Thomas Ebling, CEO With an overflowing trolley and a screaming child behind, and someone fumbling with coins ahead, the long wait in checkout queues at Walmart may seem never ending. The advent of E-commerce has kept this hustle at check by allowing customers to simply ‘Proceed to Checkout’ on an easy-to-use mobile application. What does it take to achieve this kind of ease in shopping? Thomas Ebling, CEO of Demandware [NYSE:DWRE] bluntly puts, “Consumers do not care about the technology that is behind their shopping experience and the engagement with the retailer. They just want it to be easy, consistent across channels, informative and, importantly, relevant to their needs and tastes.” This is the essence of Demandware’s E-commerce platform—to provide seamless means for consumers to shop online. Whether the clients’ next customer is on the couch, at the checkout line, or in a market, Demandware provides a superior business and technology model to seamlessly boost commerce across the retail enterprise.
While it is no breaking news that E-commerce has made some quantum leaps in the retail industry, the ‘State of B2B Procurement Study’ conducted by Acquity Group finds that it is not just another form of business, but a way of life. And Demandware supports this way of life by powering commerce across web, mobile, social, and store channels. The company’s cloud based enterprise retail technologies form the digital framework for hundreds of retail brands around the world, extending its truly engaging omni-channel experience for customers.
With a mission to deliver exceptional experiences for consumers, Demandware leverages disruptive technology to bridge the gap between two realities—consumers and their escalating expectations, and the challenges that retail brands face with legacy software. Demandware enables retail brands to engage consumers in unique and exceptional ways, empowering clients to innovate at ‘whatever speed, and in whatever direction they imagine.’
Unified Platform for Omni-channel Commerce
Today’s customers expect a cohesive experience—consistent and seamless interactions with brands, wherever, whenever, and however they shop. This is where Demandware’s unified digital commerce strategy comes in, bringing its open and scalable enterprise cloud commerce solution combined with a business model that ensures clients’ success. The company’s Enterprise Commerce Cloud brings together digital commerce, order management, point-of-sale, store operations, and predictive intelligence into a unified commerce platform.
With Demandware’s solutions, users can launch new sites or execute promotions in days or hours, not months. Its role-based, intuitive user interfaces empower businesses with control over the brand experience and site functionality, with minimal IT involvement. The clients’ in-house operators can solely concentrate on driving strategic initiatives and innovations, rather than constantly upgrading their IT infrastructure.
Vision and courage will continue to propel us forward, offer us new challenges and opportunities, and position us for success for years to come
Using Demandware’s responsive web design, Brooks Sports, an American running company, is able to focus on better ways to bring its products to customers irrespective of their location. The Demandware Commerce Cloud comes with a complete development environment; empowering technical teams to develop a highly customized brand experiences across every channel and consumer interaction point. One of the hallmarks of the company’s Commerce Cloud is that it provides a full range of capabilities that share a single view of key retail data such as customers, orders, products, and prices—powered by a single promotion and personalization engine. This unique combination of solutions provides Demandware’s clients the speed, agility, and innovativeness required to drive growth and enjoy a competitive advantage.
Leveraging the power of cloud, Commerce Cloud provides enterprise scalability, while minimizing the cost and complexities of running global commerce operations, enabling impactful consumer engagement across all devices, channels, and geographies. The cloud competence offered by the company is equipped to assist clients with cross border operations and international expansion. It allows clients to manage languages, currencies, customs, products, and preferences—all from a central platform.
Demandware Commerce Cloud also allows clients to easily leverage innovative third party technologies with pre-built integration from its vast LINK Partner ecosystem—a network for technology providers, system integrators, and agencies that further extends Demandware Commerce to clients. Providing solutions that are in compliance with security certifications like Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard (PCI-DSS) and Service Organizational Control-2 (SOC2), the company allows retailers to rest assured that their critical data is safe and secure. Also, with up to six platform upgrades per year, Demadware delivers a steady stream of new features without disrupting the day-to-day retail operations. The Demandware Commerce Cloud is wrapped with a full set of Application Program Interfaces (APIs) that allow external applications to interface with the platform’s core commerce functionality.
Besides extending its out-of-the box services to brands and retailers, Demandware creates a forum for all its customers. Working with Demandware, clients become a part of a large, vibrant, and interconnected community that is a source for fresh ideas, insights, and inspiration. Because Demandware Commerce Cloud is built on multi-tenant cloud architecture, all of its clients run on a single code base using the same version of the software.
Solving Retailers Most Pressing Challenges
As a forerunner in the industry, Demandware’s platform helps clients overcome retail challenges with ease. The company is powered by latest technologists, developers, strategists, retail practitioners, and marketers who provide seamless and continuous innovation to help brands keep pace with industry trends and customer demands.
Demandware’s business model believes in shared success and fully vests in the growth of client’s business.
When Deckers Outdoor Corporation, the portfolio company owning big footwear brands like Ugg Australia, Teva, and Sanuk, wanted to enhance their E-commerce performance, they made their foray into the industry with Demandware. Ebling’s enterprise enabled Deckers’ E-commerce platform to be more compatible with direct-to-consumer shopping, with a user friendly site optimized for different parts of the world. Deckers established a localized, user-friendly experience for its customers, enabling them to purchase merchandise via customized online stores, resulting in a dramatic increase in total online sales. Not only did it provide the subject matter expertise, but Demandware also offered tactical guidance post-launch, enhancing shopper engagement and conversion using the reach features available in its store. The company’s support system provides round the clock assistance to ensure the retailer’s ongoing success with Demandware.
"Consumers don’t care about the technology. They just want it to be easy, consistent across channels, informative and, importantly, relevant to their needs and tastes"
Coleen McNally, Vice President of IT at PacSun, says, “With Demandware, we can continuously reinvent the shopping experience across every channel.” In pursuit of their young and trend-sensitive audience, PacSun—a retailer clothing brand—in collaboration with Demandware renovated their existing E-commerce infrastructure to target each unique visitor by integrating with social media. PacSun is just one of the many brands that received technical assistance from the company. Demandware’s large clientele includes some of the global favorite brands like L’Oreal, Puma, Adidas, Skullcandy and Timberland.
Retail in 2016
“Each year the pace of change in retail and technology moves more rapidly,” states Ebling. “Our team of experts takes a front row seat to observe and participate in these changes.” With industry insights and decades of collective experience, Demandware’s global team of retail experts predicts certain significant changes that may overhaul the retail industry in 2016. From machine learning, push marketing, and the incorporation of data science into retail, Demandware is anticipating revolutionary shifts in the near future. The company is gearing up to move apace with these changes to deliver a unified consumer experience. With a mission to offer the same personalization in-store that it offers online, Demandware has a compelling vision for future store systems and internationalization—transforming itself to be the most attractive destination to a retailer looking for the highest-touch retail experience. “Vision and courage will continue to propel us forward, offer us new challenges and opportunities, and position us for success for years to come,” concludes Ebling.
