atrify GMBH The dream team for the start in the online grocery trade: Scalable commerce platform & high-quality product data

Entry into online trading should be lean and focused. In this article, Emporix and atrify show what is important at the start.

contents

• The future of the grocery trade is cross-channel
• Get into the online grocery trade step by step
• Composable Commerce: creating a scalable basis for success
• Convincing high-quality product information

Retailers in the food sector who still operate their business exclusively in brick-and-mortar stores today have a hard time: Even before the pandemic, competition from online retailing began to grow considerably. During the pandemic, the situation was exacerbated by delivery services that are aggressively entering the market and are enjoying growing popularity, especially with urban consumers. It's obvious that the future of grocery retailing is cross-channel.

Statistics: 4 out of 10 buyers bought online for the first time during the pandemic, 9 out of 10 intend to continue doing so in the future. ( criteo.com )

Grocery retailers who have not yet or hardly digitized their sales are well advised to deal with the topic of online trading now, but without immediately lapsing into technology activism. Even if we at Emporix are passionate about online grocery retailing, we recommend that our customers approach digital commerce step-by-step - starting with the measures that can be implemented with little effort and risk.

“If online, then do it right” - this is the motto of many grocery retailers who have long postponed entering online retail and are now afraid of missing out on the boat. In this situation, over-ambitious decisions are often made and quite a few retailers go too far when starting with oversized technology. When time is of the essence, e-commerce systems often cannot be big or extensive enough.

Misconception: “A lot helps a lot” often leads to retailers getting bogged down with over-ambitious measures and failing when they start selling online.

Complete systems that combine “typical” functions such as product catalog, search, ordering, payment, etc. in one solution appear attractive at first glance because they pretend to offer everything “what you need”. It is often overlooked that, although complete systems cover many areas, they quickly reach their limits when there are very special requirements. In addition, such systems usually offer significantly more than dealers need in the start-up phase.

Instead of activating all functions that could theoretically be relevant today or in the future in one fell swoop, retailers should digitize their sales step by step. To get started, a few components that can be easily implemented are often sufficient, e.g. an online product catalog and a database with the most important products. It is crucial to create a scalable technological basis right from the start that allows online sales to be gradually expanded.

Background: The online grocery trade is dynamic, which is why technical solutions for the online grocery trade must also be dynamic.

Emporix offers a scalable platform for “composable commerce”. On this basis, dealers can put together and expand their system according to their individual needs. The modular architecture of Emporix makes it possible to flexibly connect functional components (services) via standard interfaces (API), to exchange them if necessary and to remove them again. In this way, retailers can react flexibly to new technological requirements at any time.

High-quality product information is the fuel for sales and plays an important role right from the start in the online grocery trade. Without product data, there is no product presentation in the online shop, which is why it is advisable to clarify questions about the quality and management of product information at an early stage: how is the data prepared for sale? Where will the date