Lawrence Hene: driving partner success in Ocado Group's online grocery partnerships

Lawrence Hene is Chief Partner Success Officer at Ocado Group. Lawrence was previously Interim CEO for Ocado Retail and served as Chief Product Officer during the launch of our first international CFCs. With over 15 + years of experience in online grocery, Lawrence now leads the Partner Success team - which aims to drive growth, optimise performance and realise value for our partners across the globe. 

Lawrence, can you tell us more about your role and the work of the Partner Success team?

Our Partner Success team works closely with all of our live Ocado Smart Platform (OSP) partners to help them grow, optimise performance, and improve operational efficiency. We work alongside their teams to identify opportunities, drive continuous improvement, and maximise long-term value. Our model combines both global and local expertise. We have central experts who can be pulled in as needed to provide in-depth knowledge, alongside dedicated local teams that work closely with partners every day and understand the nuances of their business, market and operations. 

This work is important because we know that building a successful online grocery business requires far more than technology alone. Through our own experience and by supporting partners around the world, we understand the unique challenges retailers face. Long-term success depends on the operational expertise, strategic guidance, and practical know-how needed to deliver measurable results at scale. 

What differentiates Ocado Group's approach to partner engagement?

At Ocado Group, we are deeply embedded in our partners’ businesses as long-term strategic advisors, not simply technology vendors. Our recommendations are grounded in practical experience from building, operating and evolving the technology ourselves at scale, distinguishing what works from what doesn’t - giving us a practical understanding of the day-to-day realities our partners face.

Our operational know-how enables us to work alongside a range of diverse partners to help them optimise performance, unlock value, and adapt as customer expectations and market dynamics evolve. These learnings continue to fuel innovation and improvement across the online grocery supply chain, creating a virtuous cycle of success. 

Can you explain the work of the Partner Success Team and the sort of projects you engage on?

Worldwide, our Partner Success teams continue to support all of our partners in a number of areas, helping them to develop more efficient fulfilment and logistics operations, as well as the new ecommerce ‘muscles’ that will help them take market share from competitors. 

Across multiple partners, our support and recommendations are driving step change in operational efficiency. On average, we have seen double digit productivity increases across our CFC network in the financial year of 2025.

We also help our partners to be more productive in their warehouses - for example, in a 5-month period we improved a partner’s labour productivity (through units picked per hour in the warehouse) by ⅓. We did that through a combination of better operational processes, site upgrades and advice - helping partners in their planning and operations, alongside the roll-out of Re:Imagined technology. 

What’s most rewarding is seeing how quickly meaningful improvements can be delivered when operational expertise, technology, and close collaboration come together.

What does a truly successful partner relationship look like from your experience? 

A truly successful partner relationship is built on deep operational understanding, proven technology, and shared responsibility for outcomes. Our business model is aligned with the retailer’s success - we succeed when they succeed. This creates a genuine partnership built around long-term value and shared objectives. 

In online grocery, one of the world’s most complex supply chains, the right solutions partner brings real operational experience, having used technology within their own business to understand what works at scale. They can support retailers across every stage of the journey, from manual fulfilment to highly automated CFCs, providing strategic guidance tailored to different markets and business objectives - ultimately helping retailers to be successful in their markets.

We find success in online grocery retail when battle-tested technology is combined with the ability to move from strategy to execution. In a fast-changing sector such as online grocery, success comes from efficiency, agility, and innovation while reducing complexity along the way.