integration

    • Tomax (ERP)
    • TD Payment (Payment Gateway)
    • Experian OAS (Validation)
    • Microsoft Dynamics (CRM)
    • Roadnet Transportation Suite

Outcome

  • An industry-leading grocery shopping experience that continues to exceed customer expectations.

Features and Functions

Cart Starters

Curated lists consisting of common products based on typical events, recipes or everyday shopping needs. Business users can customize Cart Starters based on what they want to promote. Customers can pick products from the list and specify the quantity to add to their cart, or simply add the entire list.

Reserve Delivery Window

Customers are able to reserve their delivery date and time at anytime during their shopping experience, prior to checkout. The window is held for 90 minutes to ensure the customer has ample time to complete their order.

Multiple Shopping Lists

Some customers store as many as 250 shopping lists in the system for various occasions (e.g. Christmas dinner, weekend away, birthday party, backyard BBQ, office essentials, etc).

Customer Groups

The site supports three customer groups – including residential, business and non-profit organizations, each with their own personalized content, pricing and ordering rules

Scratch Pads

Customers now have the ability to create a generic shopping list (e.g. Eggs, Milk, Bread, etc.) and have the search tool find the most relevant products from that list.

Additional features and functionality included integration with Grocery Gateway’s existing loyalty program, adding a guest checkout process, and enhancing the order modification workflow.

Handling of Large Carts

Unlike a traditional ecommerce cart, a typical grocery cart contains upwards of hundreds of different products. This can result in long load times as the cart attempts to recalculate shipping, tax, promotional prices, etc. every time a product is added or changed. The Pivotree team developed a solution to speed up refresh time to ensure an enjoyable user experience for shoppers.

Report — Delivering Frictionless Commerce

Want to know what 3,800 consumers think about frictionless experiences? In this 2021 research study report, we dive into the six dimensions of frictionless commerce and show businesses how they can optimize the digital customer experience.