Challenge

L’Occitane decided to migrate to Shopify because of the technological limitations of their previous e-commerce solution that were slowing down their teams in each market. Another motivator was increasing flexibility, autonomy and independence.

An undeniable challenge was the existing technological architecture – an ecosystem of tools used to run e-commerce globally – including Cegid ERP. Another big challenge was the combination of online and offline sales (implementation of e.g. click & collect service).

Another critical aspect in projects of this type is the migration of large amounts of data (products, orders, customer data).

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Solution

We started the project with technology workshops when we established the project objectives for different groups of the client’s stakeholders (e.g. marketing, IT, customer service, or the business group will have different expectations). At this stage, we conducted a detailed technological analysis, proposed system architecture, conducted a GAP analysis, and established a roadmap of works for several months ahead.

To deliver such a technologically demanding project within the assumed time and budget, it is necessary to develop an appropriate approach to cooperation. In this case, the agile approach worked perfectly. Our internal team was tailored to the client’s needs and consisted of a project manager, business analyst, Shopify developers, backend developers, tester, and content editor. They worked closely with local teams and the client’s global IT department to create one good team. The work took place in two-week sprints in the SCRUM approach.

We started the development work by creating a custom application for data exchange between ERP class software (Cegid), ESB (enterprise service bus) data bus and Shopify Plus.

Each market has different needs and challenges – for each store, we have prepared ERP and POS integrations with service providers such as delivery, payment, invoicing, and many others.

In parallel to the development work, we worked on the regionalisation of the shop template for each market.

Results

We are currently working with L’Occitane to migrate 8 markets to the Shopify Plus platform. As a result, the local markets have gained significantly more autonomy – and dependency on the internal IT department. Separating the individual storefronts for the regions has also allowed us to match customer expectations in each market better. Customer service departments appreciate Shopify for the significant improvement in order processing.

Our team supports L’Occitane with further roll-outs and ongoing e-commerce maintenance.