Dive Brief:
- Otter, an online and delivery order management company, announced it has integrated with PDI Technologies, a leading retail technology and insights company, according to a press release.
- The integration will allow Los Angeles-based Otter to send digital marketplace orders directly to PDI, “ensuring accuracy and minimizing manual work and missed orders,” the press release said.
- The partnership will allow convenience stores using PDI to improve their mobile, digital and delivery offerings to meet evolving customer needs and expectations.
Dive Insight:
PDI has been augmenting and expanding its offerings in several ways throughout 2023. It acquired c-store technology company Skupos in August. It then announced new solutions in September, including bringing its point-of-sale system to North America, expanding its firewall-as-a-service option and adding retail site management tools and sustainability subscriptions packages.
This latest agreement adds digital orders and delivery to that list.
“We have seen the continued growth of on-demand delivery for c-stores, and we want to help our customers take advantage of integrations with other innovative solutions like Otter as we continue connecting convenience across the ecosystem,” said Brian Jefferson, senior vice president of business development for PDI.
In addition to automatically routing orders, the integration includes promotional tools to help c-stores increase orders, reporting tools that standardize data and bring it into one place, easy-to-use menu management and uptime tools to keep the amount of time digital stores are offline to a minimum.
Delivery and online ordering saw an explosion in popularity in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic, with online meal orders more than doubling in about the first two years of the pandemic, according to data from McKinsey and Company.
Online demand has moderated significantly since then, but c-stores are still innovating, with Casey’s boosting its automated technology for phone orders, H&S Energy expanding its partnership with Vroom Delivery and Grubhub launching a service to augment the delivery capabilities of stores that run an in-house program.
Alpharetta, Georgia-based PDI offers a variety of technologies and solutions, including loyalty, logistics, cybersecurity and more. The company owns the Fuel Rewards and Gas Buddy brands, which combine for more than 20 million active users.
