The UK’s third-largest grocery retailer continues to see its IT operations beset with problems as it struggles with its fraught divorce from US retail giant Walmart.
In the last couple of weeks, Asda has been hit by errors and outages affecting online clothing orders, self-scanning technology, and the app used by staff store pickers.
At one point this week, Scan and Go kiosks were closed in all stores as the company issued an update aimed at addressing a number of reported technical issues. Also reported was a slowness of self-checkout tills, a number of which required a manual restart to apply the fix.
Meanwhile, a Store Assist application used by store pickers to select products hit problems. Internal communications seen by The Register suggest that at one point, 262 stores were unable to process orders using the application. Store Assist replaces a Walmart system, and has been introduced to separate the UK retailer’s IT systems from its former owner.
The problems add to reports last week that Asda’s clothing brand, George, has suffered tech problems with online orders.
Media reports indicated that money was taken from customers’ bank accounts, but orders were not sent. Others said they could not complete online returns.
An Asda representative said online orders had been fulfilled and that the issues had been resolved.
“As part of building a bigger and better Asda, we are delivering Europe’s largest IT transformation, involving the separation and upgrade of over 2,500 systems from Walmart,” the spokesperson told The Register.
“Earlier this month, as part of this process we migrated 9.6 million historic George orders onto our new George.com platform. The overwhelming majority of these were completed successfully and the platform is trading well.
“However, we are aware of a number of issues with some historic customer orders. We sincerely apologise for this and any inconvenience caused and are working hard to resolve them as quickly as possible.”
The problems with Store Assist were a minor business-as-usual blip, the spokesperson said. This was resolved within a matter of hours.
The troubled tech separation from Walmart has seen the departure of Asda’s digital transformation chief. Asda joint owner Mohsin Issa said that Mark Simpson, who has served as chief transformation officer, would leave 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 the last three years, but had to extend its support deal with Walmart to continue to run the old systems beyond a February 2024 deadline.
The Register has reported delays to the ERP project, which involves migrating from a Walmart-hosted legacy SAP system, ECC, to the latest S/4HANA system in Microsoft Azure cloud, a massive business transformation as well as a technical project.
An annual report covering the period until the end of December 2023 shows Asda spent £241 million on “Project Future,” the IT separation program from Walmart. The figure has risen from the £189 million recorded for the period from September 3, 2020, to December 31, 2021. Media reports suggest the total bill may 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 staff transfer under TUPE – an arrangement by which employment rights are protected under UK law – has begun with the transfer of staff expected in September. ®
Updated to add
Asda has asked us to point out that Walmart still retains a stake and has a board seat. Since Mark Simpson’s departure, Matt Kelleher has joined Asda as a chief digital officer. Rob Barnes is vice president of digital and tech.
