How Lactalis Optimized for Growth with OroCommerce
In Digital Orders
Onboarded Across 12 Markets
In Manual Processes
The Challenge
Lactalis uses a mix of digital channels, like EDI and eCommerce, alongside traditional offline methods to take customer orders. But each region ran independently, using systems at different stages of maturity and their own business processes.
Without a unified system, the challenges quickly piled up:
- Costly Market Expansion: Every new market required custom IT projects, draining resources and delaying launches. Growth came with a heavy price tag.
- Stifled Scalability: Processes that worked in one region couldn’t be easily replicated in another. The lack of a standardized platform made it difficult to adapt and innovate at the pace the business needed.
- Security and efficiency: With different solutions managed locally, following the security standards of the group is very difficult and leads to evident extra costs.
As the company grew, these issues became impossible to ignore. Lactalis needed a solution to cut through the complexity, streamline operations, and give customers the experience they expected, no matter where they were.
Aurélien Devaux
Head of Digital & eCommerce / Data Management / Consumer Care
The Solution
So how do you modernize operations across a dozen unique markets while keeping things local and practical? For Lactalis, the answer was a step-by-step digital commerce strategy that balanced global consistency with regional adaptability.
The journey started with three pilot markets, where Lactalis tested the OroCommerce-powered platform with small groups of 100 customers. Every challenge was an opportunity to refine the system and ensure it fit the real needs of both customers and teams.
This careful, deliberate rollout prevented the chaos often seen in large-scale system changes. Within two years, the platform successfully expanded to 12 markets – a clear win for the company’s strategy.
With OroCommerce’s multi-brand and multi-website capabilities, Lactalis built a solution that handled the demands of a global operation while tailoring itself to local realities:
- In regions where customers reordered frequently, the platform offered an efficient portal for placing and tracking orders.
- Markets that needed a more retail-like experience got easy-to-navigate catalogs with detailed product information.
- Customizable features allowed each region to tailor workflows and interfaces to match how they do business.
The platform also allowed Lactalis to reach customers in regions without a distributor network, creating direct-to-consumer channels to grow its brand in untapped markets.
For customers, the platform made things simpler too. They could manage orders, check invoices, and handle account tasks whenever it suited them – no more waiting around for manual processes. Even customers using EDI could view and re-order past purchases, file claims, and access everything they needed in one place.
No matter how they order, the experience is now easy, efficient, and consistent.
In two years, 15,000 customers were onboarded, driving significant results:
- 230% year-over-year growth in digital orders, with higher revenue in regions using the platform.
- 44% reduction in manual data entry.
- Market deployments took a few months instead of several years.
What started as a challenge turned into a chance to unify operations. Now, previously disconnected teams are part of a digital ecosystem that can scale across the entire group, while still allowing each region to tailor design and processes to local needs.
With the groundwork now laid, Lactalis is gearing up to bring its platform to even more markets in 2025, ensuring it stays ahead of the complex demands of its global business.
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