Morrisons, the fourth largest supermarket chain in the UK, has partnered with ThoughtWorks to help in a major strategic push for greater retail agility. Retail agility is the ability to take advantage of new markets, channels, products and customer segments at a speed that keeps up with fast-changing consumer habits and technology. For at least a decade, technology in the retail sector has been evolving at a pace that businesses are hard-pressed to keep up with. But because consumer preferences are moving just as quickly, retailers have to adapt and become more agile.
Morrisons has been working with ThoughtWorks to streamline and automate internal logistics, making its brick and mortar operations more efficient and responsive to changes in demand. Morrisons is also making a major investment in building its online presence, and ThoughtWorks has now delivered the first results in that part of the partnership—a mobile web application for the retailer’s new Morrisons Cellar online wine sales operation.
ThoughtWorks built the cross-mobile application—for iPhone, Android and other HTML5-capable devices—along with a set of re-usable back-end enterprise system services for content management, customer accounts, payments, fulfillment processing and other retail functions.
ThoughtWorks delivered everything, on time, in just fifteen weeks; allowing Morrisons to keep a strategic commitment to launch the venture in its fourth quarter. With the new services layer and the internal knowledge gained from the Morrisons Cellar project, Morrisons can launch into additional online market segments with confidence and speed. Retail agility, achieved.
