Rebel parent company Super Retail Group (SRG) has invested heavily into its online fulfilment capabilities, after clocking an 87% increase in eCommerce sales in the second half of 2020.
Generating $237 million in digital sales during the second half of last year, SRG realised that its previous fulfilment system was not best servicing it or its customers.
According to SRG, its previous online order fulfilment system allocated orders based on proximity to customers without considering the true cost to fulfil.
As a result, more than 20% of home delivery orders were shipped interstate at a higher cost, despite the company having the items in stock in the state.
Additionally, more than 15% of home delivery orders were split into multiple packages, which also increased fulfilment costs.
To overcome this challenge, the business has introduced a new fulfilment system, which will configure its online order fulfilment to better realise its customer promise around time from ‘click to consumer.’
Speaking on the rollout, SRG GM of omni-retail Brian Townshend said that the system delivered results from day one.
"As a result of various pandemic mitigation measures, online sales of home fitness and outdoor leisure exploded in Australia in 2020, resulting in Super Retail Group increasing eCommerce sales.
"In an effort to meet this surge in online orders and meet our customer promise around delivery, we fast-tracked the roll-out of [the new] omnichannel solution in a remote, socially distanced manner.
"The resulting solution achieved significant fulfilment savings per order, from day one of operation.
"When COVID-19 fully hit and many businesses were consolidating projects, we actually sped up the deployment of [the system] and it now offers us a single window of visibility and availability of stock across our entire supply chain network.
"The solution is highly adaptable and responsive.
"Even implementing it virtually and operating throughout the challenges of COVID-19, the new system has been able to accommodate major order and fulfilment routing changes within minutes.
"With the new system, we were able to change our fulfilment logic and immediately reduce fulfilment costs – even achieving our 12-month goal on day one, which is a remarkable result," he said.