How PLUS Supermarkets increased successful orders by 89% with an award-winning grocery shopping experience

By fostering a strong bond with the neighborhoods it serves, PLUS Supermarkets has been at the forefront of bringing a local touch to each store. Since the merger with Coop, another leading Dutch grocery chain, PLUS has focused on local entrepreneurs, becoming more community-centered by offering products from local butchers to flower shops. While this approach brings true brand differentiation, it also introduces a unique set of challenges, such as implementing custom processes for each store’s local flavor. Sustaining this strategy requires an enterprise architecture that offers true freedom and flexibility, especially when it comes to expanding eCommerce possibilities. 

But alas, translating PLUS’s differentiation into online shopping was far from a piece of cake. The company’s IT team struggled to keep up with the business vision: Releasing new features or making updates was limited by an increasingly inflexible and unstable monolithic Intershop platform implemented in 2015. With the addition of 12 other technologies plugged into the Intershop platform, the IT landscape became even more scattered and complex, so much so that the use of Intershop resulted in 13 different data systems updated once a day. Adding new functionalities, such as barcode search, would take months, while 80% of the retailer’s development was dedicated to bug fixing and refactoring. 

As the online shopping experience became increasingly outdated, customer complaints began to pour in, especially during the COVID-19 lockdowns. At that time, PLUS’s webshop saw a 30 to 40% surge, as shoppers switched from in-store to online shopping. Unfortunately, the legacy eCommerce platform couldn’t handle traffic spikes, resulting in frequent outages. The mobile app stopped working, leaving online ordering possible only via desktop. 

To win back online shoppers, capitalize on new opportunities and ensure a smooth merger with Coop, PLUS embraced the agility and stability of composable commerce.

In addition to the flexibility of composable, PLUS was drawn to the possibilities for bite-sized, continuous implementation of small improvements, which are crucial for keeping up with a dynamic marketplace. 

The “build-and-buy” possibilities of a composable tech stack enabled PLUS to take advantage of standard commerce components while still being able to customize them. This empowered local entrepreneurs to become adaptable without added complexity, helping them make a meaningful impact in their communities. For PLUS, adopting the independent and reusable services of MACH® architecture, combined with best-of-breed components, was critical for ultimate flexibility, allowing the company to plug and play the services that best met its needs. 

With the decision to go composable with commercetools, PLUS embarked on its migration journey. The team broadened the scope of its digital transformation process to rethink customer journeys, incorporate innovative features and build an entirely new ecosystem without dependencies on the legacy platform as a way to deliver outstanding shopping experiences. 

Due to this expanded scope, the company opted for a “big bang” migration, flawlessly executed within a 24-hour window. From building the entire composable ecosystem to going live, PLUS successfully completed its migration within the planned three-year timeline. In addition to commercetools as the commerce engine, PLUS integrated Contentful for its CMS system and OutSystems for the frontend, with systems integrator Product League leading the digital transformation process.

Thanks to commercetools Platform, PLUS now benefits from seamless order orchestration across B2C and B2B businesses with outstanding API response time that elevates the customer experience — from product discovery to calculating discounts and checkout. The platform’s rock-solid stability during peak times ensures a frictionless shopping journey, boosting conversion rates and making every transaction as easy as pie.

Customers quickly noticed that shopping online at PLUS became more convenient, faster and more enjoyable — so much so that the grocery chain received an award for Best Webshop, determined by popular vote. The retailer accelerated its omnichannel shopping efforts with a revamped plus.nl webshop, as well as a brand-new PLUS app. The company is also planning new touchpoints to further spice up the shopping experience, all connected through commercetools. 

Behind the scenes, the composable solution brought tremendous benefits to the organization. Technical teams reduced time spent on bug fixing and performance tests by 50%, allowing for a more balanced split between maintenance, experimentation and innovation, each taking about 30% of developers’ time. Furthermore, the guaranteed uptime of 99.99% translated into a speed improvement of between 50 and 70% compared to Intershop, with a measurable impact on conversion and SEO rates. 

The modern architecture enabled PLUS to adopt CI/CD (continuous integration/continuous development) flows, accelerating time to market. Now, PLUS can deploy about three times a week, while running A/B tests to experiment with and validate what features resonate with customers. For example, the company introduced voice and barcode search in a two-week sprint, which would have taken two months on the previous platform.

With year-on-year growth in both market share and online revenue, PLUS anticipates a fast ROI while reducing total costs of ownership (TCO) over time. This is especially true as the cost of updating a product drops significantly, no longer hindered by irregular release cycles.