Makro owner’s IT hiring spree takes the fight to Takealot
Makro and Game owner Massmart has provided details on its significant investments in ecommerce that helped it build out its online shopping offering to better compete with players like Takealot.
The company said some of the significant technology releases it delivered in 2022 include the revamped Game website, the standalone mobile Makro Shopping app, and the group’s new advanced store employee fulfilment application, Global Integrated Fulfillment.
“Launched in May this year, the revamped Game website offers an intuitive and mobile-friendly experience through features like improved navigation and search, new product categories of clothing, pantry and liquor, and improved order tracking,” Massmart said.
The company said the website’s launch doubled Game’s sales conversion rate and revenue, showing more South Africans were shopping online from the store.
In addition, the standalone Makro shopping app launched in July 2022 now accounts for a significant portion of the brand’s ecommerce revenue.
“The new Makro pantry and liquor shopping experiences have been a great hit with customers on the app, and both of these categories continue to grow at triple digits,” said Massmart.
“The combination of both Walmart and local expertise has helped deliver a quality, mobile-first shopping experience that also uses less-mobile data and memory on users’ devices,” it added.
MyBroadband tested the Makro app shortly after its launch and found it offered an intuitive and effective online shopping experience.
We were also impressed that our order was delivered one day after we placed it, despite an estimated delivery time of 2-5 days.
Walmart’s head of ecommerce product and technology for Africa, Shilpan Bhagat, explained Massmart has been able to leverage Walmart’s experience and technology elsewhere in the world to rapidly expands its capabilities in South Africa.
“With the support of hundreds of dedicated ecommerce software engineers at Walmart’s Global Tech hub in Bangalore, India, we have adopted some of these capabilities into the South African market over the past year,” said Bhagat.
One major development has been a more than 10-fold increase in Massmart’s software engineering team — from 28 to approximately 300 employees.
The South African-based product management team has also grown from seven to more than 30, as part of the multi-million dollar investment to expand the organisation’s ecommerce capacity.
“Through this investment and leveraging the Walmart ecosystem, we are rapidly accelerating our journey to maturity in Massmart ecommerce from an estimated 5 to 8 years down to 2 to 3 years,” said Bhagat.
“Where the group could previously deliver 10 to 15 enhancements or features per quarter, Massmart ecommerce is now delivering over 100 new technology capabilities and enhancements in a quarter.”
Kanban and 4ITB help solve problems quickly
Massmart’s ecommerce improvements are also being driven by the adoption of an agile “kanban” development process and “four in the box” (4ITB) approach to problem-solving.
The kanban process involves visually representing work items on a kanban board, allowing team members to see the state of every piece of work at any given time.
“The main purpose of representing work as a card on the kanban board is to allow team members to track the progress of work through its workflow in a highly visual manner,” Massmart explained.
The 4ITB approach includes key roles within each product team who can work together to solve customer problems.
“A typical 4ITB team can include a product manager, business owner, product designer and engineers,” Massmart said.
As part of its future plans, Bhagat said Massmart’s team would create more customised cutting-edge digital solutions and strengthen Massmart’s capabilities by using additional Walmart-grown technologies and platforms.
These will have been stress tested in other markets and relevant to the South African consumer, he said.
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