Endeavour Group is accelerating digital innovation as it looks set to record more than $1 billion in online sales in FY22. It is injecting $35 million into its digital arm endeavourX to accelerate ecommerce and technology innovations.
With BWS, Dan Murphy’s and Jimmy Brings in its stable, Endeavour recorded online sales growth of almost 25 per cent – $603 million – in 1HFY22.
EndeavourX was formed in September 2019 to lead the digital and ecommerce capabilities for Endeavour Group. The arrival of Covid accelerated customer expectations and demand.
EndeavourX director Claire Smith said the needs of online customers are changing at “lightening speed”.
“We just had our biggest digital Christmas on record, and we are constantly looking at how we can innovate to meet and exceed the expectations of our customers.
“For the first time, we are seeing more customers engaging with our brands via the website or app than in our bricks and mortar stores – for example researching a product before going into a store – so our digital platforms have become the front door to all of our retail brands,” Smith said.
Personalisation remains a priority for endeavourX after it built a personalisation engine to enhance Dan Murphy’s loyalty program My Dan’s last year.
For Smith, understanding customers means being able to provide them with a better experience.
“We can personalise offers and suggest interesting products to customers that they might have never even heard of, in the same way a streaming service would suggest a movie or tv-series based on what you've enjoyed before,” she said.
Online and instore
EndeavourX is also working on instore digital capabilities. Eighteen months ago, it was the first retailer to implement drive-thru number-plate recognition technology and is now extending it across the network.
It recently started an electronic shelf label (ESL) roll out across BWS and Dan Murphy stores.
“ESLs reduce paper usage and make our store teams more efficient, but we are also exploring how we can use them to help customers browsing in store, leveraging the app capabilities we have built,” Smith said.
The labels have NFC (Near Field Communication) technology embedded, so customers can tap the shelf label with their smartphones to get more product information or read customer reviews.
The ESL technology also captures geo-location data, which will be used when creating planograms for stores in the future.
“This data will be analysed to create optimal shopping paths for our customers, and will help us create the most convenient customer experience possible,” Smith said.
