morrisons colindale entrance

Morrisons is piloting a new sales-based ordering system in two stores as part of company-wide drive to improve availability.

Speaking exclusively to The Grocer at Morrisons’ new 38,000 sq ft store in Colindale, North London - the only supermarket it plans to open this year - group retail director Gary Mills said the new cloud-based system worked by generating orders based on which products were going through the tills.

Morrisons will shortly extend the project to a further 10 pilot stores and, depending on the success of these trials, he said he hoped to be in a position to introduce it to most stores this year.

The system in place in the two stores at the moment is being used to deal with ordering for the ambient grocery and long-life fresh categories.

“It will free up colleagues’ time, it will definitely improve availability for customers and reduce stock holding,” Mills said. “Early signs are encouraging so we will see how the next 10 stores go.”

The trials were part of a wider push on availability across the business, Mills added. “We are looking at the whole end-to-end cycle in terms of replenishment from the depot to the shelf-edge, looking at what time we deliver and how we deliver it and that will also improve availability in conjunction with Morrisons ordering. So it’s a huge piece of work.”

Meanwhile this week, Morrisons reported like-for-like sales down 2% for the year to 31 January. It said these had improved in the second half of the year with Q4 like-for-likes up 0.1%.

Profit before tax was £217m compared with a loss of £785m in the ­previous year.

Morrisons also said it expected to achieve a £50m to £100m uplift in underlying profits before tax in the medium-term as a result of its ventures into wholesaling with Amazon and Motor Fuel Group.

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