SMCP goes omnichannel to improve the shopper experience

Challenge

Unlocking, analyzing, and acting on data

SMCP Group is a French luxury retailer founded in 2010. The group includes four ready-to-wear brands — Sandro, Maje, Claudie Pierlot, and Fursac — and aims to spread Parisian elegance across the world.

SMCP’s clothing lines can be purchased directly either in-store or online across 43 countries. SMCP sought to build a single view of the customer across these channels to better understand shopping habits, increase touchpoints with customers, and provide a more personalized experience. SMCP also sought to deepen relations with wholesalers by allowing real-time data exchange. This would allow partners to order new clothing lines online at their own convenience, while allowing SMCP to receive order details faster and therefore accelerate time to delivery.

However, the retail leader needed to address its aging IT infrastructure in order to achieve these goals. Underpinned by legacy systems, SMCP found it difficult to unlock critical data thereby preventing them from building a single view of the customer, as well as sharing data across different functions and with partners. Instead, the team was forced to manually batch upload information such as orders to disparate systems of record at regular intervals throughout the day. Manual uploads were not only time-intensive but led to data duplications.

Objectives

Modernizing IT ecosystem to become an omnichannel retailer

SMCP sought to future-proof its IT infrastructure and increase satisfaction across customers and partners by:

• Building a single view of the customer.
• Embracing omnichannel retail to enable a seamless sales experience both in stores and online.
• Unlocking and sharing data across its ecosystem, including partners and suppliers.
• Migrating its systems to the cloud to improve business agility and operational excellence.

To meet these objectives, SMCP turned to MuleSoft to unlock data, so the retailer could analyze and act on it faster.

The Solution

Connecting to customers and partners in new ways

SMCP used MuleSoft Anypoint Platform™ to gain the necessary agility to support its digital transformation strategy.

“Instead of connecting data using point-to-point integration to build new applications or experiences, we’re using APIs as reusable building blocks to unlock data across the organization – whether it’s customer data in our CRM, order data in our OMS, or inventory in our ERP,” explains Aurélie Martin, Manager of Integration and Application Support. “Previously, data uploads were manual and done at regular intervals throughout the day. Thanks to our API strategy, data exchange now occurs in real time allowing us to analyze and act on data faster.”

SMCP utilized API-led connectivity to accelerate its plan to create a seamless omnichannel shopping experience for its customers. The company was able to build a single view of the customer fed by both in-store and online shopping behaviors. ”Thanks to MuleSoft, new customers recorded in stores are immediately registered in our CRM, Salesforce, and they receive newsletters and invitations to private sales, which supports the growth of sales revenue.” says Martin.

Anypoint Platform also enabled SMCP to successfully manage disruptions caused by the COVID-19 pandemic and improve its business-to-business (B2B) wholesaler experience. When the pandemic forced the retailer to close its physical showrooms — where wholesalers visited to browse product lines and place orders — SMCP used Anypoint Platform to unlock product, pricing, and inventory data and launch a virtual showroom platform for its wholesalers in just five months. “B2B customers no longer need to come to our showrooms and order by filling in an Excel file. Wholesalers can now visit our virtual showroom to browse collections, see stock levels and place orders. This real-time data exchange enables us to update inventory data and prepare orders in real time, while offering a more convenient purchasing experience.” explains Aurélie Martin.

SMCP also used Anypoint Platform to automate the exchange of order information from its partners, such as Farfetch. Previously, sales from Farfetch and other wholesalers were transferred to SMCP in batches throughout the day. SMCP now has real-time data exchange by using APIs. “With MuleSoft, we recover the orders faster, which has accelerated our time to order fulfillment,” says Aurélie Martin.

Results

Accelerating time to market through API reuse

In just six months, MuleSoft became an integral part of SMCP’s technology strategy, enabling the flow of data across its internal and external ecosystems.

“With MuleSoft, we’ve been able to significantly reduce the development of new integrations, which has helped accelerate our time to market of new IT initiatives. MuleSoft allows our development teams to work more efficiently and collaboratively across the business,”

Sylvie Quandalle
Group CIO at SMCP

On top of this, SMCP achieved a 40% reuse rate of connectors and APIs. “This means that we’re saving an incredible amount of time and money for each new project,” Quandalle continues.

Anypoint Platform is now an essential part of SMCP’s strategic enterprise projects. The retailer plans to use APIs to revolutionize its supply chain. The SMCP team aims to reduce the time between orders and order preparation from 2.5 hours to minutes, supporting its goal to deliver orders to customers within two hours. This will also improve inventory-level management and reduce the number of unsold items at the end of each season, supporting SMCP’s vision to be a sustainable business. “MuleSoft will be central to the projects on our future road map”, concludes Quandalle.