Tesco.com is finalising the upgrade of its IT
infrastructure in preparation for what is set to be another busy
Christmas for the online grocery market
leader.
The company, which made a profit of £12.2m in the last financial
year, expects sales of well over £10m every week in the run-up to
the festive period. Last year in the seven days before Christmas
Tesco.com vans were making a delivery every three seconds, with
sales of more than £12m.
The online grocer is adding extra capacity on its IBM and Dell
servers, increasing its Microsoft SQL database size and boosting
telecoms capacity to cope with the demand, said Mike McNamara,
chief technology officer at Tesco .com.
"We completed our Christmas planning in July and are now adding the
technology," he said. "We increase our capacity all the time as we
are a growing business, and we will retain most of it after
Christmas, maybe with the exception of telecoms."
Tesco.com is also investing heavily in mobile technology for
employees who pick goods in Tesco stores and its van drivers, in
order to ensure accuracy of home delivery orders placed via the
website.
"We are trialling mobile devices in a number of stores and with
some of our drivers," he said. "The applications are Windows
CE-based, but we have not decided on the hardware as yet."
As well as focusing on back-office IT systems, Tesco.com is
implementing new technology to improve customer service.
Earlier this month, the company went live with new intelligent
search and navigation technology on the Wine Warehouse section of
its website. The Infront software, from supplier Endeca, will be
rolled out to the other non-food parts of the business, such as
books, flowers and electricals, in the coming months.