This project was led by me. As a start I organised a kick-off to align all stakeholders from several departments to update them on the plans and approach of the project. During the project these stakeholders were updated on a weekly basis, so they knew what the latest status was. I did this via a few slides.

The project started with a research phase where I performed field, market and customer research to gather insights to create an understanding of the as-is and to-be situation.

Desk research

The main goals for doing field research was to gather insights in the current service process of buying  groceries instore and online. To get these insights, I spoke with the necessary retail departments at PLUS  and with multiple supermarket entrepreneurs to discover their view on the current service, the moments of truth and the pain points. They also showed me where we might face problems when changing the process  of online orders, adding additional assortment, changes in billing etc.

Market research

To find out what the competition is offering for their business users and what the future will hold, I did  some market research. Therefore, I created a competitor analysis and trend analysis.

Customer research

The main goal of customer research is to find out what (PLUS) business customers think of the current service of ordering groceries in store and online and what they want to see differently. Research question I answered: ‘What is important for buying and ordering groceries and what can PLUS retail offer in this?’.

I started with qualitative research for which I interviewed 20 PLUS business customers (active PLUS customers and non-active PLUS customers) to gather insights into their current viewpoint of the PLUS service, drivers, moments of truth, pains, and gains. The main insights were validated with a quantitative study.

For the qualitative research I designed a questionnaire that was send to a research pool of (ex) PLUS customers in all type of branches, different sizes. We got N=340 responses, which was big enough to get significant results. Next to the questionnaire output, I also did data analysis on order data of business customers to get a better understanding about their shopping behaviour.

All the research data was bundled and analyzed into insights. I created 3 personas (based on their main drivers to get a better grip on the type of PLUS business customers, their journeys with motivations, pains and gains. Next to the journey, I also created a service blueprint to create additional insights in the processes that are attached to the several activities and touchpoints in the journey of the business customer.

With the gathered research insights in mind, I organised several workshops with the main stakeholders (Buying, product/category management, store operations, eCommerce operations, eCommerce Manager, and a selection of entrepreneurs) and the current eCommerce supplier to do a brainstorm on how we could turn these insights into relevant (online) adjustments for these business customers.

From a bunch of ideas, we converged to a selection of ideas, by plotting all the ideas in a matrix of effort versus impact.

Some of the ideas we thought off:

• Master account with subaccounts
• Split shoppingcard (per department/location)
• Additional assortment: bulk packaging / portion packaging
• Payment options: PIN, on account, automatic withdrawal, OCI-koppeling
• Configuration of order frequency (weekly, by weekly etc)
• Quick search in shopping basket / pre-filled orderlist
• Showing the right assortment based on customer segmentation (when business customer from a healthcare institution logs in: show relevant products)
• Include VAT per product and in invoice
• Saving order card, so the card would be visible when you log in via another device (also when a colleague logs in)
• Configuration of a budget per (sub)account
• Configuration of certain rules (master for subaccount)
• Configuration of invoicing term

The insights from research, including the ideas, were the fundament for the Business case. This case was created by Business Control and was presented to the Management Team by Business Control, the eCommerce Manager and myself. We got a ‘go’ for adding additional online functionality and offering bulk packaging, but not on specialty assortment because that wasn’t profitable for PLUS at that moment in time. The latter would be more suitable for a collaboration with Kruidvat for example.

After we got a ‘go’, I created designs which I tested with real PLUS business customers.

Next to the online changes, I ran an actual offline pilot with one supermarket, with offering bulk packaging. This was a real challenge. Especially because each PLUS supermarket handles online orders in store instead of a distribution centre. All stock (including online orders) come in at once and it is hard for store employees to distinguish between stock for online orders and stock for instore. Bulk packaging is also taking a lot of space, not only in each  store, but also for delivery. To do this pilot we had to simulate some changes in the necessary systems (e.g. ERP, stock picking app, delivery planning app).

After prototyping and testing, I had enough input to collaboratively create user stories out of the designs that were adjusted to the backlog of the necessary departments.