half of good progress,” Coles Group CEO Steven Cain said.  Near the end of last year, Coles announced it was revitalising its e-commerce plan to focus on providing a strong omnichannel experience. “We’re trying to be fairly clear about what we’re trying to achieve and how it will be measured,” Cain said. “We’ve made significant investments in the last few years, and when you look at where our e-commerce business is today, compared with where it was two years ago, we’ve invested a lot, but there’s profitability there.” Coles launched its unified app last year, which simplified the shopping experience for customers, allowing them to find their favourite items faster. Likewise, Coles Plus, the membership program the supermarket also launched last year, gives Coles’ shoppers access to free delivery for many of its services and double Flybuys points – in store or online. Ben Hassing, Coles’ head of e-commerce, said the plan wasn’t to reward certain shoppers, but instead to reward Coles’ customers for shopping wherever they want.  “When we look at our e-commerce customers, they’re still shopping in stores. That’s the main reason why a year ago when we talked about our e-commerce strategy, it was really centred on an omnichannel model,” Hassing explained.  “[Our strategy] is really just about closing the gaps in our omnichannel offer, and focusing on our other differentiating factors, like our shoppable app and Coles Plus.”  Part of this is driven by Coles’ partnership with UK online grocery retailer and technology provider Ocado – though this, too, has evolved. Coles takes back the reins from Ocado In 2019, Coles announced it would be working with online grocery retailer Ocado to ‘win’ in online grocery through an optimised store and supply-chain network.  However, due to the strategic changes in Coles’ e-commerce strategy, the nature of this partnership has now changed.  Moving forward, Coles will operate the front-end platform. Ocado will facilitate only automated fulfilment through the business’ stores and fulfilment centres, plus last-mile delivery. Cain said the change became necessary because Coles had shifted its focus throughout the pandemic to an omnichannel model, while Ocado had improved its robotics and automation.  “We’ve said many times that an omnichannel customer spends twice as much in store as an online-only customer,” Cain said. “We want everything to be as near to a one-click opportunity for customers to buy something as possible.” Cain said the roughly $150 million partnership with Ocado is fairly capital lightand that the change in direction will mean the best of both worlds for the supermarket’s customers. Selling smarter Another win for the business is its Smarter Selling program, which kicked off in 2019 with the aim of cutting $1 billion from its cost of doing business; Coles expects to have saved $750 million through this initiative by the end of FY22. This leaves only $250 million in savings to meet its target by the end of FY23, said CFO Leah Wickert, who will soon be moving to head up Coles’ commercial and express divisions. And, about 32 per cent of Coles’ sales are made up of private-label products – often at a higher margin for Coles, and a lower cost to the consumer, Cain said. She added that the business aspires to get this figure closer to 40 per cent in the near future. Remuneration costs left unresolved In 2020, Coles announced it was conducting a review of some of its pay structures, and that it had underpaid about 15,000 team members.  Coles says, to date, it has incurred about $13 million in related remuneration costs, and is holding another $12 million in reserve for potential future payments.  In December, the Fair Work Ombudsman said Coles could be on the hook for a further $108 million. The company said it was preparing a defence against the FWO’s proceeding.  Additionally, a class action has been filed against Coles in the Federal Court, where Coles is also defending itself.  Coles said it was unsure how much the underpayments would end up costing, as the matters are still unresolved.