Ocado has shared new details about how it helps grocery retailers move their operations onto the Ocado Smart Platform (OSP) with minimal disruption to customers, as Asda prepares to migrate to the system next year.
The company said migrating grocery operations is more complex than standard ecommerce because customers frequently change orders until shortly before delivery. Retailers also have to manage large product ranges, promotions, loyalty data and inventory across multiple temperature-controlled environments.
Ocado said its end-to-end platform combines ecommerce, fulfilment, supply chain and last-mile delivery into a single system, allowing retailers to migrate different parts of their operations while keeping existing services running.
The company also shared lessons from moving Ocado Retail from its legacy Ocean platform to OSP. According to Ocado, the project involved transferring nearly 500,000 live orders and moving 1.5 million active customers after more than 2,000 test migrations and 10 million test accounts.
The experience has helped Ocado refine its migration process, including improving testing, planning for unexpected disruptions and managing live customer data throughout the transition.
The upcoming migration of Asda to OSP will be one of the next major projects using this approach. Ocado said it is also developing new integration capabilities that will allow retailers to connect both in-house and third-party delivery providers through the platform.
For grocery retailers, platform migrations are becoming an increasingly important part of modernising online operations while aiming to maintain customer service throughout the transition.
