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A major online retailer wanted to create a better experience for its customers and people. In recent years, the company experienced unprecedented growth in demand and had reached capacity at its various sites.
A major online retailer wanted to create a better experience for its customers and people. In recent years, the company experienced unprecedented growth in demand and had reached capacity at its various sites.
The client wanted to continue increasing demand and explore how they could do this through a mixture of automation and human customer fulfilment.
Grant Thornton’s management consulting team helped design, program and monitor the custom-built Customer Fulfilment Centre (CFC) fitted with autonomous mobile robots from Locus Robotics. Working alongside the online retailer’s team, they were able to improve product flow and pack books faster and more accurately – keeping customers happy and coming back to order more.
The challenge of increased growth needed a solution to create a better customer experience, while creating efficiencies for warehousing staff.
The team worked with the client to decide on technology and design, ensuring a sustainable solution that would grow with the business.
The benefits of this solution included:
Australia’s retail M&A market is becoming increasingly selective, with capital concentrated around fewer, more strategic transactions. While operating conditions have stabilised since the volatility of 2022–23, sustained cost pressures, cautious consumer behaviour and geopolitical uncertainty continue to shape deal activity and investor priorities.
Automation is increasingly becoming a leadership issue rather than an operational one. Organisations investing successfully are not simply automating tasks: they’re building more scalable, resilient, and future-ready supply chain capabilities.
Rising labour costs, increasingly complex supply chains, higher expectations and the demands of omnichannel retail are becoming embedded structural costs that are reshaping how retailers operate and scale
