Grocers get in on omnichannel action

The ability to create an integrated and personalized user experience across all channels is the promise of a new omnichannel grocery solution from Grid Dynamics.



With the supermarket world evolving rapidly and shoppers demanding increased integration between physical and digital, Grid Dynamics released its Omnichannel Grocery Platform as an extension of the SAP hybris ecosystem of solutions. Citing statistics from BI Intelligence, Grid Dynamics said 3.3% of current U.S. grocery spending is online and that figure is projected to increase to 20% by 2018.



"Online grocery shopping is growing at a much faster rate than the overall category, and grocers can benefit from it only by providing customers a seamless shopping experience across physical and digital channels," said Leonard Livschitz, CEO of Grid Dynamics. "Teaming up with SAP hybris allows us to provide them an industry leading software platform that that will help them retain and grow marketshare in a quickly changing category."



Grid Dynamics contends its Omnichannel Grocery Platform allows grocers to implement a omnichannel platform that provide consumers with an intuitive user experience across channels, giving them the flexibility to shop and consume grocery-related content anytime, anywhere on their preferred medium. At the same time, grocers gain a 360-degree real-time view of customer behavior allowing them to create targeted marketing and personalized promotions to drive customer behavior and maximize returns, according to the company.



The omnichannel grocery platform will allow consumers to order online for in-store or home delivery, view nutritional and brand information, create and write reviews, add ingredients to their cart directly from recipes and cooking-related content, save, manage and share shopping lists; create custom orders (from the bakery, for example); and manage loyalty cards and points. Data collected and analyzed from such engagements gives grocers valuable insight into user behavior they can use to cross- and up- sell; create custom promotions; implement variable pricing; enhance product search; and better manage inventory systems in real-time, according to Grid Dynamics.



"Grid Dynamics Omnichannel Grocery Platform is a great example of combining the capabilities of the SAP hybris platform with the domain expertise of Grid Dynamics to deliver significant value to our joint customers around the world,” said Randy Evins, Sr. Principal IVE Food & Drug, SAP Retail.