The fashion specialist implanted in the heart of cities, the team Galeries Lafayette develops itself as an omnichannel commerce reference. It contributes, in France and in the whole world, to promote a certain french Art de Vivre (Art of Living) through all its brands.
Following an audit of the processes and organisation of the Digital pole, Clever Age has intervened with the Galeries Lafayette in 2 projects during a period of 2 years.
Project 1: Large mission of composition on the omnichannel digital transformation of Galeries Lafayette.
CHALLENGES: AN EXPERIENCE OF AN ONLINE USER AS INCREDIBLE AS A MYSTICAL EXPERIENCE OF A CUSTOMER IN A SHOP.
“To go to Galeries Lafayette”. It is actually much more than going out for shopping, the experience in a shop is unique and has lasted for decades.
The entire challenge of the brand’s project of digital transformation is based on an omnichannel experience as complete and immersive as a visit to a shop. The functionalities like click and collect, the ship from store or the loyalty program are the priorities for the brand, which must settle its position of premium experience.
THE START OF FRAMING: CLEVER AGE BACKUP
Clever Age has intervened in order to place the axes of reflection and highlight the projects to be carried out and achieve a successful digital omnichannel transformation.
Project 2: Conception and implementation of a new digital platform.
A PROJECT AT HEART OF OTHER PROJECTS:
To operate a digital transformation with a main challenge like omnichannel strategy implies different services within a company. In the case of Galeries Lafayette, at least 130 people are concerned through the IT department, the Business team, the client service, the logistics, the stores management etc.
The relevant choice of the DSI was to make the internal teams and the providers collaborate, therefore fluidifying the dialogue between the actors of the concerned topics (OMS, PIMM e-commerce solution etc.)
Synchronised and in parallel with the other projects led by the team, Clever Age handled the main topic of the e-commerce platform.
CHOICE OF SOLUTION:
The Galeries Lafayette have expressed a wish to pass from a development approach to measure to a more pragmatic approach. To do that, they chose to rely on a market solution in order to take full advantage of their essential capacities.
The challenges of this new platform for the Galeries Lafayette are:
- to operate a digital omnichannel solution which from now on allows to accelerate the online business in context of global growth of a sector for this channel
- to optimise resolutely omnichannel systems by promoting links with stores
- to onboard more luxury brands in the product catalogue to offer an optimal and personalised experience to customers
Following a comparative analysis of different market solutions, the solution SAP Commerce Cloud has been selected, since it covers the entirety of the functional needs and offers autonomy to the teams, improved reactivity as well as the access to foreseen functionalities in the roadmap produced and supported by the editor.
DESIGN STAGE:
A peak in the rear view mirror…
Continuing the initial Clever Age led and coordinated the detailed design phase which took place over a period of 6 months with different services of Galerie Lafayette.
- Collaborative work between the teams Galeries Lafayette, SAP and Clever Age
- Implication of several Third parties(SEO ect)
- Around twenty functional and technical workshops
- Co-design UX and production of wirefarms
- Definition, prioritisation and subdivision of the backlog project
- Identification of risks, definition of the realisation stage’s governance
- Implementing of the first project monitoring bodies
- Workshops with additional work with the SAP editor in order to validate the technical approach jointly with Galeries Lafayette and Clever Age
- Planning of the design stage to be respected.
Every functional workshop was handled by the method of “User Story Mapping”, with the goal to align all the stakeholders of the project, to identify the functionalities of the future platform and to produce a backlog.
The review work and prioritisation was made jointly between the business team of Galeries Lafayette and Clever Age.
The detailed design stage allowed to correspond to the following goals:
- Confirm and validate the hypothesis listed in the before-sale documents and the functional scope of MVP and of the evolutional bundles.
- Operate the relevant technical choices by ensuring the rationalisation of the implemented technologies, in particular the systematic use of the native functionalities offered by SAP Commerce Cloud.
- Define the identified requirements for the realisation stage
- Plan the implementation of the project
- Define the governance project between the different actors
- Anticipate different functional, technical and organisational risks
The UX was obviously in the heart of the concerns, but also accessibility, the main challenge for a brand with such recognition.
Working on the functional scope allowed to show a beautiful collaboration and an important implication of the teams, guaranteeing the success for the realisation stage.
AN AGILE METHODOLOGY AT THE SIZE OF THE PROJECT… OR PROJECTS:
The designing stage is finished, it is necessary to put in place a project management methodology that will be adapted to a chain of the company and the organisational challenges to carry out a project of this scale.
For this reason, the SAFe methodology was adopted in order to manage an important number of teams and projects to be treated in parallel. The implementation of this agility at a scale allowed to fundamentally transform the company at the level of its organisation and in the way to coordinate the teams involved in the project.
From the operational point of view, the replatforming project was cut into several consecutive Program Increment Planning (PI Planning), each one lasting for 3 months. Every 3 months, all the teams involved in the project were reunited at present within the local Galeries Lafayette for an essential ceremony in the SAFe methodology. The PI Planning, in order to align the teams in a common vision and the shared goals.
IMPLEMENTATION:
Once the design phase is finished and the methodology is defined, the implementation of SAP Commerce Cloud was able to start off.
In the target system composed of teams Clever Age and Galeries Lafayette, the professional services of SAP were also complete and teams already in place.
At the front-end level, the successful integration of framework Spartacus/Composable Storefront, provided by the editor of SAP Commerce Cloud, allowed to fully welcome the artistic direction willing to optimise the user’s experience.
One of the challenges of the project was to connect the platform SAP Commerce Cloud to the multitude of bricks of a SI complex:
- **New PIM Stibo
- OMS
- Mobile APP
- Cashing and Electronic Payment
- Shop Services
- Marketplace management via the solution Mirakl
- Merchandising via Fredhopper (Crownpeak Product Discovery) etc.
- …
A SUCCESSFUL LAUNCH FOR A MAJOR PROJECT:
The online implementation of the new e-commerce platform was made in February 2024 with a logic of progressive deployment: the volume of the incoming traffic towards the new platform has increased sequentially.
