Auchan Retail International
Auchan Retail France & International: story of a successful transformation
Total number of stores: 1 123
Solutions: Smartdetection – Smartdecision – Smartdiscount
Change is at the heart of the projects on the table for retail decision-makers. Auchan Retail, with its stores in France and abroad, is a model of successful transformation. By implementing Smartway technology to tackle food waste, it is a responsible and sustainable digital transformation of processes that Auchan’s management has successfully led, for a rapid culture transformation and economic growth.
Leading an anti-waste
processes transformation at Auchan Retail
Deploy the Smartway technology
quickly and efficiently across the stores, on a large scale
Involve all stakeholders with a power decision,
with their respective challenges
Introducing an innovative professional gesture,
the foundation of a new corporate culture and efficient processes
A transformation project for Auchan, with Smartway as a “processes change maker”
Auchan Retail has put the fight against food waste at the heart of its corporate project. Each country has set a reduction target for 2024 and 2032, with the ambition to approach a final target of 0% of food waste worldwide by 2032. It is with this dynamic that the Auchan brand undertook a far-reaching transformation of its stores. This global implementation of anti-waste corners has propelled Auchan into a new corporate organization, created a new philosophy around the product lifetime, generated new processes and integrated a new professional gesture.
By gradually deploying the intelligent technologies developed by Smartway in all the countries where it operates, Auchan International has initiated a transformation of its retail model on a scale never seen before.
Immersion in this story, where strategic and operational decisions were aligned to guarantee the success of a new corporate culture, in every country concerned.
“With Smartway, it’s above all the story of a meeting. When I realized how these solutions could help us better manage short-dated products, I said yes to a massive roll-out… in six months!“
Philippe Brochard
Former CEO of Auchan Retail France and Luxembourg
A massive deployment of the Smartway technology: a first in the retail sector
The joint story of Smartway and Auchan Retail began in Romania in 2020. This European country was the “Proof of Concept” for our partnership. The objective? Get all the stakeholders on board, test all the deployment stages defined by Smartway and demonstrate the impact generated in the Romanian stores by these new anti-waste processes: a reinvented short-dated products checking routine, human capital onboarded, economic gains, real and net reduction of food waste, an answer to the decreasing purchasing power of consumers and a demonstration of the strength of collaboration between dedicated project teams.
8 stores deployed and 3 months later, Romania became the first success story in the joint history of our partnership, with a pilot validated after just one month. Our technology onboarded all the stores and teams in the country.
A total of 49 Romanian stores took this path of change, fighting against waste on a daily basis and adopting a new professional gesture.
In 2021 and 2022, 94 stores in another Auchan country trusted the Smartway technology and have successfully embraced the fight against food waste, deeply transforming their firm culture.
France rolled out the first stage of its new anti-waste processes in 2022. Cocorico: our support for Auchan Retail’s project teams has resulted in the effective and massive deployment of SmartDecision in the 385 stores of the country.
The 3 stores from Auchan Luxembourg also adopted reinvented processes to tackle food waste in 2023. And France, following on from SmartDecision, has now installed SmartDetection in all its stores. By adding this new Smartway solution, France has taken a new step forward in its fight against food waste, increasing its impact at every level: human, economic and ecological.
Poland (105 stores) and Hungary (24 stores) were fully deployed in early 2024.
For the Spring/Summer 2024? !Vamos! Portugal (83 stores), then Spain (with a massive deployment of more than 400 Alcampo stores), are following the example of their European counterparts at Auchan Retail by transforming their management of short-dated products thanks to Smartway. And both our teams are doing it with even more speed as the roll-out is done on a crazy dynamic, with between 50 and 100 stores deployed each week.
A strategic choice for Al Campo (Auchan Spain), attuned to market issues, in a country where the fight against food waste is a national matter.
So, how did our teams manage to lead such a major change project for the retail giant Auchan Retail and deploy our technology on a massive scale in different countries? Thanks to a unique methodology, proven over 12 years of deployment.
The project assessment, first fundamental step in any change project
A transformation project success according to Smartway? Understand and analyze the existing habits to build future changes on a real, observed and understood situation and thus get human capital on board.
- The audit. It took the form of stores tours that we carried out with Auchan Retail teams. The objective? Get a diagnosis on the food waste and internal processes, identify problems or malfunctions on the shelves and analyze the data transmitted. This “live” observation enabled Smartway’s teams to identify the needs and development directions required to optimize the anti-waste approach in each country. 50 Auchan Retail stores were globally audited.
- Meetings and workshops. This is the challenge of a large-scale project such as the implementation of innovative processes to fight against food waste, which profoundly transforms the organization, the operations, the information systems, the economic results and the professional gesture for employees: the ability of our teams to meet all the business challenges, adapt to cultural specificities and unite the teams around a project with major impact
At the heart of our discussions to achieve this alignment?
- Solutions presentation with their benefits
- Stakeholders alignment about what needs to change (and how?)
- Project impact on existing people and processes
- Cost of change vs estimated generated value
- Roadmap to set up the best anti-waste processes
It was during this phase of preparation for change that we ensured that all employees in each country were aligned with a common strategy, from IT and data teams to those in charge of Performance and Revenue, not forgetting the CSR divisions and the business and operational teams.
After a pilot, the official GO has launched the strategic deployment phase at Auchan.
Change needs to be prepared, discussed and accompanied. It is through this full commitment of all stakeholders, customers and partners to a common goal that the transformation becomes a successful project.
“The audit phase is essential for the Smartway teams to respond adequately to the challenges and to build the future roadmap. Auchan Retail International’s project teams have always been committed to the goal, focused to make a positive and lasting change in their stores, through the integration of new processes to fight food waste into their daily routines.”
Thomas Aydos
Head of Operations at Smartway
A transformation based on a unique deployment methodology
The deployment phase is the key stage where, once the teams have been onboarded, it’s time to concretely build this change project, step by step, ensuring that responsibilities have been distributed and that a dedicated change management team, with the necessary skills and authority, has been chosen to lead the operations.
In the various countries deployed by Auchan Retail, it was a major “change” phase, in which the project teams drew up and spread a convincing project, positively impacting all employees and aligned with the definition of objectives from the management.
The roadmap definition, the central deliverable of any change project, is essential: this roadmap sets the pace for each deployment and facilitates collaboration and communication for the successful deployment of the Smartway solutions.
Once these elements were in place, our teams began the onboarding of Auchan Retail stores, using a unique school stores methodology. These ones were responsible for transmitting the new routines regarding the fight against food waste and the best processes to other stores, thus guaranteeing a total harmonization of the short-date products management method.
These training stores, key players in the roll-out, were initially pilot stores. Before launching a large-scale change project, the test phase is essential. This is where the project teams carried out the first deployments, using them as operational and IT pilots to assess the quality of the tool use, the operational adoption to change “on the tiles” but also to check technical flows.
Once they had become training stores, they were responsible for training other Auchan stores in their territory. To achieve this, “key people” were defined: a leader, responsible for ensuring optimum training of the teams and two ambassadors, assisting the leader in his missions. To sum-up: local guarantors of change.
Smartway and Auchan thus trained several thousand employees to the use of Smartway solutions thanks to consecutive waves of deployment based on these school stores, supported by a mix of on-site training sessions and MOOCs (Massive Open Online Courses).
The expertise of a partner like Smartway is further illustrated by our Customer Success Manager (CSM) teams, key players in the success of this type of project. They supported 100% of Auchan Retail stores in their deployment, ensuring :
- that each stage was carried out according to the defined roadmap
- that the technology was well understood by the teams
- that the new professional gesture had become part of the corporate culture
- that the time and revenue savings were matching expectations
- answering the questions and doubts in this kind of transformation project
A daily presence that was much appreciated by Auchan Retail stores, which were able to benefit from the availability and quality of our teams’ support at every minute of the deployment.
While our anti-waste technology is at the heart of this project, it is the quality of our accompaniment – in which we have become experts since 2012 – that is one of the keys to the success of the Auchan Retail stores roll-out.
An ongoing support during the run phase, to a successful anti-waste transformation
Transformation must be accompanied from start to finish. At Smartway, our goal was to accompany Auchan beyond a “simple” solutions deployment, to work with teams over the long term and transform, with them, their retailing model.
In the run phase, Auchan Retail deployments have been led according to the roadmap defined between project teams, Smartway technologies have been deployed, employees have been trained and new methods for tackling food waste have been integrated into the shelves routines. The challenge now is for our teams to stay close to the stores in their new corporate life, where processes have been transformed.
Two main objectives guided this phase of the methodology:
- Performance monitoring and animation
- Action plan implementation
As local partners for the stores, the CSM from Smartway continue to provide support, to ensure that the new anti-waste routines are optimally executed, that operational and financial results are in line with the defined targets and offer continuous improvements to the stores.
The Auchan Retail stores receive dashboards reporting their results on a daily basis. They can monitor and control their store data and key performance indicators: revaluation rate, product labeling rate, products sold, discarded products, top 100 labeled products, by volume and value… at a national level, but also by territory, department or point of sale.
This monitoring method makes it possible to detect stores that are falling short of their targets and to quickly adjust the situation, through the implementation of action plans by the dedicated CSM.
For the countries deployed, this phase is one of continuous improvement: how to optimize the positive transformation of stores, day after day, by tackling food waste with the Smartway technologies?
The results
A successful collaboration since 2020 between Auchan Retail and Smartway, deployed on an international scale and demonstrating that our processes dedicated to the fight against food waste are the best way to ensure a sustainable change. The technology implemented generated a new corporate culture and new revenue drivers about a critical environmental issue.
1 123
stores deployed
200M
products saved
240 000 tons
of CO2 saved
100%
of people onboarded
“ We had a real challenge of speed, it’s a very nice project, there was an efficient mesh between the Smartway and Auchan Retail teams, in terms of deployment and in terms of store teams collaboration and performance.”
Bénédicte Vantorre
Operations Performance Manager, Auchan Retail France