How one of Australia’s Largest Supermarket chains secured a future-proof path to digital transformation

Our customer had a vision of a centralised ticketing solution that would meet the rapidly evolving needs of its business, and provide a future-proof path to digital transformation at the shelf-edge. We were able to guide them in the most effective use of their technology by gaining a deep understanding of their business. We continue to support our customer’s evolving needs and expectations through the Last Yard team and platform, which empower retailers to rapidly innovate their in-store customer experience.

Digital Transformation at scale through streamlined integration with third-party vendors

The Last Yard Platform serves as a central hub that houses over 400 of our customer’s business rules. These rules process data from 25 data sources and automate over 100,000 decisions per day for this large supermarket chain. These decisions include whether or not a ticket should be printed (or taken off the shelf), the product details that appear on tickets or screens, and how they are presented visually. 

Last Yard’s business rules engine and data integrations can be leveraged elsewhere with very little additional investment. Therefore, our customer has the agility to rapidly trial other in-store marketing technology without duplicating or rebuilding any of their business rules in those systems. Furthermore, this removes barriers associated with upgrading to future hardware technologies.

The ability to add new price-dependent hardware to stores without custom development each time has allowed them to integrate with more than six third-party vendors, including Electronic Shelf Edge (ESL) vendors, department scale vendors, and a back-office system, enabling efficient and scalable operations.

The Last Yard implementation also facilitated a proof of concept (POC) for digital shelf-edge (DSE) displays by leveraging existing data, design, and planograms, a rapid POC of digital tobacco boards, and a streamlined integration with e-commerce systems. 

This forward-thinking retailer is digitally transforming their customer experience and investing in Omnichannel technology to connect the online and offline aspects of the customer journey. For example, Last Yard’s e-commerce integration enabled them to rapidly test customer reviews and star ratings in their shelf-edge marketing without requiring custom software development. This initiative was ultimately rolled out to all stores.

Reduced delivery time for marketing and promotional initiatives

Our customer has a newfound confidence to create new promotion types and offers for their shoppers as a result of Last Yard’s business rules engine. There is peace of mind knowing that each product, in each store, has the correct price at all times across their large network of stores.

In addition to accuracy, our customer observed a 66% improvement in delivery times to roll-out new shelf-edge marketing initiatives to stores. Because of this streamlined promotion-to-shelf process, marketing and operations teams are able to adapt quickly to changing customer demands and market trends, resulting in increased sales and profitability. 

For a business that executes over 15 millions promotions each week, this type of efficiency and scalability is a mission-critical competitive advantage.

Enhanced Compliance

With legislative compliance being top-of-mind for our customer, we worked with them to design a system that would minimise risk. Firstly, Last Yard’s rules engine ensures that the correct information is always displayed at the shelf-edge. For example, country of origin and comparative unit pricing are locked-in business rules that will always be displayed when required.

Secondly, we designed an intuitive dashboard that indicates what store staff must action such as removing cancelled promotions or confirming prices have been changed at the shelf so that the POS can start scanning at the new price.

Thirdly, there are automated workflows that create internal support tickets in the event of hardware malfunction (scales, electronic shelf labels, etc). With Last Yard’s customised checks and balances, our customer can significantly reduce compliance risk. 

Efficient Store Operations

Store teams no longer need to sort through hundreds of price changes that are in no particular order to figure out what needs to be actioned. With Last Yard’s dashboard, store staff see exactly what needs to be updated in-store, and just click print. The dashboard is customised to group all tasks in a way that makes sense for our customer. For example, price changes in produce are all grouped together in what we call a batch. Furthermore, with the data integration with our customer’s planogram data, all tickets print in the correct order to minimise the time it takes to update shelves. 

Missing or damaged tickets are quickly and easily corrected though Last Yard’s integration with the existing fleet of mobile devices. All it takes for a team member to scan any product needing a new ticket, and it is automatically added as an action item on the dashboard.