Asda hits the brakes on tech tweaks to avoid festive fiasco The UK's third-largest retailer has accelerated plans for a system freeze during the busy Christmas period as it grapples with a long-running tech divorce from its previous owner. Since 2021, Asda's tech team has been engaged in a project to separate from US retail giant Walmart. Asda previously stated it was on track to …
There are certainly supply issues, ASDA took over the local COOP petrol station near me this summer. Closed for a week for the re-brand and then they cocked up the pay of the TUPEed employees, so most quit = they were offering £5 an hour over previous to try and recruit, but word had got out and no one wanted the jobs!
Meanwhile they regularly ran out of fuel - its the busiest fuel stop for ~70 miles and on a major tourist route - but no fuel! (Despite no longer opening 24 hrs due to above staffing issues)
Time for them to go away.
Just visited mine and immediately reminded why last time I swore I wasn't coming back. Gaps in the shelves, lots of own branded stuff to the exclusion of all else in some categories. Never been particularly impressed with the quality of their fresh produce either, it just barely makes it to the best before date. If I want cheap and cheerful I'll go to Morrisons.
I think the entire sector has become too big and too diversified. We don't need stores the size of an Olympic stadium with half of the space given over to cheap, disposable fashion and homeware.
"Whether that's a money issue or something related to their IT, you get the vibe that at a store level they're in trouble."
I wonder if some comparisons with a "centrally managed economy" can be made.
My local Dollar General seems to suffer from this. They are often out of the most basic food stuffs when there's ample shelf space to stock far more and some room in the back for really fast selling items. I could do grocery inventory there manually and do a better job of keeping the store stocked. More than once I've left with maybe a couple of bananas (loss leader). Nothing else I needed was stocked or in stock. The more this happens, the less I rely on the store for anything and shop elsewhere. I can't be alone in this.
I think every B2C company I've worked with over the last 25 years has had a change freeze in the run up to a busy period - that's just business as usual. Bringing it forward and applying it "with immediate effect" is a little unusual but then for a retailer, TBH I'd expect it to be in place by now!
I don't like Asda, and haven't since the Walmart take over. I can't quite put my finger on it but the shops always seem a bit well dirty, unkempt, and the arrangement of goods seems haphazard like a bargain store without the bargains.
Didn't think I'd find myself saying I find Aldi and Lidl more upmarket than Asda.
Morrisons also has a similar dingy, neglected vibe since its takeover.
I guess it's enshittification of supermarket sites
I believe the academic name for the enshitification of a business is "Leveraged Buyout".
(The killer line in that Feb 2021 report is "But interest rates are currently extremely low, which will made Asda's debt burden affordable." They didn't bank on Liz Truss, did they?)
All the private equity firms are just taking advantage of decades of low interest rates and QE which was bound to come to an end sometime and it happened to co-incide with Liz Truss starting as PM. Maybe the Truss/Kwarteng budget may not have helped, but the problem was coming anyway.
@Olaf
Morrisons, like Asda, has got way more debt than they can realistically handle. All thanks to being bought out by those parasites known as Private Equity Investors. As in, "Hey, Let's buy this company, mortgage it up to the eyeballs, give that money to ourselves and then fuck off, enjoy life and let the company collapse. Not our problem...
Oh, and then we must find another victim...
I always find Morissons a bit weird, their store layouts and ambience are not very welcoming, and their plant based range is very poor. I definitely prefer Aldi or Lidl for staff friendliness, Tesco for selection, and Sainsbury's somewhere in between. And I’m always a fan of a Co-op for their yellow sticker fridge!
"Didn't think I'd find myself saying I find Aldi and Lidl more upmarket than Asda."
That's scary since we have an Aldi (in the US) that I only visit for the ranch dressing. I walk through to see if there are any good deals, but I've really cut out the processed snacks. I'm not really spotting any good deals on things I buy elsewhere so I get a bottle or two of ranch and I'm on my way.
Well, there's your problem right there. The Walmart ghosts have you convinced that you're in the USA.
I don't recall sitting down in sunny South Wales for Thanksgiving turkey and arguments with my MAGA family members.
What next? The Independence day sale?
10% off for Columbus day?
On a more IT related note, these issues with the computer system restructuring were predicted by just about all the commenters on the last ASDA article!
It may surprise you to know that UK banks also tend to have change freezes around Black Friday/Cyber Monday
Not because they are eating turkey, but because they are very busy periods for customers and they really don't want anything to break.
Ah, but in this one they're not actually freezing the changes, they're having a special meeting of very important people every day to decide what to deploy.
So basicaly this is news because "change freeze" no longer means "no changes", it just means potentially fewer changes than usual.
One of the banks I consult for has their end-of-year freeze running from 01 Dec to 15 Jan every year.
Retailers in general freeze the state of their systems, excepting critical system-outage kind of work, during similar time frames.
This practice has been a known 'feature' of IT work for decades.
"One of the banks I consult for has their end-of-year freeze running from 01 Dec to 15 Jan every year."
If you have to call in people during the last couple of weeks of the year for lots of overtime, the pay isn't going to make much of a difference. It messes with holiday plans and especially travel since it can be impossible to re-book flights, trains and if family is coming to stay, do you just leave them on their own in your house? Might be a bit awkward if your spouse isn't on the friendliest of terms with some of your family but you were on the rota to host that year.
Not just Food Supply Chain - central (UK) Government here and our bit of it has a freeze from mid-Dec to early Jan.
This might partially be an inherited artifact from the days of our systems being run by an outsourcer that also handled Retail companies, so they froze all of their systems over the Festive Period, although obviously even with everything in house it's nice not to have to worry about changes going titsup when tucking into your Christmas pudding.
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