Petco to offer BOPIS services

Dive Brief:

Petco has partnered with Yantriks to roll out a buy online, pick up in-store (BOPIS) capability in about 1,500 stores nationwide, according to a Petco press release.
The Yantriks' Personalized Fulfillment Platform deployed by Petco has already received more than 100,000 BOPIS orders, and has increased the retailer's e-commerce revenue and number of net new customers by more than 5%, the press release stated.
The new system offers Petco stores a single view of available inventory to support online order processing and fulfillment. It was installed in less than four months, and replaced a previous technical architecture made up of multiple separate platforms that couldn't support that single view.

Dive Insight:

More retailers have started to launch BOPIS programs, and with good reason. An OrderDynamics study earlier this year found that shoppers using these services tend to spend additional money in store when picking up their online purchases. Customers are catching on, too. These offerings are expected to be especially popular shopping features this holiday season, according to a recent GPShopper study.

BOPIS has a high awareness among shoppers, thereby leading to more retailers to test and experiment with the concept, including Home Depot and Nordstrom. Adopting a click-and-collect strategy requires a transformation in how both e-commerce sites and brick-and-mortar stores operate, and greater coordination and visibility across channels.

Rushing into BOPIS services could potentially lead to problems with inventory visibility, lag in response times and inability to fill orders accurately. Petco's partnership with Yantriks implemented a completely new system for more than 1,500 stores in a matter of a few months, rather than the year or so that is typically required. The Yantriks platform is capable of thousands of transactions per second, thereby streamlining capabilities for consumers.

BOPIS is becoming competitive table stakes for retailers, but it's a migration companies have to make sure is done right the first time.