From Harvey Nichols’ perspective, the implementation will improve customer experience. For CDC it demonstrates that it can pull together its disparate acquired applications to address a business requirement.
The implementation pivots around the Pivotal CRM suite and the marketing automation and lead-management software, CDC MarketFirst. They are being used to generate an increase in per-customer sales revenue by monitoring and tracking customer preferences and spending triggers, then translating the information into point-of-sale information for customer-facing staff in the stores.
They are also being used to improve marketing campaign response rates through the execution of focused campaigns based on data collected on customers and their spending trends. By integrating Pivotal CRM and MarketFirst, Harvey Nichols is aiming for the complete visibility needed to measure the effectiveness of individual marketing campaigns.
For us, CRM is all about empowering teams across the organization with a strong understanding of their customers, in order to enhance the customer experience, says Martin Schofield, IT and logistics director at Harvey Nichols. With CDC MarketFirst and Pivotal CRM, we are empowering our marketing team with the ability to plan and execute targeted campaigns from a central point. At a more fundamental level, we are also empowering our point-of-sale representatives with the information needed to provide personalized value-added services to each customer they serve.
Once the basic customer data is in place, the company will use MarketFirst to gather and analyze more detailed information about its Personal Shopping customers, providing shop-floor staff with access to a comprehensive profile of these key customers, which includes information on preferences such as colors and styles, plus measurements. Using the profile information, it said shop-floor staff will be able to provide the customers with a personalized experience.
The CDC Software applications have also been integrated with Harvey Nichols’ existing Merret sales transaction database, ITIM till interface, and FRESCA online store. This has brought several data streams together, creating a extensive resource for business intelligence data. Records of every sale logged by the Merret system are known to the CRM system, which provides a historical view of transactions for each customer. Online store activities are also supported. MarketFirst has been used to integrate all this information into the till system to ensure that customers who have registered on line are automatically registered in-store.
Another advantage of the integrated system is that point-of-sale staff can identify customers and capture information before proceeding with sales. Again MarketFirst plays a key role because it allows the point-of-sale system to feed information into an central customer record, which in turn enable the marketing team to develop and deliver customer-specific promotions and offers.
The integrated system has been deployed in the Birmingham, Edinburgh, Manchester, and Leeds stores.
We believe this system is at the cutting edge of the retailing industry, said Mark Carlile, managing director of CDC Software in the UK. Today, retailers operate in a highly competitive environment and increasingly their differentiation results from their ability to provide the customer with a complete and highly satisfying shopping experience. This solution will allow Harvey Nichols to manage their customers’ experiences with thorough visibility and awareness that will improve multiple touch points.
