Britain’s third-largest grocer continues to struggle with IT problems and is struggling with the difficult separation from US retail giant Walmart.
In recent weeks, Asda has experienced errors and outages with online clothing orders, its self-scanning technology and the app used by staff in stores to pick items.
This week, scan-and-go kiosks in all stores were temporarily closed as the company released an update designed to fix a number of reported technical issues. There were also reports of slowdowns at self-checkout lanes, some of which required a manual restart to apply the update.
Meanwhile, there were problems with the Store Assist application, which is used by the pickers in the store to select products. Internal communication, seen by The Register suggest that 262 stores were temporarily unable to process orders through the application. Store Assist replaces a Walmart system and was introduced to separate the UK retailer’s IT systems from those of its previous owner.
The problems follow reports last week that Asda’s clothing brand George was experiencing technical issues with online orders.
Media reports said money was taken from customers’ bank accounts but orders were not shipped. Others said they were unable to complete online returns.
An Asda representative said the online orders had been fulfilled and the issues had been resolved.
“As part of building a bigger and better Asda, we are undertaking Europe’s largest IT transformation, which includes separating and upgrading over 2,500 systems from Walmart,” the spokesman said The Register.
“As part of this process, we migrated 9.6 million historical George orders to our new George.com platform earlier this month. The vast majority of these have been successfully completed and trading activity on the platform is going well.
“However, we are aware of a number of issues with some previous customer orders. We sincerely apologize for this and any inconvenience this may have caused and are working hard to resolve these as quickly as possible.”
The problems with Store Assist were a small but normal glitch, the spokesperson said, and were resolved within a few hours.
As part of the difficult split from Walmart, Asda’s head of digital transformation has left the company. Asda co-owner Mohsin Issa said Mark Simpson, who served as chief transformation officer, will leave the company in July.
Asda has a turnover of £25.6 billion. The supermarket has been building separate IT systems – including infrastructure, POS, ERP, HR and payroll – for three years, but had to extend its support contract with Walmart to continue using the old systems beyond a February 2024 deadline.
The Register has reported delays in its ERP project, which involves migrating from its legacy SAP ECC system hosted at Walmart to its latest S/4HANA system in the Microsoft Azure cloud, a major business transformation as well as a technical project.
An annual report for the period ending December 2023 shows that Asda spent £241 million on “Project Future,” Walmart’s IT spin-off program. The figure is higher than the £189 million recorded for the period from September 3, 2020, to December 31, 2021. Media reports suggest the total bill could reach £800 million.
The move also includes the transfer of around 100 tech team members to Indian outsourcing company TCS. A collective consultation for a transfer under TUPE – an agreement that protects workers’ rights under UK law – has begun and the transfer is expected to take place in September. ®
