Case study: how we built the logistics of their new e-shop with Billa

Food delivery within 3 hours of ordering, high quality fresh fruit and vegetables and a guarantee of maintaining the temperature chain of chilled and frozen food. This is what Billa customers can count on when they order their groceries online. The launch of the e-shop and the introduction of grocery delivery required comprehensive advice on logistics, warehousing and customer experience.

After Austria and Germany, it was also the Czech Republic’s turn. Billa wanted to consolidate its market position here and introduce its own e-shop. The requirement was clear: to deliver quickly, reliably and in compliance with all food transport standards. All this with the aim of setting a high service bar right from the start, leading to a positive customer experience.

Billa turned to DODO thanks to its experience in grocery delivery and references from the biggest players in the European market. Our task was to make sure that everything worked to the best of our ability in the pilot operation. Our proficiency in last-mile logistics proved beneficial due to the greenfield nature of the work.

Setting up grocery delivery from scratch

It was clear right from the start of the cooperation that our role would not just be “classic system interconnection and process debugging”. We also helped Bilal to set up a large part of the logic in the warehouse and part of the e-shop workflow. Thanks to our experience from previous projects, we helped to set up customer services such as payment methods or the length of time slots on the website.

Subsequently, we prepared the entire delivery logistics setup for the new grocery e-shop:

• Based on predictive data simulations, our data analysts defined suitable delivery zones to serve as many customers as possible while maximizing the efficiency of delivery routes, thereby saving costs and the environment.
• Together we have set up a number of processes. One of them was the order preparation process. We optimized this to suit Billa’s warehouse processes, but also to suit us in loading and labelling orders.
• We have set up our delivery capacity to reduce the cost of each individual order.
• We designed the type of delivery vehicles based on service parameters such as bag size, number of orders or number of loads.
• In addition to Prague and Brno, we added Mladá Boleslav, which expanded our customer base and was logistically advantageous due to the warehouse in Horní Počernice.

This created a strategic symbiosis between DODO and Billa and a strong business partnership. Both companies care about the best possible customer experience for customers and all teams were involved in the project with this goal in mind.

Technical implementation: Czech-Austrian cooperation

DODO had a team of six people involved in implementing our software to Billa’s systems. The team worked closely with the client’s IT team in Austria, which was responsible for the development of the e-shop. It took several months to fine-tune all eventualities, but the process was dependent on the development of the e-shop and was thus different from the situation when we connect to an already completed solution.

From the beginning, we were planning full integration to our own GAIA system, which manages practically the whole process – planning routes, order distribution to individual cars and is connected to the courier applications. It also takes care of monitoring, including retrospective analysis and data collection for further logistics optimization.

Roll-out phase: public and non-public pilot operation

Before Billa made the grocery delivery service available to the public, Billa and DODO employees and their loved ones participated in the pilot operation. In the beginning, we delivered with only four cars, but from January 2023, after the official launch of the e-shop, the number of cars and couriers increased. At the end of August 2023, we were already delivering to Brno, Prague and Mladá Boleslav with 20 cars and about 400 orders a day.

The future of DODO and Billa cooperation: coverage of other cities in the Czech Republic

The test run was excellent and we can now focus on our client’s future plans. This includes, among other things, to offer shopping via the Billa e-shop to customers across the Czech Republic by the end of 2025. We are delighted to be there.