After 13 years, a refresh of the metro&moi digital ecosystem was needed. With customer loyalty, personalization of its offer and increasing the value of the grocery basket always in mind, Metro decided to revamp its loyalty program to meet current customer needs. One of Metro's objectives was to unify the rewards programs of its various banners under a single program called Moi. Building on the success of the metro&moi program, which boasted 1.2 million active subscribers—more than half of all Quebec households—the company wanted to expand its program to include Jean Coutu pharmacies, Brunet and the Super C discount banner, among others. The aim was to enable consumers to collect points in nearly 900 stores and redeem them instantly at the checkout to save even more on their everyday essentials.
"The launch of Moi marks a major milestone in the company's overall digital strategy, as customers will benefit fully from the complementary nature of our food and drugstore networks for the first time. We are thus uniting the voices of five major banners where 97% of Quebec households store during the year. Together, these five banners form Quebec's largest food and drugstore network." - says Alain Tadros, Vice President of Marketing Metro.
Nmédia, a digital ally of choice for Metro
With this goal in mind, our team of business analysts, architects, UX strategists and programmers stepped in to support Metro in updating its documentation and collaborating on implementing a new multi-banner digital ecosystem.
Nmédia's mandate included the following:
- Support the team in updating documentation;
- Develop the Moi mobile applications for the various banners;
- Deploy the Moi applications for the different banners.
Behind-the-scenes work for a branded customer experience
Nmédia's principal mandate in this project was to work behind the scenes. The programming team spent much effort ensuring everything ran smoothly for customers and employees, in-store and back home. Our team of experts provided the smooth running of the customer experience, from joining the Moi program and using the card in-store to in-store and online purchases, order history, and account profile management. Ultimately, this input from our team makes the customer experience, both in-store and at home, pleasant and user-friendly.
The apparent choice of Microsoft technology
To support Metro Inc. in its objective, the Nmédia team was able to rely on various Microsoft technologies throughout the project:
The use of Xamarin and the work that began on the transfer to .NET MAUI enabled us to create high-performance applications for both iOS and Android, meeting the high-quality standards that Metro wanted to put forward. We also integrated Azure Active Directory B2C for authentication in various applications. Since we had to develop and launch eight applications simultaneously, leveraging the best cross-platform strategy was vital. Using a tried-and-true solution like Xamarin and .NET MAUI was the way to go!
Impeccable collaboration thanks to DevOps and App Center
Azure DevOps and Microsoft's Visual Studio App Center ensured excellent collaboration and real-time sharing between the Nmédia development and Metro teams. These tools were used, among other things, to create a work environment that enabled the Metro team to monitor developments on a day-to-day basis. They also helped implement sustainable practices for developing multiple applications, such as continuous integration, automated testing of all applications and automatic deployment of different versions.
