Société des alcools du Québec (SAQ) customers will not be able to purchase their wines and spirits online from Tuesday 26 January to Tuesday 2 February inclusive.
Crown must make a major upgrade to its technology infrastructure. Once this is over, customers will finally be able to access more inventory and see how many products are on offer in real time. The stores will remain open.
With the massive increase in online sales since March, SAQ has been in urgent need of updating its transactional site. Although this digital transformation was anticipated in its 2021-2023 strategic plan, “the system was not up-to-date to support the weight of orders,” he explained in a phone interview with Journalism Crown Yann Langlais Plante spokesperson.
The pandemic and containment have caused many consumers to migrate to online shopping, among other things to avoid waiting lists. To meet this unexpected demand, the number of shifts in warehouses serving SAQ.com increased from one to three, operating 24 hours a day. In November and December, online sales jumped 130%.
Increased efficiency and security
Langlais Plante says this eight-day update has nothing to do with the hacking attempt that happened last May. SAQ has planned to operate for more than a week, first and foremost because it must finish responding to commands before beginning to transform its system.
Second, because he wants to take the time to run all the necessary tests to ensure that the new transaction site will be effective once it reopens and that the security will be enhanced. “We are not immune to mistakes that could lead to further delays, but we are [ne doute pas] To go back to normal on February 3, ”says Jan Langles Blunt.
More products and stocks online
Currently, just over 20% of SAQ products are filed online. More specifically, SAQ.com offers 3,000 products out of a total of 14,000 products that pass through the network annually. For comparison, there are approximately 5,000 products in Selection stores.
“Ultimately, we’d like to show all of our products online, but that won’t happen overnight. We also aim for a 24 hour delivery time.”
The new system will address some causes of inconvenience, such as products advertised for sale, which were not available for online orders. The SAQ ensures that there will be an increasing inventory and that customers will be able to monitor the number of products obtainable in real time.
Some discounts are only in store
Readers told us that they were unhappy with the fact that SAQ-Dépôt’s 15% discount on the purchase of 12 bottles is not available online, only in-store. “This is another example of inconsistent government messages calling for online shopping and corporate health measures,” Ranger wrote to us. It will not solve this problem, nor will the discounts be uniform, as it is a marketing strategy.
” as such [enseignes]There are various promotions, explains the speaker. For example, “10 times Inspire Points on Origine Québec products” does not apply to it on some weekends [enseignes] SAQ Dépôt, but in the branch and on the Internet. Our aim is to provide a variety of offers, but above all, to be customized to our customers. ”
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