Alphamega is the largest, fastest-growing Cypriot hypermarket chain and first grocery retail company in the country to launch an e-commerce store. To set up its online store, the company collaborated with Gordon Tech, whose flexibility and experience allowed the creation of a customised solution for Alphamega’s needs.
Alphamega’s Chief Information Officer Andreas Demetriou, who has been with the company for 10 years said:
“We are Cyprus’ largest grocery retailer, both in terms of revenue and employees. Today, we have 20 stores throughout Cyprus, and as of February 2021, we will also have an e-commerce store. This will make us the first company in Cyprus to have an eshop that offers island-wide coverage”.
Finding the right partner
Andreas described Alphamega as a tech-driven company with an emphasis on customer experience and innovation. The company had been wanting to launch its e-commerce business for many years, but first needed to find the right partner:
“We knew that creating an e-commerce business in grocery retail would be complex. It’s not just about having a fancy website and a sales platform. It’s also crucial to have the right logistics model and structured software that will allow you to be efficient and productive”.
Since Alphamega is the first grocery retail company in Cyprus to have an e-commerce website, we had trouble finding talent and expertise in this field, Andreas explained. It was therefore important for Alphamega to find an experienced partner that could guide the company through the challenges and answer all its questions before it embarked on this journey.
After conducting market research and looking at a demo of Gordon Tech’s solution and software, Alphamega knew that it had found its partner.
“Once we realised that we could get such excellent technology at such an affordable price, we decided to move forward with them”, Andreas recounted. “Not only did Gordon Tech create a solution that would have otherwise been very time-consuming and difficult to implement from scratch, they were also able to customize their software to address our needs”.
Increased productivity and efficiency
Ever since the launch of Alphamega’s e-commerce website in February 2021, Gordon’s tech platform has handled one of the most complex parts of delivery: last-mile delivery.
“With Gordon Tech’s platform we can handle the routing of our trucks and manage our last mile deliveries in an efficient way”, Andreas clarified. “Thanks to their solution, we can now be as productive and efficient as possible, instead of having to drive across the whole country. That has saved us a lot of time and fuel, and we’ve been able to significantly increase our capacity when it comes to the number of deliveries that we can make per day using their software”.
Flexible and dedicated
Because Cyprus is a small country, services such as Google Maps have limitations and do not cover the entire island, Andreas explained. However, this proved not to be an obstacle for Gordon Tech, who solved the problem by implementing a solution that supports multiple map providers:
“When we were first testing out the software with Gordon Tech, the addresses didn’t come up correctly. So, they made changes to the software so that we could get it right”. He added, “They were also flexible enough to create all of the customer communication in Greek, so that our customers could receive information in their own language. And whenever there’s been an issue, we’ve got a dedicated support line that can help us out quickly. So far, we’ve had no serious issues, and the minor ones that we’ve had were all resolved very quickly”.
A long-term partner
“Alphamega has only just begun its online journey and will continue to collaborate with Gordon Tech as its e-commerce business expands” Andreas said. “We are very impressed by their professionalism and willingness to adapt their solution to our needs. They rose to the challenge even though they had never done a project such as ours in the Mediterranean, giving us everything we needed to succeed” he added.
