What you need to know

• Barbeques Galore customers have changed the way they shop over the last decade, with 70 per cent of purchases now starting online.
• As a result, customers are more knowledgeable than ever before with greater emphasis on what they can do with BBQs once they get them home.
• Customer lifetime value has "absolutely" increased says CFO Mitchell Koureas, whose visibility over the pulse of the company has never been greater thanks to a new Microsoft ERP replacing an ancient 1980s legacy system, along with new order management software and a full stack Salesforce implementation across CRM, Commerce Cloud and Marketing Cloud.
• The company has also invested in a relationship with next-gen payments firm Waave that both increases customer choice and ease of use drives down payment costs.

Barbeques Galore took eight months to get its data story in order, according to CFO Mitchell Koureas. Then it embarked on a major overhaul of technology operating systems, replacing an ancient ERP from the 1980s with Microsoft’s Dynamics 365, then implementing a CRM, commerce and martech refit based on the full Salesforce stack.

In November, the retailer also became the first Australian customer to go live with Waave, a payments solution leveraging Open Banking standards which were introduced in 2019 as part of Australia's legislated Consumer Data Right to ensure authorised third-party apps are able to access a consumers bank account data securely, once consent is given.

“I have a real-time dashboard now for the whole organisation. I know what sells. I know what products I'm selling in Perth right now, it’s really right at my fingertips," Koureas tells Mi3. Speed to decision-making has improved significantly as a result.

“It’s also transferred into the productivity of our team. Our team is gaining insights to make strategic decisions faster," he says. "As a medium-sized retailer, when you're competing against mom-and-pop shop owners at one end, then at the other end you're competing with big brands like your Bunnings and Woolworths, you have to be nimble and react quickly. Having those insights at your fingertips and knowing what to look for is really important to how we compete.”

The ability to interrogate data is especially important in the context of a changing customer landscape. More than 70 per cent of Barbeques Galore customers start their journey online today.

“Over the last decade, it's gone from customers coming in with no preparation and no knowledge to being now pre-qualified, basically knowing what they want to do, how they want to cook, what kind of products they want to use and utilise," Koureas says. “They now come to us for advice and our experience and to get confidence in their purchasing decisions. They might consider a product for a period of time, then choose to come back or go online to transact.”

A more engaged relationship also brings critical competitive advantage, even if it takes more effort. “We are absolutely seeing an increase in the lifetime value of customers," Koureas continues.

“We’ve seen a significant shift in two things. Firstly, in what people want to serve up their friends and families when they come around for a barbeque. But also the number of barbeques per household. They'll have their general gas grill to whip up some steaks after work on a Thursday night. Then they might have a smoker or some other device where they can go and cook a 14-hour brisket on the weekend.

“It’s changing from burnt sausages to meals made at home.”

Flicking the switch on a new tech set-up

Barbeques Galore cut over to its new Microsoft ERP in March 2020 just as Covid-19 was beginning to wreak havoc on the economy.  “It was a precarious period of time, and your ERP is the equivalent of a brain transplant for an organisation,” Koureas comments.

But in retrospect, the timing was prescient. “It gave us the ability to then have a relational enterprise-grade product that connects to everything. We went from something implemented in the late 1980s to something that is current, modern and fit for the tech stacks of today," he says. “From there, we implemented in quick succession a new order management system, a Salesforce CRM, Commerce Cloud and Marketing Cloud."

Ultimately, the goal is to replicate sophisticated experiences provided to customers online across physical in-store experiences. "By following that purchase cycle we see from our customers, we know that [online] helps to drive revisitation to our stores,” Koureas says.

The retailer has also expanded payment options provided to customers via a new relationship with Waave, which promises to reduce costs by trimming the amount of money lost to intermediaries. Barbeques Galore is the first major retailer in Australia to go live with Waave’s Pay by Bank solution, Australia’s first B2B and B2C use case of Open Banking. ‘Pay by Bank’ is an alternative payment method to traditional cards allowing customers to pay instantly and directly via their bank. For its part, Waave claims it is up to 80 per cent cheaper than card payments for merchants.

By adding this function and promoting it as a surcharge-free option to customers, Barbeques Galore aims to substantially reduce merchant fees and lead the industry on seamless payment experiences.

For Koureas, Waave provides Barbeques Galore with a differentiated product unlike many other payment providers. “We have everything from Latitude's 50 months interest-free products right through to Mastercard, Visa, Amex, and all the flavours of buy now, pay later," he says.

“Wave presents a new and different opportunity for us. This is a direct payment method. You can use open banking to basically do real-time transfers. Normally, with a general merchant arrangement, the sale goes through an acquirer and processor and back to the transactional banks. With Wave, you're cutting out all of those intermediaries.”

Koureas describes the regular payment methods as “all cost by stealth,” and positions Waave as “disrupting those old grey-haired banker mechanisms and coming out the other side with a bit of colour in its hair, punking it up".

The retailer's default position is it wants to provide customers their preferred method of payment. “It’s about however they want to pay, not however we want to receive funds. I'm not there yet on Bitcoin though," Koureas jokes.