A costly B2B ordering experience needing an upgrade
Alberta Gaming, Liquor and Cannabis (AGLC) faced numerous challenges within its legacy B2B ecommerce platform, primarily stemming from labor-intensive manual processes and difficulty in ensuring fair product distribution in line with the Fair Distribution Act. AGLC’s legacy platform, built on Sitecore XP and XC 9.3, became increasingly difficult to scale and innovate on due to its tightly coupled architecture and limited extensibility.
In response, AGLC sought to streamline its operations, integrate systems, and optimize its experience to better serve the growing needs of cannabis retailers across Alberta.
Key challenges included:
- Manual order entry processes: The shopping experience for retailers was inefficient, requiring significant manual intervention.
- Product assignments: The process of ensuring equitable product allocation across retailers was manual, time-consuming and complex.
- Scalability issues: The existing systems could not effectively support the increasing demands of high traffic and large orders.
AGLC automates ordering and fulfillment processes with OrderCloud
AGLC partnered with XCentium to migrate their B2B ecommerce platform to Sitecore OrderCloud, aiming to improve operational efficiencies and the retailer experience. Automation streamlined key processes like ordering, fulfillment, and inventory management, reducing manual tasks and enabling 24/7 ordering. This provided retailers greater flexibility and minimized delays.
OrderCloud enhanced the ordering experience with intelligent inventory management, ensuring fair product distribution and real-time order allocation. Improved search and navigation features made it easier for retailers to find products across devices. AGLC also used the platform to deliver responsible cannabis sales content, while breaking down internal silos to foster innovation.
Migrating to Azure Cloud boosted performance, ensuring scalability and resilience during high-traffic periods. The collaboration between AGLC, XCentium, and Sitecore was key to delivering a high-performance, user-friendly platform. The move to OrderCloud and XM Cloud enabled true composability with a decoupled architecture and API-first integrations, allowing AGLC to innovate rapidly and scale flexibly.
Cost savings, ordering efficiencies, sales growth
AGLC transformed its B2B ecommerce platform into a more efficient, scalable, and user-friendly system for cannabis retailers. The integration of Sitecore technology, cloud migration, automation, and intelligent inventory management streamlined operations, improved customer satisfaction, and boosted sales performance.
The platform's automation led to cost savings of approximately $400,000 annually, while order processing times improved by 20%. Unplanned downtime was reduced by over 50%, ensuring greater system reliability.
Retailers now enjoy 24/7 ordering capabilities, access to downloadable order guides, and a fairer, more predictable distribution system resulting in weekly sales reaching $13 million.
AGLC’s digital transformation positioned them for long-term success while maintaining regulatory compliance and social responsibility.
The implementation enabled seamless integration with third-party systems such as JDE and CLS, ensuring data consistency and operational transparency.
Retailers gained access to a downloadable order guide, easily linked to their POS systems for more streamlined order processing.
Retailers can now build and save their carts at any time, improving convenience and reducing rush-hour ordering behavior.
As a government-regulated entity, AGLC’s adoption of a composable architecture sets a precedent for how innovation and compliance can coexist in the public sector.
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