UK’s Leading Online Supermarket Engages Custom Software Development Firm to Broaden Customer Service Enhancements

DataArt today announced that is has been selected by Ocado, the UK’s leading online supermarket, as a strategic technology partner. This relationship will complement Ocado’s existing IT initiatives and enable it to innovate more rapidly across a number of technical fronts.

Delivering over 21,000 product lines while servicing around 70% of UK households, Ocado is one of Britain’s leading online supermarkets and was named 2010 World E-tailer of the Year. To help meet the growing demand for new features, Ocado commissioned DataArt to provide top class engineers to work with its in-house teams, enabling Ocado to accelerate its developments, especially on mobile platforms and on its website.

“Ocado has always been at the forefront of technology innovation, and we needed a trusted partner who could share our pioneering vision, meet our high standards and understand our business,” said Mark Richardson, Head of Ocado Technology. “DataArt provided us with a motivated and expert team of top engineering talent that has consistently delivered at every project stage.”

After a rigorous screening process, DataArt engineers were chosen to collaborate on the development of a number of critical business functions. DataArt engineers will work with Ocado’s IT team to extend Ocado’s mobile applications to all smartphone platforms, creating robust customer facing applications and boosting mobile advertising campaigns. In 2011 Ocado won Consumer Initiative of the Year at the Grocer Gold Awards for its popular mobile commerce platform.

“Ocado sets a very high bar for the qualifications and expertise of its software development team members, and we’re proud to have passed that bar as their inaugural technology partner,” said Dmitry Bagrov, Head of DataArt UK. “Our continued collaboration will help maintain the rapid pace of change of Ocado’s IT systems and support new functionality as they set their sites for further expansion.”