15 years of innovation at the Netherlands best known supermarket chain

In 2006, Ronald Bakker was the first consultant through Qualogy at the Netherlands’ best-known supermarket chain. Ronald came in as a Java Developer for the team working on the website for online ordering. 15 years later he is working together with about 40 Qualogy colleagues on various assignments at this appealing client. A good time to look back at the past 15 years.

My first assignment, as I said, was with the website for online orders. I was immediately allowed to help build a new version of the website. This version used the Fredhopper system to manage the online assortment. The page also got a new look and feel. A fantastic challenge.

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The IT organization in 2006
The IT organization 15 years ago looked completely different than it does today. The website was its own organization within the company; I actually had little to do with the other IT departments. Because of our expertise, my colleagues and I were also technically responsible for the corporate website. The department consisted of 5 Oracle PL/SQL developers, 2 Java developers, and 1 more front-ender was hired. In terms of Java, there was really nothing yet, not even a version control system. Everything up to that point was largely set up by the Java developer who was already there.

The 2006 tech stack
The tech stack was also a lot less professional. The logic for the website was largely in Oracle PL/SQL. There was a Java layer that talked to this and, in turn, a front-end layer for this. The Java layer was written on a self-built framework.

In comparison to now, we use Spring Boot on the Java side, which is deployed with Kubernetes in the Azure cloud. We are also increasingly using Kotlin instead of Java.

Contributing to multiple projects
I have worked at the supermarket chain in 2 periods: from 2006 to 2016 and from October 2020 to now. I am thrilled to be back. Over the years, I have collaborated on several assignments, such as:

• building a recipe finder .
• single sign-on between old – and new environment.
• construction of an online wine store.
• construction of the mobile app.
• transition from old to new environment, including termination of the old environment.
  the new recipe website with app

I am currently working on the digital assistant and track & trace push notifications for online orders. You can read more about them here.

The growth of the brand
The supermarket chain has grown significantly over the past 15 years. In the beginning, online order sales doubled several times. And I suspect that has happened several more times. Furthermore, the delivery area has expanded from urban areas to virtually all of the Netherlands. In addition, even customer service is now automated with a digital chatbot. And, of course, several mobile apps have come along, the most important being the online shopping app.

Highlights and challenges
I can remember several milestones. For example, in 2006 when all of the Netherlands suddenly flocked to our online store around Christmas to search for recipes. Suddenly we had more than a million hits a day! And that for a country of 17 million people. On Christmas Day, the site was so busy that it was down every hour. We didn’t expect this kind of traffic at all! Fortunately, in 2007 we were prepared for this and the site stayed up and running.

I have always enjoyed working on one of the busiest websites in the Netherlands. It is always a nice challenge to make this traffic technically possible. Also recently during the first lockdown we faced the challenge of extreme traffic. All of the Netherlands suddenly started shopping online. It’s fantastic that we manage to keep things running.

The online shopping app is also a highlight. It was one of the first apps in the Netherlands and suddenly everyone in the supermarket was walking around with their cell phone. Very handy, because with that app you can put your shopping list in walking order of your local supermarket.

The future of grocery shopping
In the top 10 stores in the Netherlands this year were 4 supermarkets. That does say something about the familiarity of supermarkets and the appreciation Dutch people give them. You also see more and more small players in cities, who deliver groceries very quickly by bicycle. I think that will only grow in the coming years. Many people are starting to realize that you can save a lot of time if you order online. You make your grocery list, pay online and then all you have to do is wait for the delivery guy. Convenient! I also think that more and more will be automated, including in distribution centers and in the delivery process.

The challenges for IT
More and more people are ordering online and more and more competitors are entering the market. Everyone will want to grow more and more. Then you need to be able to scale up quickly and easily. Automation is then important to reduce costs. This will require all kinds of AI techniques, such as robots in distribution centers and the digital chatbot. And of course, it’s always good to build cool new features that the competitor doesn’t have yet! You have to keep innovating.

The role of Qualogy
Qualogy is a very good fit for this supermarket chain because Qualogy has knowledge of Oracle. Oracle is still the backbone of the company. Furthermore, we are very good at Java, which has proven to be the most robust and scalable programming language to build your backend in. Qualogy has a great Java community, where everyone keeps each other up to date with the latest knowledge. Every two weeks we have a lunch session where we give each other presentations. External people also give presentations. And we, in turn, share that knowledge with customers. And as icing on the cake, we also have an AI branch and wit Front-end, for the cool new features.