- Sector
- Ecommerce & Cross-border Retail
- Region
- United Kingdom
- Engagement
- Client engagement
McGrocer ships British groceries to more than 120 countries on a personal-shopper model, sourcing from UK retailers. Devinity built the AI ordering system that turns an incoming customer order into the corresponding stock order with vendors automatically, with inventory analysis behind it, removing the manual step between a sale and its supply.
The situation
McGrocer sells British groceries to customers worldwide, sourcing from UK retailers and independent stores. The model is a personal shopper at scale: an order arrives from anywhere in the world, and the right items have to be bought in Britain and shipped out.
Between those two events sits a manual step. Someone reads the order, works out which vendors hold which items, and places the stock orders. At a few orders a day that is administration. Across 120 countries it becomes the constraint on how much the business can sell.
What we built
Automated vendor ordering
An incoming customer order triggers the corresponding stock order with the vendors holding those items, without a person assembling it.
Inventory analysis
Stock positions and movement analyzed so ordering decisions account for what is available and what is moving, rather than treating every order as isolated.
Order-to-supply mapping
Catalog items matched to vendor sources, including cases where the same product is available from more than one supplier.
Exception handling
Orders the system cannot resolve confidently are routed to a person rather than guessed at.
Applied AI
Where AI does the work
- Order interpretation and vendor routing
- The system determines what needs to be bought and from whom, handling the variation in how products are described across the catalog and across vendors.
- Inventory pattern analysis
- Movement analyzed to inform ordering rather than reacting order by order.
Outcome
What changed
- Customer orders convert to vendor stock orders without manual assembly
- Ordering decisions informed by inventory analysis rather than handled in isolation
- Unresolvable orders escalate to a person instead of failing silently
- Supports a catalog sourced from UK retailers and shipped to 120+ countries
What’s next — Continued work on vendor coverage and fulfilment reporting.
More work
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