Shop Direct Group Ltd. adopting ATG technology
A successful story on how Shop Direct Group Ltd. maintains its position as the U.K.'s market leader with its capability to realize its growing eCommerce expertise and translate it into actions after implementing ATG. Now, they are poised to serve the growing online customers emerging from ten unique house brands in a more scalable and sustainable manner.
The client
Shop Direct Group Ltd. has successfully gained an unmatched customer loyalty in the paper based catalogue world. In 2009 they were ready to extend their pristine home shopping customer experience in the online space. Their goal is to empower the online visitors with more personalization features and web 2.0 technology in the near future.
The organization strategizes to get the business to achieve "70% online by 2010", which is to provide the company with the functionality to think and act as a best-in-class online retailer. Separating front-end site development work from back-end IT effort was inevitable, ATG was chosen for this reformation.
The project challenges
The shift to the new ATG eCommerce platform was architecturally and culturally complicated and challenging. Its legacy in-house eCommerce platform was connected to more than fifty four backend interfaces, refining business requirements alone required meticulous attention-to-detail while racing against an aggressive ten-month schedule.
For an organization that was traditionally catalogue-focused, the operational teams had been relying heavily on a custom-built in-house platform that was not necessarily online-centric. The effort and discipline being put forth to adapt to a more customer-reactive online business model and align it with their existing streamlined business processes was also a highlighted area that needed to be addressed.
The Spindrift solution
Analogous to the ATG application itself, we aim to be the enablers for our clients. Our team is equipped with experienced ATG architects, developers, as well as business consultants with the best-in-class online retailer background. Throughout the project, we worked side-by-side with various teams of Shop Direct Group Ltd., giving them needed guidance and recommendations to deliver the project within their control.
Being a customer-focused organization, Shop Direct Group Ltd. took on a phased migration approach, which translated to a demanding effort from the operational units to simultaneously maintain and learn old and new platforms. Our support model mirrored the "tandem-jump" approach, provided the operational teams with abundant shadowing opportunities and hands-on experience to ensure they operated with full confidence once our team exited.
The result
Our ATG bespoke system delivers rationalized result that satisfies Shop Direct Group Ltd.' business requirements and optimizes ATG capabilities. On the front-end, in addition to the successful launch of their first European website, all brand websites were migrated to the new platform, and they were proven to be more SEO friendly. The time-to-market was reduced significantly, which gave the company the added competitive edge. Shop Direct Group Ltd. is now ready to embark on the eCommerce journey with added capability that ATG promises.
Spindrift continues to remains a close partner with Shop Direct Group Ltd. after the implementation.