Walmart-owned Massmart has appointed Thembani Biyam, a former management consultant, as vice president of group e-commerce for business-to-consumer platforms.
Biyam’s experience in the e-commerce space includes serving as country manager for OLX and CEO of food delivery app Orderin.
Massmart views e-commerce as a “strategic growth vector”, and has invested significantly in expanding its online shopping presence in recent years with the stated ambition of becoming “South Africa’s top e-commerce destination”.
In 2021, Walmart seconded a senior e-commerce executive, Sylvester John, as Massmart senior vice-president for group e-commerce to focus on building its online shopping proposition.
In a statement, Biyam said his first priority will be to continue driving Massmart’s revamped digital offering, which includes a new Game website and Makro app, as well as a significantly enhanced Makro website.
“Following these successful launches last year, which helped contribute to almost 100% group e-commerce GMV (gross merchandise value) growth, we are working on more exciting developments aimed at offering our customers an unmatched shopping and delivery experience that they can trust. One of the things customers can now look forward to is a revamped Builders website in the next few months,” Biyam said.
He added that speed and reliability are crucial in delivering a positive online customer experience.
‘Huge team effort’
“We recognise that customers expect fast and reliable delivery when shopping online. Reducing the customer promise for delivery to two to five days and pickup to next day, across Makro, Game and Builders, was a huge team effort and has been very well received by customers. We are continuously improving our execution and in the first quarter of 2023, more than 80% of Makro and Builders orders nationally were delivered in two days or less with high on-time delivery rates.”
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“Ultimately the end-to-end customer journey needs to be consistently seamless in order to build utmost trust for accelerated online adoption in the months and years to come,” said Massmart’s John. “While we still have much work to do, we are encouraged by the continued progress across our platforms, fulfilment operations and service levels, and we look forward to the further improvements ahead under Thembani’s leadership of our omnichannel platforms.” — © 2023 NewsCentral Media
