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Superdrug Boosts Fulfilment Capacity by 400% with Ardanis’ Cloud-Native Platform.
Background
Superdrug, one of the UK’s leading health and beauty retailers, needed to respond rapidly when COVID-19 dramatically shifted consumer behaviour. With footfall across stores declining and online demand rising, the business had to rethink how it fulfilled customer orders.
To maintain service and reduce pressure on central operations, Superdrug repurposed selected stores as local fulfilment hubs — enabling online orders with in-store collection. However, their legacy systems weren’t built to support this model at scale.
Referred by a trusted industry contact, Superdrug engaged Ardanis to design and deliver a platform that could power a new Order & Deliver model — quickly and at scale.
Challenge
Superdrug needed a fast, reliable fulfilment platform — one that could scale efficiently and evolve into a modern, cloud-native solution.
Several constraints limited Superdrug’s ability to adapt:
- Shift to Online: A drop in store traffic as customers moved to digital channels.
- Strained Systems: An existing on-premises .NET monolith couldn’t handle high-volume fulfilment or scale quickly.
Superdrug’s system was limited to around 56 transactions per minute and required staff to be on call to address outages during peak periods.
- Peak Season Pressure: Events like Black Friday exposed performance bottlenecks and system timeouts.
- No Clear Scaling Path: The architecture lacked flexibility to support additional stores or rising customer demand.
The new Order & Deliver platform enabled store-based fulfilment, easing pressure on central ops and boosting speed and scalability.
Solution
Ardanis delivered a two-phase approach to address immediate business needs and long-term technology goals.
Phase 1: Order & Deliver Enablement
- Ardanis developed a new backend system integrated with Superdrug’s existing website.
- Orders were automatically routed to stores based on stock levels, enabling staff to pick and prepare items for delivery or in-store collection — including from multiple locations, not just central warehouses..
- Built using Superdrug’s established UI patterns, the platform provided a seamless and intuitive experience for employees.
Phase 2: Cloud-Native Transformation
To prepare for future growth and ensure resilience, Ardanis re-architected the platform for the cloud. Key initiatives included:
- Decomposition of the legacy monolith into scalable microservices.
- Migration to Azure Web Apps, Azure SQL, and Azure Storage.
- Infrastructure-as-code with Terraform.
- Automated testing and CI/CD pipelines via Azure DevOps.
- Secure deployments through Azure App Service Environments and Key Vault.
This removed performance constraints, accelerated deployments, and enabled dynamic scaling across the store network.
KEY OUTCOMES
The solution delivered measurable improvements in fulfilment speed, scalability, and system reliability:
Fulfilment capacity increased by over 400%, with the platform now handling up to 300 transactions per minute and no outages.
Cloud-native scalability eliminated performance bottlenecks and reduced operational overhead.
Smarter order logistics enabled fulfilment from multiple stores, improving speed and flexibility.
Modernised platform reliability removed the need for on-call support during peak periods.
Through its partnership with Ardanis, Superdrug has transformed to meet rapidly evolving customer expectations — delivering unmatched flexibility, speed, and resilience across its retail network.
