Sainsbury’s SmartShop impresses RTIH Innovation Awards judges

Sainsbury’s has been highly commended in the payments category at the 2020 RTIH Innovation Awards, sponsored by PMC.

The award recognises companies and projects/initiatives that are both innovative and customer and retailer friendly.

MishiPay took home the gold, impressing our judging panel with its rapid international expansion during 2020.

However, Sainsbury’s ran it a close second for accelerating the roll-out of its SmartShop solution.

The technology will be deployed at all 770 of its convenience branches in time for Christmas. This is up from 250 Local branches currently, alongside all Sainsbury’s supermarkets.

Sainsbury’s says that sales through SmartShop have exceeded 50% in some stores and 37% of total sales across the grocery giant in the past quarter.

Judges’ comments

Gerald Dawson, Finance Director, Forthglade Foods, observed that a 770 store roll-out is a big deal. “Sainsbury’s have moved rapidly this year to adapt to zero contact shopping. Impressive speed for a legacy retailer.”

Sharon Peters, Head Of Technology - Marks and Spencer, HR, Finance, Corporate Services and M&S Bank, commented: “It’s always difficult for a large retailer with legacy tech to adapt quickly and this shows that the focus has been very adaptive to meet customer needs.”

“To get to the volume in such a quick time and meet the clearly challenging end to end test validation that would have been required shows a real customer focus.”

Whilst Simon Curtis, Sales and Marketing Director, PMC Retail, said: “Very impressive rapid roll-out of this Covid-19 friendly solution.”

“Few in the market can boast the customer adoption levels they have achieved, a testimony of the strong marketing and ease of adoption. 50% of sales in some shops is tremendous.”