Same Day Pickup | lcbonext

Same day pickup app

A new way of looking up.

By Julia Fogerty (Product Manager)

The Problem

Process Context

The same day pickup (SDP) process begins when LCBO customers submit orders online. They select the products they want to purchase, the quantity, and their desired pickup location. When these orders are submitted, the LCBO store receives the order information in their own system. At each store, certain LCBO employees are assigned responsibility to the same day pickup process on a given day.

When a new order is received, the employees begin the selection process. Employees typically begin by printing off a paper copy of the order information, also known as a “pick list”, which contains the purchased products. They move down the list, selecting products one-by-one and placing them in a bag for the customer. If they do not already know the exact location of a given product, they use a lookup app on their store devices. In this app, they manually enter the SKU number of the product, and the product information is displayed, such as the size, country of origin, or name. Once all products are selected and bagged, they mark the order as complete, place the bag in the staging area, and the customer can retrieve their order.

LCBO store 217 is the flagship store located in downtown Toronto. Due to its sheer size, the same day pickup process is timely and inefficient, often taking employees upwards of 40 minutes per order to simply complete the retrieval and bagging process. Additionally, the process outlined above is very tedious and manual, particularly the product search, leaving employees feeling frustrated. As mentioned earlier, a lookup app is used when staff require more information on a product. Although this app is easily accessible on their store devices, they are forced to individually and manually enter product SKU numbers to complete a search, using the printed list to reference the numeric values.

Recently, LCBO|next partnered with Danavation to pilot electronic bin tags for this same store, with the goal of automating price changes to reduce resource consumption and minimize errors. These bin tags each have an LED light, which has 8 colour display options, however this functionality has gone completely unused up until this point.

Combining both of these factors, this sparked us to put on our innovation hats and develop a solution to gain valuable insight on the usefulness and functionality behind the LED lights, while also optimizing the SDP process for store 217 to reduce time and create a better employee experience.

Problem Outline and Statement

Product Validation

To validate the need for a solution to the problem above, a group interview was conducted with two store 217 employees. This allowed us to better understand their pain points, needs, and problem spaces. Shortly after, two additional interviews were conducted with LCBO employees to obtain further details and information about the system and its users. Of these two interviewees, one employee was from store 217, and the other was from an LCBO located in the city of Waterloo.

After conducting user interviews, we determined who we sought to help with this project:

Store 217 Retail Staff
- To provide an efficient method to access SDP order information, search products, and locate products via LED light activation
- To provide a method to efficiently complete incoming SDP orders to provide a better customer experience

LCBO|next and Danavation Team
- To provide insight to the functionality and usefulness of the LED bin tag lights

Users

User Interview Key Takeaways

Some of the key takeaways after user interviews were as follows:

Employees who fulfill same day pickup orders are frustrated by the lack of notifications, by the manual and tedious searching of products, and by switching between platforms for different steps of the process.

Employees who fulfill same day pickup orders see value in activating the LED lights for a given product, however it should be an optional feature, to prevent confusion for customers who may be shopping.

Many employees who fulfill same day pickup orders have different techniques/methods for how they approach the process. For example, while some complete one order at a time, more experienced staff can complete multiple. Thus, our solution must be flexible for its users.

Shorten Order Fulfillment Time

Shortening the time it takes to fulfill SDP orders will improve the availability of retail staff, allowing them to work on additional tasks. Also, reducing the time until an order is complete will mean that customers can pick up their order sooner, improving the customer experience.

Determine usefulness of LED Lights

Determine the value in activating LED bin tag lights to better locate products around the LCBO stores. This will allow LCBO|next to better gauge how electronic bin tags should proceed and expand into additional stores for the future.

Improved Employee Experience

In the current system, many of the steps are manual and tedious, such as individually entering product SKU numbers to perform a product search. Enhancing this process will create a more positive experience for retail staff, improving morale and enjoyability in their role at LCBO.

gOALS

Deliverable

Responsive Web-app

Duration

3 months (June-August 2022)

Team & Roles

Julia Fogerty, Product Manager

Thomass Muir, UX Designer

Ryan Lui, Full Stack Developer

Steven Yau, Full Stack Developer

SCOPE

COMPETITIVE MARKET SPACE

What does our solution have that the current lookup app does not?

As mentioned above, employees already have a lookup app in place to help locate products around the store. This app, however, forces users to complete individual searches. Employees enter each product SKU number to obtain information, which is timely and tedious. Additionally, the lookup app is entirely removed from the other platforms, meaning it cannot access order data that would help optimize the selection process. LCBO|next strives to create a product that can match the performance of the current lookup app, while also implementing and optimizing additional features.

REQUIREMENTS and features

Based on the user interviews, we identified some core problems that we wanted to address in our solution:

LED light activation:
- We decided to create a “picker” system. When a user logs in, they will be assigned a “picker”. The first sign-on of the day will be “picker 1”, the second “picker 2”, and so on. Each picker will be assigned a colour, which will be associated with the colour of the LED lights they choose to activate.

Group items on pick list by category:
- One issue identified during interviews was that employees often re-visit sections around the store. The pick list they currently use lists products in the order that they were added to the customer’s cart. In our solution, users can select an option to sort the items on their pick list based on category. This organizes the list to group products that are in the same category together. This optimizes their travel around the store.

Help employees better locate products in the store:

Email notifications
- We decided to implement email notifications for when new orders are placed. Employees have portable store devices that will make this feature very convenient. This attracts the attention of employees, shortening the time it takes for an order to be selected and fulfilled. Additionally, this means employees do not have to manually check the system.

Enable users to receive new order notifications:

Help users to manage multiple orders at a time:

Add multiple orders to a pick list
- We wanted to create a web app that was flexible for its users. While some users only select one order at a time, others decide to pick for multiple. We provided users with the ability to add more than one order to their pick list. The pick list maintains constant organization to prevent confusion for what products belongs to what order.

Design decisions and MVP

Creating user flow and user journey diagrams helped us to determine the app layout. Additionally, these helped to ensure feature requirements were being met. When used in tangent with the user personas created from user interviews, we created designs that met end-user goals. An early version user flow map can be seen below as an example.

We prioritized simplicity during the design stage. We determined that users would be able to access four main pages using a navigation bar:

Orders page:
- The orders page acts as home and is split into two separate lists:
  - Unpicked Orders: This list contains new orders that have yet to be picked. Users have the ability to add these orders to their own pick list, at which time the order will move to the in-progress section. Users can click into an order at any time to see more order details.
  - In-Progress Orders: This list contains all orders that are currently being picked. These orders are labelled with the picker.

Product Search Page:
- Users can enter a product SKU number to pull up specific product information, such as name, country of origin, category etc.

Pick List Page:
- This page displays the orders that are in the user’s pick list. A user must add orders to their pick list for it to be displayed here. They have the ability to activate LED lights, sort by category, and cross items off their list. Users can also remove orders from their list, during which the order will be returned to the “unpicked orders” section. When all items have been crossed off in a given order, the remove button becomes a “Mark Complete” button.

History Page:
- This page is used to see all same day pickup orders. Users can search via order number to find any given order.

User Testing and Iteration

During the design process, multiple internal design reviews were held with our team. We prioritized continuous improvement, facilitating it by collecting important feedback from our colleagues to use when iterating and improving our designs.

Additionally, user testing was completed with store 217 staff. This allows us to determine the usability and learnability of our designs. Using this feedback, it allowed us to improve both user interface details along with process flow details. Once designs were complete, we held handoff meetings with the developers, and they began working on the first version of the product, which is being piloted in store 217 shortly.

This project was a great learning experience. I was able to learn and grow as a product manager, having the opportunity to conduct user interviews, define requirements and specs, and communicate with developers to create a useful product that satisfies the needs of end users. It was truly a rewarding experience, and launched my love for product management!

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