As early as in the 1960s, the lingerie maker Triumph ventured a step into the Asian market – this was an unusual and courageous move towards expansion at that time. Due to their combative management and shrill innovations such as the ,,Angel Bra“, Triumph rose to become the leading maker of lingerie in Japan. In order to preserve its pioneering role, Triumph already invested into e-commerce activities at quite an early stage. To remain successful and to increase revenue in the future the company decided in 2013 to replace and improve the existing proprietary e-commerce solution with SAP hybris.

Brand Leader through Targeted Customer Approach

At present, the whole lingerie industry must deal with stagnant or even declining sales: new suppliers penetrate the market and put pressure on prizes. Therefore, manufacturers need to differentiate and define themselves clearly from one another. Triumph Japan decided to rely on customer service and an elaborated omnichannel strategy. For all their brands Triumph and Amos Style it conducts stationary trade. Hence, the aim is to link both worlds online and offline perfectly to one another and by doing so create a consumer centric overall shopping experience. The customer shall be perfectly advised at all levels of communication.

The company’s central objective is a continuous development of their e-commerce system to increase turnover. That is closely linked to an increase of customer satisfaction which is enhanced by a refined customer approach in the stores. This is achieved by a consolidated data management – through usage of a scorecard for example – and marketing that reaches far beyond the realms of e-commerce into retail. So as to achieve this goal in the best possible way, internal processes had to be optimized in a further step. Therefore, the hybris customer service module is used which was adapted by communicode to Triumph’s individual requirements and is used since then by the internal stakeholders.

Upload to the Cloud

An indispensable basis for an efficient omnichannel customer approach is, among others, a stable system architecture. The then existing architecture had reached its limit of capacity, due to an increase of traffic and even small variations led to extremely long page loading times. This was the reason why, in 2015, Triumph and communicode elaborated a concept for the implementation of an adequate system architecture for Triumph’s Japanese e-shop. Here the focus was on scalability, thrift, minimal risk, and future-proofness. A best practice solution was sought which allows scaling due to campaign rhythm and thus adjusts the used capacity precisely to demands. The decision was made for Amazon Web Services (AWS) that could further convince through good service and global dissemination.

From the idea to practice

In order to minimise the risk, a proof of concept tested the feasibility and outlined a scenario in which the existing system architecture was migrated and then optimised. After simulation of load tests during normal operation as well as at peak times it became clear that in terms of pricing vertical scaling was attractive even when it comes to cloud hosting, as capacities can temporarily be booked in addition. The decision was obvious: 30 % cost savings, 50 % sales growth within the test period, 40% more users, and a 30% higher conversion rate convinced and the pilot system was then gradually expanded into the productive system. Besides the technical realisation, communicode also took over the project management and was thus responsible for the coordination of all project related service providers. In December 2015, after three months’ duration the project was successfully completed in time and budget. In order to assure smooth operation Triumph Japan makes use of communicode’s 24/7 support. A meeting is held once a month during which planned marketing activities such as TV spots, mailings, or voucher campaigns are communicated.

Lessons learned

Each and every project is unique and such is each customer. An international project confronts us with challenges different from local projects. However, the ongoing collaboration between Triumph Japan and communicode proves that today’s technology makes it possible to bridge the missing physical proximity to the customer to a great extent. Like with all international projects a different and alien language and culture lead to a special situation that is to be dealt with. A certain amount of time is needed to establish oneself as a reliable strategic partner, since mutual trust has to be built on both sides. In addition, an agile working method presents a particular challenge when working remotely: thus, certain adaptations according to specific project and customer needs are required – and especially so when it comes to working within different time zones. However, alongside this knowledge we also gained experience on a technical scale: whoever wants to run a hybris online shop within the cloud needs expertise in the fields of application and cloud services. Yet, hybris is definitively ready for the cloud. The highly efficient mix of instances and services together with automatic scaling saves costs and resources. Triumph Japan is now optimally prepared to further enhance their omnichannel strategy that helps to maintain the company’s leading market position in the future.