Orange re-platform
A look at how Orange dramatically improved their ability to react to change, as well as enhancing the customer experience.
The client
The Orange online shop started life as a small site selling just four phones and one talkplan, and has evolved into a multimillion-pound sales channel today. Orange wanted to replatform their site for a number of reasons: to improve its stability and scalability; to increase revenue and conversion rates; and to improve their customers' experience of the site.
As the telecoms marketplace moves ever faster, Orange also wanted to improve its time-to-market for new products, and to be able to empower its business users to create their own rapidly-created, tactical sales campaigns on the site. ATG was selected as the ideal platform to meet all the company's needs.
The project challenges
Orange's platform choice came with some significant challenges for the company.
Orange had no previous in-house technical expertise in either developing or implementing ATG, and a distributed technical team meant that the work would be done across four sites in two different countries. Orange's requirements for their ATG platform called for a bespoke, tailored implementation beyond ATG's initial out-of-the-box functionality to include customisations to the ATG catalog, a CMS, and tenured pricing. The business team had not previously managed their own site releases, nor done their own site updates.
The Spindrift solution
We provided the hands-on technical expertise and training which enabled Orange's technical teams to deliver the project. A team of eight Spindrift experts worked exclusively with the teams at all four of Orange's sites to lead and teach their developers, and transfer our knowledge of best-practice ATG code and environments architecture.
Spindrift's experts produced roadmaps for the development of the required functionality, advised on the most effective approach for roll-out, and encouraged knowledge sharing between teams.
Our business specialists trained the Orange business team on the tools of ATG through customised training sessions tailored around the client. No business team can afford to take several days off for training, so Spindrift suggested frequent small sessions rather than prescribed blocks of training, and were on hand to support the business as they migrated their entire existing product portfolio to the new platform.
The result
The new shop's success is best measured in minutes: the site's new stability and improved user experience has reduced the customer journey time to checkout from 18 minutes to just five. Last-minute changes to the site go live in an hour, not a day. New products can launch in days, not weeks.
Orange's team are now committed to extending their use of ATG throughout the business' sales operations to ensure that they continue to keep time on their side.
But don't just believe our own words for it. Here is what Orange has to say about Spindrift:
"This project was groundbreaking for Orange, and Spindrift have been critical to its success."
"Spindrift have helped our teams to advance their implementation skills, their operational skills, and have enabled Orange to understand strategically what they can do with ATG."
Terry Page, Programme Manager