www.salmon.com 1

Platform ImplementationAt our core is more than 25 years’ expertise in selecting and

implementing the right commerce platforms. We’ve built on this

know-how to deliver digital technology that introduces

a step-change in marketing, data management and operations.

High Impact Ecommerce Solutions Through Insight, Technology

& Innovation

www.salmon.com 2

Choose The Right Platform And PartnerPut your commerce platform programme on track

with the right approach. The stakes are too high to

get it wrong. Yet to deliver customer experiences

that drive sales across channels and continents is

highly complex.

That’s why seamless integration is just one factor

to consider when you choose your commerce

platform and partner. You also need to think about

the whole customer experience across touch-

points, and the impact the platform will have on

your overall business strategies, processes and

operations.

We extend your inhouse capabilities with a

full range of expertise from multichannel and

technology strategy, to customer experience

design, implementation and managed services.

Choose your commerce service provider first; then

we can define your technology strategy before we

select, develop and integrate the platform to meet

your goals.

Our ExpertiseWe select, deliver, integrate and optimise

commerce platforms for the world’s leading brands.

Our deep understanding and many years’

experience of the leading platforms and supporting

components, means our commerce platform

implementations can be delivered with minimal

disruption to the business - whether across retail,

luxury goods, grocery, B2B or manufacturing

sectors.

COMMERCE PLATFORMS

PLA

TF

OR

M IM

PLE

ME

NTA

TIO

N

We keep sight of your overall vision, reduce project risk, accelerate time to market and

give you one accountable supplier

Much of the work by Salmon has focused on improvements ‘behind the screen’ to allow us to build new

and exciting functionality that will make the shopping experience better, faster and more efficient for our

customers.

Jon Rudoe, Digital and Technology Director, Sainsbury’s“

“

www.salmon.com 3

At the start of a commerce platform programme

we listen and understand your challenges during

interactive workshops.

We build relationships with your IT, ecommerce and

marketing teams to ensure we integrate changes

across your business and consider your long-term

strategic goals Then we call on our experience to

select the best technology for your business needs.

Our Experience

Sainsbury’s

We led Sainsbury’s commerce re-platform programme - one of the first and largest grocery implementations

on IBM WebSphere Commerce anywhere in the world. The website includes support for thousands of

simultaneous promotions and a single customer view for grocery and general merchandise.

“It’s taken Sainsbury’s 14 years to reach £1bn annual sales online and this new platform gives us the capacity

to double this. Salmon has been a key partner in helping us transform our digital offer, managing the overall

programme and more than ten third parties. With ongoing support from Salmon, we look forward to achieving

this significant milestone.”

Jon Rudoe, Digital and Technology Director at Sainsbury’s

“We looked at a number of platform options and we ended up with IBM WebSphere Commerce and Salmon,

simply because they are the best in Europe from the point of view of delivering WebSphere as a platform.”

Russell Harte, Head of Multichannel Development & Delivery at DFS

DFS

Extensive customer experience research informed our development of a new multichannel platform for the

leading British furniture retailer. Their customers now enjoy a seamless, integrated journey and more control

– from inspiration through to order tracking.

www.salmon.com 4

In 2016, we’re getting to a stage where the content management

system and the ecommerce platform often live in harmony:

each doing what they do best, elegantly, and without stepping

on each others’ toes.

Choose The Right PlatformsYour challenge is to find the right technology for

your business in an ever-changing market.

Once you have the right technology you can

use content to drive engagement and increase

sales. Managing this for you, Salmon continuously

assesses leading and emerging innovations

and technologies across all types of content:

documents, images and video.

Calling on more than 25 years’ experience,

Salmon will examine how each piece of

technology will help you towards your business

goals. We explore the changes that will reset

expectations and help transform your ecommerce

business.

Our ExpertiseFew digital commerce organisations understand

better than Salmon how content and commerce

need to work closely together across every

channel.

Some of the world’s biggest brands come to

us to optimise how their content management

and ecommerce platforms work together, and to

improve the overall customer experience.

Sometimes we make bespoke changes to existing

systems. On other occasions we implement new

content management software from leading

software vendors or open source technologies.

What our experience does tell us is that individual

solutions need to be developed to meet each

client’s content management vision.

CONTENT MANAGEMENT

Salmon content management solutions provide the flexibility to easily manage both

enterprise and website content

Salmon added real value in many areas throughout the project: great leadership, great experience through

the discovery phase in understanding the capability of the platform and taking our vision and transforming that

into something we could deliver very quickly.

Ken Platt, Head of Multichannel Ecommerce Delivery, Morrisons“

“P

LAT

FO

RM

IMP

LEM

EN

TA

TIO

N

www.salmon.com 5

The end result is always a robust, stable and

user-friendly system. We also advise you how to

manage rich media content assets, like imagery

and video - and how to control content across

multiple channels, languages and locations.

Our ExperienceWe fulfil complex content management

requirements for large ecommerce and

multichannel businesses.

From our experience we’ve refined how to

optimise the capture, storage, management and

delivery of structured and unstructured content to

meet your business processes.

The technologies we use perform a variety of

objectives. For example we can make sure you’re

using the latest keywords and phrases popular

and on-trend on social media. We then automate

new category production so you can quickly reach

your audience with the relevant language.

To use content most effectively, we continuously

improve the way customers search and find your

products. Applying workable innovation, we

integrate new technologies to enhance browse

and search functions, to offer predictive search,

canned searches for clearance products and to

recommend alternatives for out-of-stock products.

With tailored page layouts based on purchase

history, we personalise the customer experience

and create opportunities to cross- and upsell.

Sainsbury’s

When we re-platformed the Online Groceries

service for Sainsbury’s, we integrated a new

content management system into their new

commerce platform.

This meant Sainsbury’s could introduce rich

content across the website with additional

flexibility to manage large volumes of content

change quickly and efficiently.

A leading UK retailer

We integrated video content software to give

this retailer improved bandwidth and to help

customers have a more virtual and informed

experience by bringing them closer to the

products they browse.

www.salmon.com 6

Our ExpertiseWe look at your existing marketing operations and

recommend improvements that ultimately make

your marketing efforts work harder.

During the discovery phase, we take the time to

understand your business and review your current

marketing activities. This helps us advise you on

the best ways to automate, optimise and measure

your marketing campaigns.

Marketing technology services include:

• Technology selection and integration

• Managed marketing technology including

automation

• Managed marketing platform features;

decision engines

Our ExperienceWe use our many years’ experience to help you

choose the right marketing technology solutions

and advise on how to integrate your systems to

optimise marketing effectiveness.

We build marketing technology and automation

into your website to drive up your conversion

rates.

MARKETING TECHNOLOGY

Use marketing technologies to deliver effective campaigns that drive sales

Our aim was to optimise our online marketing to all of our customers, to encourage return visits and to

increase sales. As a result, Salmon’s ecommerce experts have reviewed our promotions to make them more

engaging, changed our customer email content and re-designed and improved both our checkout and

registration processes. We are delighted with the results.

Scott Weavers-Wright, Partner at Kiddicare.com

“ “P

LAT

FO

RM

IMP

LEM

EN

TA

TIO

N

www.salmon.com 7

Our ExpertiseManaging orders is a complex and vital process

that has a huge impact on customer loyalty and

repeat purchase. It needs to be right.

We help create team structures to support new

processes, systems and scope, or introduce and

implement new order management technologies.

From order to delivery and returns, our experts

understand the processes, systems and

technologies that you need to put in place.

Our ExperienceWe develop agile and integrated order

management services that provide customers with

a consistent service across all channels.

The order management strategies and solutions

we develop translate into efficient fulfilment

services. We ensure new systems integrate with

your current ecommerce operations and are

scalable to grow with your business.

Our multichannel consultants balance

sophisticated processes such as integrating

promotions, bundling, partial shipments and split

orders with design and implementation of the

‘packaging’ experience itself.

ORDER MANAGEMENT

Improve customer satisfaction and profitability with efficient processing and management

of orders

Since implementing our new multichannel platform, we have had a very successful year and an outstanding

Christmas with website visitors up 67% on the same period last year. Customers are more engaged with our

brand and website conversion is up significantly.

Ken Platt, Head of Multichannel Ecommerce Delivery, Morrisons“

“P

LAT

FO

RM

IMP

LEM

EN

TA

TIO

N

www.salmon.com 8

©2016 Salmon Ltd. All rights reserved. All company and product names, brands and symbols mentioned herein are brand names and/or registered trademarks of their respective owners.

For more information,email: info@salmon.comor visit: www.salmon.com

ABOUT SALMON

Salmon is a global digital commerce consultancy

– the largest in WPP’s network of companies. We

define and deliver market-changing solutions and

customer journeys for the world’s leading brands.

Established in 1989, with operations in London, New

York, Melbourne and Beijing, Salmon clients include

AkzoNobel, Argos, Audi UK, DFS, Halfords, Premier

Farnell, Sainsbury’s and Selfridges.

Salmon’s Multichannel Commerce Solutions

brochure complements this booklet on

Platform Implementation.