Perfecting stock ordering with Blooms the Chemist.

Customers expect that when they walk into a Blooms the Chemist store there are certain core items that are always on the shelf and available to purchase. We worked together to strengthen this position, while eliminating incidences of overstocked items, and cutting down on staff operational costs.

The Customer Problem

A core principle for Blooms the Chemist is that core-range items should always be in stock. Full stop. This is what makes Blooms the Chemist stand out from its competitors! 

The brains trust had some super smart algorithms for maintaining optimal stock levels, while adhering to this core principle, but it was not easy to customise their existing off-the-shelf ordering solution. They also wanted to protect their IP – i.e. the clever algorithms! Thus, it was time for a bespoke in-house solution.

The Solution

Leveraging real-time data insights from the BigQuery Data Warehouse that we had already developed for Blooms the Chemist, Mondo Ventures built a bespoke system for order generation, rate-of-sale calculation, and minimum/maximum stock threshold calculations. All while feeding into existing systems to provision orders once they had been generated, which is what they were designed to do.

The Outcome

Blooms the Chemist now has a super-optimised custom ordering system with all the trade secrets protected within their own system. Chemist store owners have never been happier with the process as they are proactively informed of order events and empowered to have timely input into ordering. Tedious manual processes have been replaced with sleek automation, saving operational costs and reducing error rates.

“The Mondo team handled complex problems with ease and were a fun team to work with during the project. They delivered on the original concept plus over-and-above solution functionality.”
Steven Bayer
National Inventory Manager

The Metrics

15%

ROI in the first year alone

2

staff days per week freed up for more important tasks

1%

in-stock improvement across all stores, unlocking additional revenue and keeping customers happy

Reduction in overstocked items, leaving precious storage space for the right items and optimising cash flow for stores.

How did we do it?

The Mondo Approach

  • Initial fixed-price consulting piece to help shape the scope of work, and provide Blooms the Chemist with a proposal document for their board.
  • Complete outcome delivered at fixed price over 7 months.
  • Small releases – often and iterative. Meant real world ordering benefits could be seen early and often! 
  • Real users could see, and steer, product evolution before their very eyes. Feedback, feedback, feedback – users are experts!
  • Worked collaboratively with existing vendors for custom integration.
  • More fun stuff! We added loads of bonus features beyond the fixed-price outcome and everyone loved it.
  • Small teams = better, transparent communications.

What Mondo Used 

  • Technical and UX design input.
  • Simple scale-to-zero and on-demand priced cloud solutions with almost zero operational upkeep required. Saving cloud and staff costs.
  • Integration into existing products and platforms.
  • Ingestion of data feeds into BigQuery for the data warehouse.
  • Publishing of full historical data into BigQuery to unlock reporting options for staff using BI tools, such as Power BI.
  • Technical handover and documentation for the support team.

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