Multi-award winning Moco Food Services is a foodservice distributor supplying major consumer brands products such as Nestle and Unilever to customers including pubs,  clubs, restaurants and cafes. They are the prominent name in the B2B food distribution industry trading out of the East Coast of Australia.

Moco’s state-of-the-art distribution center houses some of the sharpest warehousing and logistical efficiencies in Australia. The company has invested heavily in its technology infrastructure to enhance operations across its warehouse including voice picking, live inventories on hand and forklifts with automated routing software.

Distributing new advances

Moco wanted a system that would better accommodate users and encourage more to use it, as many of its customers were ordering through its call center. With significant advances in machine learning and artificial intelligence, the company wanted to find a technology partner that would advise and assist in those areas.

Validation through customer research

Moco employed a holistic approach in setting out their vision that centered it around an immersive visitor experience.

The distributor commissioned customer research and spent three months interviewing their extensive customer network. Craig Purnell, Chief Operating Officer at Moco pointed out "our customers wanted something online that makes it easy to order, gives them inspiration and provides customized offerings.’’ 

Craig also noted, “Once we had this feedback it was an easy decision for us as we knew this was the journey we wanted to go on, and we needed to keep our customers happy!”

Emulating B2C experiences

Moco’s research concluded that customers desired a journey that reflected their every day, online shopping experiences as a consumer. Customers expect B2B distributors to offer a B2C experience.

This alone made Moco’s existing platform obsolete for customer needs. The business’ current ordering platform was one dimensional – not meeting increasing customer expectations. Having been designed solely as an ordering platform and not as a user interface for enjoyable user experience, it wasn’t appealing to visitors.

“Being a progressive business, we wanted to change the current platform because it was not where we wanted it to be as a business," says Craig Purnell, Chief Operating Officer, Moco Food Services. 

Moco had set out an ambitious yet comprehensive platform requirement. One which would better accommodate current users’ needs and attract new users to visit. It needed to be fast, with a powerful search functionality and space to showcase thousands of products in an easily accessible manner.  

• Speed to order - a fast platform at processing information
• A powerful search functionality
• Product information, detail and attributes easily accessible.

Optimizely's personalization solution

To satisfy market demands and maintain exponential growth, Moco Food Services today leverages a suite of Optimizely solutions. 

"We like Episerver’s [now Optimizely] integrated approach, development lifecycle, and comprehensive modules," says Craig on the value Optimizely delivers for his organization.

Benefiting from a single, unified digital ecosystem, Moco smartly deploys Optimizely as a central module that integrates with numerous platforms to ensure smooth 24/7 operations. From payment systems to delivery tracking, the Optimizely Digital Experience Platform handles all of Moco’s capability requirements. 

Before the upgrade to Optimizely, the analog ordering process meant that customers purchased the same items repeatedly. Their attention wasn’t drawn to other items that would be of use to them. Unleashing machine learning through Optimizely’s Personalization suite has enabled Moco to showcase its entire pallet of products. It is not only Moco who benefits from a unified platform experience. Their customers often remark that they "weren’t aware of Moco’s extensive range." This higher visibility has led to an increased likelihood of customers purchasing more items from Moco, valuing the company as a one-stop-shop. Influencing an increase in purchases, this has grown Moco’s revenues while driving efficiencies for the customer as they now receive one supplier invoice.

As Moco builds out their customer personas and uncovers rich customer data, the personalization venture continues, ensuring super-accurate recommendations every time.

"The personalization component is something that really aligns with our strategic objectives," says Caroline Kelly, eCommerce Manager, Moco Food Services.

Pricing is paramount but no longer a game-changer

As Moco continues to set the precedence and disrupt the norm, industry counterparts are catching wind of this. They, too, are deploying artificial intelligence solutions signaling an industry shifting away from a price-orientated, transactional basis.

The traditional battlefield for B2B distributors was overwhelmingly centered around price. Large-scale hospitality customers commanded huge volumes that equated to price discounts. Moco is now better positioned to efficiently accommodate all customers - expertly crafting a rock-solid pricing strategy across their entire product estate. This equals a browsing journey that transitions the customer from search-to-order in just three clicks. 

Unpacking the benefits and delivering behavioral change

During the first five months of launch, 65% of orders were placed through the new Optimizely platform. This marked an incredible take-up rate well ahead of the business’ expectations and heralded a new digital era for the distributor’s customer base. This shift in behavior, away from traditional ordering methods, is on target to grow – expecting to deliver 85% in due course.  

With smart automation following the ecommerce launch, Moco already enjoys a 10% reduction in error rates. The Australian team avoids order information being lost in translation or written in error - an unexpected benefit that brings significant cost savings. It has also led to an increase in internal efficiencies of 60%, with staff being redeployed to other positions to deal with the shift in customer ordering journeys.  

Future plans and outlook

Today, Moco Platform users must be existing account holders with Moco to access the platform, and Moco is looking to build a self-registration system so any business can register online quickly. The wireframes are already being drawn up to further explore Optimizely Personalization and the powerful customer insights it can deliver. Throughout this discovery phase, Moco continues its successful strategy of keeping the customer at the heart of their development.  

Moco’s Optimizely solution has positioned them for strong growth for the short, medium and long term. This is business-critical since the likes of supermarket retailers vie for distributor territory. These new market players, with hi-tech robotic warehouses, offer deliveries "direct-to-door," an approach which encroaches on Moco’s space. Moco, however, are not concerned by this movement. Moco believes that the Optimizely platform will help brace them as they focus on growing their core market to deliver an immersive experience for all.