Coppel Launches Faster, Better eCommerce for Millions of Customers

Coppel launched a fully modernized eCommerce platform across nearly 2,000 stores. Here's how Mexico's largest private retailer got there.

With a goal of reaching 20 percent digital revenue and peak season approaching, Coppel recognized that sustainable growth wouldn't come from adding features to an aging platform. It required rethinking how technology was built, governed and delivered—and doing it fast enough to serve millions of Mexican families during the company's highest-traffic months.

Coppel’s legacy eCommerce platform, built on HCL Commerce, had been running for more than a decade. While functional, it was increasingly slow and expensive to update. Platform downtime, a rigid change process and rising IT operating costs put pressure on the business. For customers, the effects were tangible—unreliable delivery estimates, site slowdowns during high-traffic periods and a shopping experience that couldn't keep pace with how people actually wanted to buy.

Even defining technical specifications for a single module could take up to a month. Delivering new business rules often required 10 weeks of manual effort before release. This pace made it nearly impossible to respond to commercial priorities and seasonal demand at the speed the business needed.

Our multidisciplinary team—spanning strategy, product, engineering and data—worked closely with Coppel's digital organization to modernize both the platform and the operating model behind it.

The redesigned platform introduced over 200 functionalities built around how Coppel's customers shop:

• Users can now save products and carts across devices, compare items side by side and log in with fingerprint or facial recognition
• Digital financing options extend Coppel's value proposition into channels where customers already spend time
• Real-time order tracking and personalized recommendations based on browsing history round out an experience built to earn trust and keep people coming back

To speed up the re-platforming, we brought in Sapient Slingshot, our AI-powered software development and modernization platform, to accelerate code interpretation, spec generation and testing. 

Delivering at that scale also meant changing how the organization worked. We embedded with Coppel's teams to stand up an Architecture Review Board and define the operating rhythms—through the Center of Excellence leadership—that would let them move fast without losing control.

A cross-functional pilot team validated the new model before rolling it out through structured training. Behind the technical milestones was a team united by a shared purpose: building meaningful, accessible digital experiences for millions of Mexican families.

Within two hours of launch, the platform processed more than 2,000 orders without disruption—proving its ability to perform at scale from day one. Today, more than 4,000 in-store kiosks connect customers directly to Coppel.com, helping unify physical and digital experiences.

The transformation gave Coppel the agility to launch promotions in sync with inventory, adjust pricing based on live demand signals and deploy updates during peak traffic without downtime. Customers now benefit from more accurate delivery promises, improved product availability and a more reliable checkout experience.

The results speak for themselves:

• Documentation timelines reduced from one month to days
• Developer effort decreased by up to 30 percent
• More than one million lines of code modernized
• Expanded payment options, including credit applications and WhatsApp payments
• Reduced downtime and rework, improving operational efficiency and margins

Beyond commerce, Coppel is extending the same approach across supply chain, point-of-sale and order management to improve inventory visibility and fulfillment speed.

Together, these capabilities support Coppel’s long-term vision to become Mexico’s leading omnichannel retailer by 2030.