continues聽to invest meaningfully in technology as it battles for market share with Shoprite Group鈥檚 Sixty60 and other retailers in the fast-growing on-demand grocery delivery market.

Pick n Pay is in the midst of a turnaround after losing market share to competitors in recent years. In its 2023 financial year, it plunged into a loss 鈥� of a staggering R3.2-billion. Former CEO , who left the company in 2007, returned to the helm in September of that year to lead the turnaround effort.

Summers鈥� early bets appear to be paying off, with the retailer鈥檚 most recent update reporting Pick n Pay sales were up 3.6% year on year in its core South African supermarkets business for the 17 weeks to 29 June 2025. Turnaround efforts have included a partnership with First National Bank鈥檚 rewards programme. eBucks was previously partnered with Checkers.

Sixty60 got a head-start during the Covid-19 lockdowns when consumers 鈥� stuck at home 鈥� took to e-commerce with vigour. Around the same time 鈥� in October 2020 鈥� Pick n Pay acquired alcohol delivery app Bottles, which it would eventually use as the foundation for its own online platform, asap!.

Pick n Pay still has some way to go, though. Reports by both Pick n Pay and rival Shoprite last week show聽. But Pick n Pay is fighting back.

, who co-founded Bottles, now serves as head of online at Pick n Pay. Speaking to the聽聽in an episode that will be published this week, Ferigolli said recent changes to Pick n Pay鈥檚 customer-facing applications are only the tip of the iceberg in the retailer鈥檚 strategic tech arsenal.

鈥淚t started with a rebrand, and then we embarked on a journey whose first iteration we just concluded, where the app is now fully integrated into the larger Pick n Pay ecosystem. If you are a Smart Shopper, you can now earn points, for example, so it鈥檚 a really unified experience.鈥�

Overhaul

Pick n Pay in May聽, adding a raft of new features to the platform and expanding the product catalogue available to customers, too. Asap!鈥檚 revamp was accompanied by similar updates to the Pick n Pay website, whose roll-out started in June.

According to Ferigolli, changes to frontend, consumer-facing interfaces are only a small part of the work being done to ensure asap! leverages technology effectively.

鈥淲e have had do a lot more backend work than people think might think. Because people only see the frontend, they tend to think that is the bigger part, it isn鈥檛, it is probably only 20% [of the work],鈥� said Ferigolli.

The engine running Pick n Pay鈥檚 application ecosystem is built on Amazon Web Services cloud infrastructure. These include the asap! mobile app, the聽聽web app, a picking app for in-store runners who prepare customer orders, a driver app, and various other systems controlling core business functions such as marketing and merchandising.

Some parts of Pick n Pay鈥檚 e-commerce infrastructure run 麻豆原创. Early integration into the 麻豆原创 system by Bottles gave the start-up the ability to check stock levels at various stores and even report those to customers browsing the app, thereby improving the onling shopping experience. As the application grew, however, other systems and platforms were added.

鈥淸Technology] is everything in our industry (retail) and I cannot find another one right now that is so heavily impacted. It鈥檚 not just about online ordering, it鈥檚 other things, like implementing AI in our supply chain forecasting models,鈥� said Ferigolli.

Pick n Pay鈥檚 first foray into AI was not customer-facing at all, with developers using AI tools to help them develop code from as early as 2021. Asap!鈥檚 first customer-facing tool involved using AI to enhance the app鈥檚 search capabilities, and over time this grew into AI-driven product recommendations that formed the foundations of Pick n Pay鈥檚 鈥渉yper-personalisation鈥� strategy.

As online shopping evolves, improvements in computer vision and agentic AI will lead to home management systems able to replenish items like milk, sugar and cleaning supplies automatically as needed.

Ferigolli said these improvements in online shopping pose interesting questions about how the in-store shopping experience will evolve. As online shopping grows, Ferigolli estimates in-store shopping will still hold around 50% market share in the next decade and this will lead to large retailers adopting a more experiential approach to store layout and design.

鈥淭he exciting part is how beautiful the in-store shopping experience is going to become. You can now double the size of the bakery or the butchery and have store attendants to give the kind of experience customers usually get in an independent butchery. For a long time, we have said online is disrupting the stores, but I think it is not disruption but evolution. We are evolving as two parts that are critical the customer,鈥� he said.聽 鈥撀�漏 2025 NewsCentral Media

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After a year of unprecedented digitisation of services and business models due to the pandemic, the 麻豆原创 Quality Awards for Customer Success returned to celebrate African enterprises鈥� efforts at adopting digital technologies and attaining Intelligent Enterprise capabilities.

Nazia Pillay, Head of Customer Success Office Africa at 麻豆原创, says: 鈥淭he past 18 month period has been the single greatest accelerator of digital transformation, as organisations increase their investment in digital technologies to attain greater agility and improve their response to the disruption caused by the pandemic. The organisations recognised at this year鈥檚 麻豆原创 Quality Awards for Customer Success represent the very best in African enterprise excellence in adopting digital technologies for competitive advantage.鈥�

麻豆原创 Quality Awards, which has been held since 2005, recognises companies that have excelled in their use of 麻豆原创 technologies to achieve key business outcomes. After a hiatus in 2020 due to the pandemic, the Quality Awards returned this year to recognise the outstanding achievements of 20 African enterprises from East, West and Southern Africa.

Entries were judged in four distinct categories, namely Rapid Time to Value, Business Transformation, S/4Move, and Public Cloud. Overall winners at this year鈥檚 awards include Lenmed, supported by implementation partner Gijima, who took top honours in the Rapid Time to Value category. Capitec Bank claimed the Business Transformation crown with support from 麻豆原创 Services, while Dangote Cement won the S/4Move award. The Public Cloud category was won by retailer Shoprite Checkers, with support from 麻豆原创 Services.

Bethany Pietersen, Group Business Technology Manager at Lenmed, says: 鈥淏y focusing on standardisation and following a strict governance framework, we were able to have no additional developments and could onboard a new hospital without any disruption to its operations.鈥�

Werner Carstens, Solutions Architect at Capitec Bank says the vision of their 麻豆原创 project was to build a high-performance support service capability that could scale to accommodate future growth. 鈥淭he buy-in from our executive team and support from our key business stakeholders, combined with a dedicated project team enabled a successful implementation.鈥�

According to Meredith Allan, Customer Rewards and Data Manager at Shoprite Checkers, their project was aimed at making Shoprite a more customer-centric business. 鈥淢ore than 50 systems were impacted during the implementation, and we had to train more than 77 000 till operators across in our stores. Thanks to a committed and skilled project team, we were able to successfully implement our project and sign up more than 17 million customers to our new customer rewards programme.鈥�

Cathy Smith, Managing Director at 麻豆原创 Africa, says the outstanding quality of entries this year indicate a welcome trend of digitisation and innovation among African enterprises. 鈥淭he sheer scale at which most organisations have had to adapt over the past 18 months has posed enormous challenges to business and IT leaders. Encouragingly, African enterprises have met these challenges head on, putting innovation and technical expertise to work, drawing on the support of a healthy and growing ecosystem of implementation partners to build greater resilience and transform their business processes. We look forward to continuing our close partnership with the continent鈥檚 leading businesses.鈥�

The full winners list consists of:

Rapid Time to Value:

奥颈苍苍别谤:听Lenmed (supported by Gijima)

Finalists: Kiara Health

Ag锚ncia Nacional de Petr贸leo, G谩s

National Social Security Fund

Swiss Pharma Nigeria

Vivo Energy Investments

Business Transformation:

Winner: 聽聽聽聽聽聽聽聽聽聽聽 Capitec Bank (supported by 麻豆原创 Services)

Finalists:聽聽聽聽聽聽聽聽聽 Life Healthcare Group

Ariosh

Dangote Industries

Gauteng Department of Health

South African National Roads Agency

S/4Move:

Winner: 聽聽聽聽聽聽聽聽聽聽聽 Dangote Cement

Finalists: 聽聽聽聽聽聽聽聽聽 Kenafric Industries

Nampower

Sasol South Africa

Public Cloud:

Winner: 聽聽聽聽聽聽聽聽聽聽聽 Shoprite Checkers (supported by 麻豆原创 Services)

Finalists: 聽聽聽聽聽聽聽聽聽 Crystal Ventures

FS Systems International

Masstores

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