April 2022: retail technology deals and deployments at a glance
RTIH rounds up the stand out retail systems deals, deployments and pilots from April, including Ocado, Circle K, Standard AI, Monoprix, Primark, Amazon Canada, and Walmart.
Ocado's within an hour grocery delivery service, Zoom by Ocado, has launched a second micro site, in Canning Town, East London.
In a LinkedIn post, Kieren Johnson, Head of IT at Ocado Retail, said that the facility was “built using the OSP platform (70 odd bots doing their stuff) and stocking 10k+ items for delivery within one hour. All electric delivery fleet.”
The first site was launched in 2019 in Acton, West London.
The aforementioned range of 10,000 products compares to over 50,000 from the main Ocado Retail business.
The retailer is looking for additional sites within London's M25 orbital motorway.
Standard AI has announced the opening of an autonomous store in partnership with Circle K.
This builds on another checkout-free tie up from last year.
Customers walk in the Phoenix, Arizona store, shop as normal, and tap the Circle K Innovation app at Standard AI’s tablet-based stations when they’re ready to leave. Receipts are sent to their phones within minutes.
Asda has selected the following Workday solutions: Workday Human Capital Management, Absence Management, Benefits, Compensation, Learning, Prism Analytics and Recruiting.
The grocery giant, which was named UK retailer of the year at the 2021 RTIH Innovation Awards, says that it chose the technology to gain “a unified view of its workforce and to deliver personalised and engaging employee experiences that will help the organisation keep pace with evolving talent needs”.
Amazon Canada has opened its newest robotics powered fulfilment centre, YHM1, in Hamilton, Ontario.
“This new facility is the company’s most advanced one in our network today, and it’s the 1,500 employees that really make this place spectacular,” says Vibhore Arora Regional Director, Canada Customer Fulfilment, Amazon Canada.
“Robotics technology helps extend the reach and capability of our team in a manner that makes tasks easier and more efficient, and make our fulfilment centres safer and more collaborative.”
Cruise, the self-driving car unit of General Motors, has expanded its autonomous delivery pilot with Walmart in Arizona.
The company will now be doing limited deliveries for customers in Chandler, in addition to Scottsdale.
Australian retailer Coles Liquor is implementing the RELEX Solutions Living Retail platform across its 931 stores.
The solution will service Coles Liquor’s Liquorland, First Choice Liquor Market and Vintage Cellars stores as well as five distribution centres throughout Australia, with the aim of driving improved availability for customers through supply chain planning and AI driven replenishment.
Fast fashion big hitter boohoo has announced the launch of its first NFT collection.
Phase one of the brand’s move into this space included the launch of NFT education and community building platform @boohooverse on Twitter and Discord, which aims to onboard the female fashion community into Web3 ahead of the first drop.
boohoo ran a competition to support a second phase. This recruited artists in the NFT space to be part of what is pitched as “the biggest female led NFT collection yet”.
Primark has unveiled a new website, featuring thousands of products from across its ranges, as well as a fresh design, enhanced navigation and a new feature that allows customers to check stock availability in their local store.
This is launching first in the UK, before rolling out to Primark’s 13 other markets in the coming months.
Alongside the retailer’s in-house team, EPAM Systems has been the primary design and technology partner for the project.
The site has been built using technology components from a number of digital solution suppliers including Bloomreach, Amplience, commercetools, Microsoft and Salesforce.
Worldline has been chosen by Monoprix to roll-out its omnichannel payment platform across all 700 of the retailer’s stores in 250 towns in France.
The project includes its six retail chains: Monoprix, monop’, monop’daily, monop’beauty, monop’station and Naturalia.
