Context
Founded in 1956, La Maison du Whisky (LMDW/The House of Whisky) holds a prominent position in the alcohol industry in France and internationally. As the exclusive distributor of over 250 brands, it explores a wide range of alcohol categories (whisky, rum, cognac, armagnac, calvados, tequila, mezcal, and rarities), summing up to more than 4,000 products. The goal of La Maison du Whisky is to present enthusiasts with the finest discoveries in the world of alcohol.
After functional and technical qualification of PIM and redesign of their e-Commerce B2C in 2022, LMDW renewed their confidence in Clever Age by attributing their web platform project dedicated to selling to professionals. This B2B website meets a dual business objective:
- Allow customers to place orders autonomously
- Provide sales agents with a robust tool for receiving orders and managing their business portfolios
At the same time, LMDW adopted a Hubspot solution for their new CRM. This decision aims to monitor customers’ portfolios and market animation through sending emails and commercial interactions.
Customer’s request
LMDW aimed to profoundly rethink their selling and communication process within their professional customer base, all while searching how to optimise the digitalisation of tools for their commercial agents.
Initially, the idea was to capitalise on the design of the existing B2C website, but at the designing process, the emergence of a new graphic vision led to gradually influencing the existing design of B2C. LMDW was accompanied during this rich and dense design phase by Clever Age and Jaune’s(communication agency of Clever Age Group) teams in order to prepare the best to realisation process.
Project description
FRAMING/DESIGN
The project consisted of creating a user-friendly and modern selling website dedicated to professionals. The goal was to enable customers to access the catalogue, to follow promotions, to place orders, to have a personalised customer area and to contact their commercial agent. In parallel, the site had to serve as a portfolio management tool for commercial agents. The platform equally allows exploration of new designs using middleware CDM (Clever Data Management) between Magento 2/Adobe Commerce, M3 and HubSport (the new CRM).
REALISATION
The project involved development across multiple technologies, notably relying on those existing in B2C (Prismic for the contribution, Magneto 2 for online commerce). These technologies were optimised and adapted to respond to complex business rules specific to B2B and the sales of alcohol.
WEBSITE B2B/PRISMIC/HUBSPOT/CUSTOMER ERP
The platform is composed of different technical solutions connected to each other via CDM, a robust ETL developed by the Clever Age teams. The ambitious goals of digitalisation of LMDW have pointed out significant technical defiances. However the implemented agile organisation allowed to respond precisely to business needs and guarantee user satisfaction. This approach allowed to polish the design all along the project, which proved crucial to accurately meet business needs and guarantee user satisfaction.
FIRST COMPONENT OF AMS FOR THE IMPLEMENTATION OF OTHER FUNCTIONALITIES
After the deployment in production in July 2023 for all features intended for customers, a first phase of AMS was realised intensively in order to put in place complementary features for the agents section LMDW. This approach led to the deactivation of the previous site in November 2023, with a complete closure in December of the same year.
Results
THE DIGITAL PLATFORM AT THE CORE OF THE COMMERCIAL PROCESS
From its launch, the new professional website saw the number of orders increase rapidly.
From now on, more than one in two orders for professional channels entered on the professional site.
EVOLUTION OF TURNOVER GENERATED THROUGH THE WEBSITE
The turnover generated by the professional website has progressed by 90% after the first quarter in 2024 compared with the first quarter of previous years. This strong progression explains itself both by a larger number of digitalised customers but also by switching all their sales agents to the single Web channel.
These data reflect the successful transition to the digital tool for taking orders, thus generating a significant growth both in volume and in value. It’s the result of close collaboration with LMDW, and Clever Age is delighted with the progress made together!
