Increasing direct-to-consumer sales was at the core of their strategy, which required a digital transformation in both technology and mindsets. To set themselves up for success, they had to consider how to exceed digital expectations set by competitors, along with meeting the ‘always on’ expectations of direct, digital online retail sales and support. To enable this, they invested in a significant upgrade to not only their e-commerce platforms, but also content creation processes, the underlying logistics and customer support capabilities required to underpin exponential growth in direct sales. This digital transformation was the global programme that drove this organisation, and Project One is proud to have been a partner in making it a success.
The results
The programme set out to deliver a future-ready, global e-commerce infrastructure. This was one of the largest and most complex transformations in the organisation’s history, requiring enterprise-wide collaboration, while maintaining sales and support to their customers 24/7.
It has enabled the organisation to respond rapidly to changing customer needs and has delivered:
- Global standards: applying common frameworks across the world to ensure consistent look and feel, along with a consistent, low effort customer experience.
- Local customisation: enabling specific markets to adapt to regional variations, such as language, tax and local sales agreements with partners.
- Flexibility and scalability: to thrive in the peak periods of retail engagement, such as China Singles Day and Black Friday trading periods, with confidence in the merchandising and fulfilment capability.
- Increased self-service: digital transformation enabling customers to complete transactions and enquiries with limited support to improve customer satisfaction and reduce the cost to serve.
- Owner support: enabling owners to resolve issues relating to purchased products and, if required, purchase replacement parts to extend the life of appliances.
- Agile delivery and development: enabling rapid development of new features and capabilities, to improve the overall customer experience and the value to customers.
- Data compliance: ensuring alignment to GDPR and other similar data compliance regulations.
This was an end-to-end transformation of interactions with both potential customers and existing owners, undertaken in parallel with the continuous development and introduction of new, innovative products. Taking a more Agile approach to delivering new products and propositions into the market and has created process efficiencies, cost reductions and, most importantly, a step change increase in direct sales. With omnichannel considered as a core requirement from the start, customer and owners of their products are put front and centre.
