L - R: Cohesio's Rizan Mawzoon; Chemist Warehouse's Mark Finocchiaro and Edwin Chong, and Cohesio's Tim Noakes.
Melbourne-based integrator Cohesio Group (Körber) has enhanced the online ordering experience for Australian pharmacy retailer Chemist Warehouse in developing a new Click to Deliver solution.
The two companies have worked together since 2017, with Chemist Warehouse deploying Cohesio’s dedicated retail software, Ignito to underpin its Click and Collect processes. This has now been further expanded with addition of a new Click and Deliver same-day solution that took Cohesio four weeks to develop.
The pharmacy recognised it needed to meet the changing consumer market conditions due to Covid-19, which resulted in record online orders for the pharmacy -- reaching higher levels than Black Friday and Christmas periods.
Chemist Warehouse operates more than 500 stores nationally, servicing more than 1.5 million customers and dispensing almost a million prescriptions per week.
“We wanted to ensure that we could offer our customers the safest possible option to shop during Covid-19 restrictions," Chemist Warehouse managing partner and director Mark Finocchiaro said.
"We knew that for many they felt it was a risk to leave their homes and shop in the traditional way, so we approached Cohesio Group to help us develop our existing Click and Collect solution to become a Click and Deliver solution.”
The solution was developed in four-weeks by the Melbourne-based technology provider and the first stage has been rolled out across all of Chemist Warehouse’s stores in Australia, with New Zealand set to follow.
The solution allows the retailer to pick and pack online orders in store, instead of using a central distribution centre (DC).
When a customer selects an order on the Chemist Warehouse website or app, the order management system (OMS) will check the stock levels in stores closest to that customer to fulfil the order, and will send a message to the store inventory team, communicating which orders are for Click and Deliver and which are for Click and Collect.
The app will also profile the consumer and recognise if they have previously visited or ordered from a particular local store.
Since using Cohesio’s Ignito software solution, Chemist Warehouse has increased order fulfilment throughput rates by up to 30 per cent, processing up to 150,000 online orders a month.
“Chemist Warehouse stores are unique in that they tend to be very large facilities and hold a huge amount of inventory. We recognised that this created the perfect opportunity to fulfil orders in store, rather than from a DC,” Cohesio head of transformation, Rizan Mawzoon said.
Cohesio CEO, Nishan Wijemanne added this kind of fulfilment was on the rise as e-commerce continues to take up a larger percentage of the retail spend.
The latest project comes as Cohesio landed a new deal with Kmart Australia to deploy its Android Voice solution across its fulfilment operations, marking the first retailer in Australia to use Android Voice.
Set to go live this month, the deployment in Kmart’s distribution centres (DC) will support Kmart stores and KHub stores that will be opening from July.
Cohesio’s Android Voice solutions are based on Honeywell’s Guided Workflow Solution, and took less than four weeks to deploy, following on from Kmart’s previous installation of the solution at four DCs across the country.
With the Android Voice solution, Kmart will be able to meet faster and more efficient delivery and picking targets across its DC’s, instore and online operations.
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Rather than looking at picking slips, users can instead listen to order details while they continue to pick and pack, and offers more information around location and order details, along with an image of the product.
“Over the past few months we have experienced unprecedented levels of growth across our instore and online fulfilment operations. By partnering with Cohesio, we have been able to increase productivity, accuracy and efficiency across our fulfilment operations,” Kmart Australia general manager of supply, Oliver Blombery, said.
“We partner with Cohesio because of their innovative approach. By working with their inhouse software development team, we now have a much greater ROI on our equipment. Their Android Voice solution is the perfect fit for us, offering us a rapid increase in our productivity and faster order fulfilment and store replenishment."
Cohesio was acquired by logistics technology group, Körber in September 2019 and will now undertake a rebranding exercise under the Körber Supply Chain banner in the next few months.
