Edition 2025 : Onestock Workshop

In a sector where speed, fluidity and personalisation have become unavoidable standards, the customer experience can no longer be dissociated from logistics execution. The case of JD Sports, presented at One to One Retail E-Commerce, is a concrete demonstration of this: to meet the challenges of growth and demanding customer requirements, the retailer has made OneStock Distributed Order Management (DOM) the foundation of an ambitious omnichannel transformation.

A unified vision for a hypergrowth group

In front of an audience of decision-makers, Johan Benoualid (OneStock), Georges Correia (JD Sports) and Olivier Godard (JD Sports) presented a global overhaul project aimed at simplifying an ecosystem that had become complex: multi-brand, multi-country, multi-source of stock.

JD Sports was built up through numerous international acquisitions, resulting in an accumulation of heterogeneous IT systems, warehouses operating in silos and fragmented business processes. This model, effective in the short term for growth, had reached its limits in terms of operational efficiency, customer consistency and centralised management.

Added to this was growing pressure: digital was becoming the main channel for a young, demanding, mobile customer base. Reducing friction between channels, guaranteeing product availability in real time and offering ultra-flexible delivery options were becoming essential.

The challenge? To reconcile operational agility and international scalability. By integrating a highly configurable DOM, JD Sports has unified its flows, synchronised stocks (current and future) and offered a single view on a global scale. This standardisation made it possible to overcome the limits of customised systems, while guaranteeing rapid, controlled implementation in a variety of regional contexts: 3 months in Malaysia, 12 months in the UK.

The customer promise as a strategic pillar

1. Real-time product availability

The DOM has established itself as the heart of an ambitious omnichannel strategy at JD Sports: giving each customer access to all available stock, whether in the warehouse or in shop, in the country or abroad. This global view of stock, displayed right from the product page, also includes future availability, offering total transparency on what can actually be delivered: from where, how, and within what timeframe.

This capacity feeds into reliable, contextualised delivery promises, dynamically constructed on the basis of multiple criteria: speed, proximity of stock, logistical competitiveness, or the operational capacity of a given preparation point. OMS then orchestrates each order towards the best possible source, taking account of performance on the ground in real time.

This mechanism requires a robust technical infrastructure: the system handles up to 1,400 promise calls per second, with a response time of less than 250 ms, guaranteeing a smooth experience even during busy periods.

2. Faster delivery

The ability to deliver faster and more reliably is a key competitive factor today. JD Sports responds by intelligently orchestrating orders through an extensive and agile logistics execution network.

This dynamic logic activates the right omnichannel paths at the right time: Click and Collect express, Same-day delivery, etc. The challenge? To meet the expectations of ultra-connected customers, while optimising logistics costs.

The concrete result: delivery times cut in half, sometimes from 5 to 2 days, depending on the configuration, without compromising margins.

3. An enhanced in-store experience

This new model transforms the entire retail organisation. Shops are becoming local logistics hubs that can be used on demand. Shop teams can order a product for a customer that is not on the shelves via mPOS, ensuring conversion even if the product is out of stock. The DOM adds value in this way:

• Local sales (the shop is still counted as a point of sale)
• Reduced delivery times (from 5 to sometimes 2 days)
• Lower return rates, by improving the accuracy of the promise.

 

Shops, which are often seen as cost centres in traditional models, become agile relays in the supply chain, contributing directly to improving the customer experience and optimising the economics of the omnichannel journey.

A cultural and technological transformation

Historically a fan of in-house development, JD Sports opted to move away from bespoke solutions in favour of a standard solution that could be managed without code and that focused on usage. This strategic choice was based on three strong convictions:

• Think native: keep as close as possible to the standard so as to retain control over future developments
• Get buy-in: involve shop teams from the start of the project
• Deploy quickly, but well: adapt the pace to local conditions without compromising the consistency of the model.

 

WHO: a catalyst for customer value and business performance

This use case illustrates a paradigm shift: the DOM is no longer a technical tool reserved for logistics. It is an omnichannel barycentre, at the crossroads of customer, supply chain and financial issues. It enables you to :

• Maximise the use of available stocks
• Orchestrate hybrid order paths
• Improve customer experience and satisfaction

 

In conclusion

In 2025, omnichannel is a customer standard, not a competitive advantage. Unified commerce cannot be improvised. It requires robust solutions, committed teams and a strategy guided by usage. JD Sports has demonstrated that putting the DOM at the heart of the organisation is a lever for growth, loyalty and simplification on an international scale.

This feedback points the way forward for brands in the sector that want to reconcile growth, efficiency and customer excellence in an omnichannel world.