Last Yard and Woolworths Group Speak at NRF24 Conference in New York; Summarise benefits of 22-year collaboration and outline focus of ongoing innovation focused on improving customer experience and reducing compliance risk
New York, New York, US – January 16, 2024: Last Yard today announced, at NRF’24, that it has expanded its collaboration with Woolworths, Australia’s largest retailer, enabling Woolworths Group to enhance customer experience, reduce waste and improve compliance across its fleet of stores.
Speaking on stage at NRF24, the world’s largest and most prestigious retail conference, in New York, Last Yard chief executive officer, Chris Stoyles said; “Since we began working with Woolworths Group 22 years ago, we have understood that they strive to put the customer at the centre of everything they do. For more than two decades, Last Yard has worked closely with Woolworths Group on a range of innovations on their in-store, shelf edge and ticketing strategy to support their customer-focused innovation in these key touchpoints. We are excited to be here at NRF24’ to announce that we have partnered with Woolworths Group on their journey to transition from paper shelf edge labels to electronic shelf label (ESL) to digitise the in-store customer experience.”
Angelo Clayton, Technology Director, Stores & Information Management, Woolworths Group, said; “Our partnership with Last Yard has enabled us to accelerate our digital transformation at the shelf edge across the Woolworths Group. Through the deployment of the Last Yard platform we have enabled a consistent experience for our customers and delivered an improved team experience by optimising our ticketing process in store (for both Digital and printed tickets as we roll out ESL tags).”
In 2001, Woolworths Group’s relationship began with Last Yard, one of the world’s leading providers of in-store experience platforms, to help maximise the efficiency of paper ticketing across its network. Last Yard has played a key role in Woolworth Group’s shelf edge and customer experience evolution, including with the company’s migration to cloud computing (for ticketing in this scenario), its adoption of software as a service solutions, the deployment of a single platform to execute marketing and merchandising across its entire store network (2018), as well as and back and front of store ticketing focused technology integration.
Today, Last Yard is an integral partner in the now centrally managed design, creation, distribution and management of more than 15 million tickets a week for the full fleet of stores in Australia and New Zealand, including Woolworths Australia Supermarkets, BIG W and Woolworths New Zealand. Last Yard has enabled Woolworths Group to build in a range of ‘rules’ for ticket (and increasingly, ESL based) tickets across 400 different variables. This not only ensures Woolworths Group is able to continually improve the customer experience but to reduce the risk of non-compliance with ticketing.
Last Yard has also been integral in Woolworth Group’s strategic decision to embark on the transition from paper ticketing to an integrated, omnichannel, ESL ticketing rollout.
Already in place in a large portion of Woolworth Group’s stores, the ESL platform ensures the retailer has integrity of its promotions between the store shelf and Point of Sales terminals, reinforcing its commitment to customer satisfaction and unlocking new customer engagement opportunities at the shelf edge.
Stoyles said; “Last Yard is helping Woolworths Group, Australia’s largest employer, to increase the speed to market for new customer engagement initiatives while mitigating the risk of data fragmentation across its wide range of systems. In partnership with Woolworths Group, we continue to invest in this foundation for innovation that we’ve created together. As new technologies are trialled and rolled out into stores, Last Yard provides a highly secure, singlesource of truth for Woolworths Group across its customer touchpoint network, allowing the company to meet the continuously evolving needs of its team and customers’ expectations.”
About Last Yard
About Last Yard: Established in 2000, Last Yard offers the best of breed software to engage and convert retail customers at the point of purchase. With heritage in the original ‘shelf edge’ of printed tickets, it is now at the forefront of the industry moving to new channels such as Electronic Shelf Labels (ESL), Digital Shelf Edge (DSE), mobile, screens and more. Last Yard focuses on 4 key retail sectors: Liquor, Pharmacy, Grocery & Speciality, working with large national corporate brands such as Woolworths, Big W, Sigma, JB Hi-Fi, Freedom and many more.
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Peter Witts
Navigate Communication
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Email: peter@navigatecommunication.com.au