7-Eleven Australia’s digital investment to enable future business growth
7-Eleven Australia is advancing into the future with significant investment in digital and explorations into format and offer.
General Manager Retail Operations, Braeden Lord, says the investment in digital and exploring new offers and formats are important for the future of the traditionally bricks and mortar focused business.
“We are a customer focused business. Over our more than 40 years we’ve always pushed ourselves to evolve to meet the needs of our customers quicker than our competitors, from our market leading freshly ground $1 Coffee offer, back to our earliest days when we pioneered 24/7 retailing in January 1978, we’ve been willing to invest and to push ourselves to grow. However the convenience consumer in 2030 and beyond, even more so than the consumer of today, will expect brands to provide digital across the physical retail experience, and to use technology to enable personalised, frictionless, value added experiences in-store,” Mr Lord said.
Mr Lord said that right now, digital for 7-Eleven means building a digital ecosystem with strategic partners to enable an extraordinary customer experience in both the digital and physical spaces.
“We want our platform to support our fantastic teams to give our customers what they need, when they need it, where they need it while ensuring that doing business is simpler, easier and more efficient. We want to evolve our offer to provide customers with services that meet their needs, and to provide more food for now food, and for later solutions, so freeing up our teams through technology enabling that to be achieved in an efficient and sustainable way,” he said.
According to Mr Lord, the evolution of convenience means that stores will continually need to adapt to new offers and new services, but the aim is for the investment in digital to free up time in store to put back into the quality of the offer.
“Customers will expect different things in terms of what a convenience store does. We need to try new formats and offerings to make sure that we can stay synonymous with convenience in the minds of Australian consumers. Whether that involves day part focus on freshly delivered bakery products, extended food preparation, or acting as a store concierge to help customers use new digital services, it means the capability of store leaders and team members need to evolve to,” he said.
Mr Lord said it’s an exciting time to be involved in convenience retail.
“Consumers will have needs in 10 years we can’t imagine right now, and no doubt there’ll be things
7-Eleven is doing in five years that aren’t on the radar right now, whether that’s new services such as our 7-Eleven ParcelMate, food, delivery or something else. Our growth and success over the last two years, and to be more accurate, over the past 40 plus years, has been strong and sustainable. It’s a testament to the hard work of our entire team over that time that we are in the market leading position we are today. However our industry is changing and to remain relevant, we want to leverage our ability to invest in the long term areas we want to win in to ensure the business is as successful in 2030 and beyond as it is today,” Mr Lord concluded.