Venlo – The Netherlands – On August 12^th, Office Depot launched a new and improved eCommerce website (http://www.vikingdirekt.at/) in Austria. Combining customer feedback with state of the art software, the new website allows the company to react quickly to changing customer needs. Besides that, the website is a first, but important step in Office Depot’s digital transformation journey.

For more complex sites and web applications, managing upgrades and revamps become increasingly difficult and expensive. When launching their new eCommerce website in Austria, Office Depot used, state of the art, hybris software to prepare for a sustainable future. “Creating a sustainable business for the future requires moving from a catalogue focused business to an omni-channel, eCommerce led business approach. The go live of the pilot in Austria was a major milestone on this journey,” said Jonathan Newman, VP eCommerce & Marketing Operations and International CIO at Office Depot.

Following significant online growth and increased demand from the Office Depot customer base, in January 2015, the project team started the build of the new platform together with software partner hybris, an SAP company, and implementation partner Tacit Knowledge, a Newgistics Company. Austria is the first country in which customers have started using the new and improved website. Whilst reviewing the success of the implementation in Austria, Office Depot prepares for a European roll out in the course of 2016 and 2017.

“The integration of the hybris Commerce Suite’s omni-channel capabilities has enabled Office Depot to dramatically accelerate its time to market,” said Mark Holenstein, EVP Global Sales SAP Customer Engagement & Commerce at SAP. “And driving an aggressive deployment timeline, Office Depot, hybris and Tacit Knowledge were able to help drive significant return on investment. By choosing to invest in a new and improved eCommerce platform, Office Depot is ensuring all of its customers receive an engaging, dynamic and seamless shopping experience, regardless of the device or channel they use to interact with the brand.”

Voice of the customer

One of the key elements throughout the replatforming project was the Voice of the Customer. “One of the key values that we have within Office Depot is that the customer is at the heart of everything that we do”, says Newman. “Besides creating a new website, based on the latest technological requirements, we’ve gathered customer input to deliver a website that answered to their specific needs.”

Furthermore, delivering an enterprise level commerce solution will often attract complexity surrounding not only the technology and the business process transformation, but also, and often most importantly, the people. “The quality of our engagement from day one with Office Depot and hybris, was something that together, we focused on to ensure the project was set up for success. Without doubt, this outstanding implementation is owed to the clearly defined partnership between our three organizations. Our collaborative approach has enabled the solution to be implemented using agile delivery principles, underpinned by quality engineering, together providing an innovative best in class customer experience for Office Depot’s customers” says Trenton Brown, GM of Newgistics / Tacit Knowledge Ecommerce and Chief Operating Officer.

What’s new?

One of the visible changes is the responsive framework. This means the website can be accessed on all devices while maintaining an optimized design and consistent user experience. According to the Global B2C eCommerce Report 2014, 73.4% of Internet users access the web through a mobile device which makes this a necessity to have.

Another feature that was renewed was the search functionality. Newman says: “Customers have indicated that finding products easily is key for them to continue their purchase, which is why our search functionality has been optimized. Predictive search allows customers to select the right product from a drop down menu after typing in the first few letters. This will lead to more relevant and accurate search results. The changes we’ve implemented allow customers to navigate through our pages more quickly, find what there are looking for more quickly and check out more quickly. A win, win, win situation!”

An overview of the key (new) features can be found here. Though a lot of changes are visible for customers, there are technical changes and enhancements that are running at the back end. “There is so much we’ve done. For the actual user experience, I suggest people take a look themselves”, adds Newman.

About Office Depot

Office Depot provides business supplies and services to help customers work better – whatever their workplace. They are a single source for everything customers need to be more productive, including the latest technology, core office supplies, print and document services, business services, facilities products, furniture, and school essentials.

Office Depot has combined pro forma annual sales of approximately $16 billion, employs about 56,000 people, and serves consumers and businesses in 56 countries with more than 1,800 retail stores and a dedicated business-to-business sales organization – all delivered through a global network of wholly owned operations, joint ventures, franchisees, licensees and alliance partners.

Within Europe, Office Depot operates in thirteen countries through its two main brands Office Depot and Viking, with retail stores in France and Sweden.

The company is headquartered in Boca Raton, Florida.

About Tacit Knowledge, a Newgistics Company

Tacit Knowledge is the digital commerce consultancy that delivers Silicon Valley innovation to retail organisations around the world. Founded in 2002 by a group of software engineers, Tacit implements packaged applications and builds custom software for globally recognised omni-channel organisations.

Tacit United Kingdom opened its doors in London in 2009, and has gone from strength to strength ever since. Recognised by their customers for enabling them to focus on the possibilities of online commerce rather than the problems, they are seen as trusted advisors. Using the hybris commerce platform, Tacit has successfully delivered digital commerce projects globally for many brands and retailers.

Tacit is a SAP hybris global gold level partner and current EMEA partner of the year. The company has a thriving London office, headquartered in San Francisco and employs more than 120 people across six international offices. For more information please visit tacitknowledge.com or email consulting@tacitknowledge.com

About hybris

hybris software, an SAP company, provides omni-channel customer engagement and commerce solutions that allow organizations to build up a contextual understanding of their customers in real-time, deliver a more impactful, relevant customer experience and sell more goods, services and digital content across every touch point, channel and device. Through its state-of-the-art customer data management, context driven marketing tools and unified commerce processes, hybris has helped some of the world’s leading organizations including 3M, ASICS, Bridgestone, EE, Galeries Lafayette, Johnson & Johnson, Levi Strauss & Co, Nestlé, Nespresso, Nikon, Rexel, Samsung Electronics, Ted Baker, Tommy Bahama and W.W. Grainger, to attract, retain, and grow a profitable customer base. hybris Commerce Suite, hybris Marketing and hybris Billing sit right at the heart of SAP’s customer engagement and commerce (CEC) suite of solutions, alongside SAP® Cloud for Sales, SAP Cloud for Service and SAP CRM. These provide organizations with the foundation, framework and business tools to create a holistic customer view across channels, simplify customer engagement and solve complex business problems. For more information, visit www.hybris.com.