In PART ONE we talked about the Sustainability accomplishments of Hunkemöller and how Hunkemöller, amongst other companies such as Scotch & Soda communicates its climate targets honestly and transparently, and makes an active contributions to the achievement of the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).
A lot of mid-sized companies are demonstrating their commitments to climate and people in their promotional campaigns, but frankly we can and should question whether they are really investing in making the world a better place to live.
🚧 Technology, at last
Quickly a chronological wrap up of the partners Hunkemöller hook up with before 2022 and 2023:
inriver (2014), Logility (2017), OneStream Software (2017), Marigold-Selligent (2018), Salesforce (2019, 2020).
In PART TWO we talk about the recent digital initiatives | innovations that are enabling Hunkemölleer to further grow and get a grip on its Supply Chain: Bamboo Rose PLM, SAP S/4HANA and Google Cloud.
🌄 Bamboo Rose PLM | January 2023
Hunkemöller selected the Product Lifecycle Management (PLM), Sourcing, and Purchase Order Management applications of Bamboo Rose to connect and streamline design, development, sourcing, and supply chain processes.
Bamboo Rose’s Multi-Enterprise Retail Management Platform and suite of connected business process applications will help Hunkemöller digitize product development processes to improve transparency to downstream teams, suppliers, and logistics partners.
At the same time the solution will help Hunkemöller to get a grip on their suppliers and sustainability initiatives. Just recently Bamboo Rose acquired Supply Pilot, a leading provider of supplier engagement and collaboration software, that transforms the way retailers work with their suppliers.
The enhanced supplier collaboration capabilities, will provide further supply chain visibility and foster Environmental, Social Governance (ESG) initiatives.
Digitizing the product lifecycle and supplier collaboration on Bamboo Rose will enable Hunkemöller to more cost effectively prepare products for different selling markets and account for upcoming Environmental, Social, and Governance (ESG) regulations that will impact core product development and sourcing operations.
“We’re thrilled to partner with Bamboo Rose and Columbus Consulting who will be key players in digitizing and streamlining our product management processes through seamless digital transparency and communication”
— Charlotte Davies, Chief Product Officer at Hunkemöller.
[See References: Hunkemöller Selects Bamboo Rose to Support Digital PLM and Sourcing Operations Amidst Growth Plans]
The Bamboo Rose Multi-Enterprise Retail Management Platform consists of:
- Comprehensive End-to-End Platform
- Third-Party Integrations
- Vendor Management
- Production and Materials Management
- PO Creation and Management
- Compliance and Traceability
- Retail Experience
- Sourcing
For more details about the Bamboo Rose PLM solution check out: Bamboo Rose Multi-Enterprise Retail Management Platform.
🌄 SAP S/4HANA for Fashion Management | July 2023
How can a leading brand better serve its customers and accelerate omni-channel growth strategy in less than a year?
At the beginning of the year, lingerie specialist Hunkemöller decided to switch to SAP S/4HANA for Fashion Management.
Hunkemöller is active in 23 countries with more than 850 stores and several state-of-the-art webshops. Hunkemöller sells its lingerie through its own store channels and through other channels such as marketplaces, wholesalers and franchise organizations.
The lingerie collection is designed by the in-house team and the products are fully tested to ensure a high quality. The design team from Hunkemöller is constantly working on developing new products and innovations for a good price-quality ratio.
Hunkemöller is one of the fastest growing lingerie brands in Europe and wholesale is seen as an important pillar for future growth of the company in Europe and globally.
Unfortunately the existing on-premise SAP ECC environment and underlying IT architecture were having a hard time keeping up with the extensive growth of the wholesale activities.
At the beginning of the year Hunkemöller consciously chose 'Rise with SAP' to enable further growth ambitions in the coming years. The decision was taken based on the long relationship with SAP, the promising SAP Fashion Management solution and the fact that SAP was one of the few ERP providers that offered Hunkemöller complete freedom and flexibility in the choice of Hyperscaler.
Hyperscalers are large Cloud Service Providers (CSP) that offer Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS), Platform-as-a-Service (PaaS), and/or Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) services.
In terms of architecture, in addition to its SAP Converged Cloud, built on OpenStack technology, SAP solutions must be able to run on the 4 largest Hyperscalers, namely Google Cloud, AWS, Microsoft Azure and Ali Cloud.
Hunkemöller selected Google Cloud because it offers not only an IaaS environment, but also data and analysis applications for more accurate customer segmentation.
“Many of our other processes already run in the Google Cloud. In addition to the SAP platform, we also do our application development on Google Cloud.”
— Gordon Smith, Global IT Director at Hunkemöller
This summer, Hunkemöller migrated to SAP ECC in the Google Cloud after a 6-month preliminary process during a smooth GO-Live migration.
Hunkemöller opted for a lift-and-shift approach in which its existing environment is first brought to the Google Cloud with minimal adjustments. The main advantage of lift-and-shift is that it allows to move a SAP system quickly to the cloud with minimal disruption or downtime.
However, Hunkemöller is far from ready. The transition to the SAP S/4 HANA-based Fashion Management solution has yet to be initiated.
Hunkemöller can now focus all its efforts on realizing the business wishes and requirements in/with SAP Fashion Management.
Hunkemöller’s digital transformation journey through RISE with SAP
In this interview with SAP, Gordon Smith, Global IT Director at Hunkemöller, discusses how "RISE with SAP" enabled the migration of Hunkemöller’s SAP environment to Google Cloud.
Note: For an extensive comparison of SAP S/4HANA with other ERP providers visit my Cloud ERP Comparison Table.
🌄 Google Cloud with Devoteam G Cloud | June 2023
Google Cloud announced a new partnership with Hunkemöller, a leading women's lingerie brand, to help improve its customer experience and accelerate its omnichannel growth strategy.
By leveraging Google Cloud's Data and Analytics capabilities including Looker, BigQuery and Vertex AI, Hunkemöller will be able to more precisely segment and activate its customers in accordance with its local data policies.
Using the data on its registered members — from both inside and outside Hunkemöller’s SAP® software environment — Hunkemöller can suggest the right size for customers based on their purchase history and preferences.
This will not only deliver a more personalized shopping experience, but also enable the company to reduce returns, streamline processes and provide an improved omnichannel experience.
Working together with Devoteam Hunkemöller discovered they needed to overcome several challenges before embarking on their digital transformation journey.
👉 Lack of in-house expertise, driving up the cost and complexity of the project because external teams have to dive deep into the bits and bites, the culture and processes of the company.
👉 Out-dated on-premise data architecture which was not scalable or agile enough to support the rapidly growing business of Hunkemöller.
👉 The existing on-premise systems couldn’t provide what was needed, leaving Hunkemöller without a big data analytics solution.
👉 Hunkemöller couldn’t use Machine Learning or Artificial Intelligence with their current setup.
Reading the announcement on the website of Devoteam I realize that the new Data Analytics Environment which Hunkemöller needed was the first step for going to the Google Cloud.
So Devoteam paved the way for the lift-and-shift transition of SAP ECC to the Google Cloud.
[See references: How Hunkemöller optimises its retail business with a data transformation]
Hunkemöller Collaborates with Google Cloud
On June 26, 2023 Google Cloud announced a new partnership with Hunkemöller, a leading women's lingerie brand, to help improve its customer experience and accelerate its omnichannel growth strategy. The global retailer will use the RISE with SAP® solution to move its SAP® software workloads and IT infrastructure to Google Cloud to realize a more flexible, scalable, and data-driven approach that will enable a seamless omni-customer experience across its brand.
"Hunkemöller, like many other brands, has access to large amounts of data, which is frequently stored in SAP® software systems. This data can be used to gain better insights into customer behavior and market trends. We are excited to collaborate with Hunkemöller to migrate its critical business systems and data to the cloud, and to help the brand establish a data-driven foundation for future growth."
— Joris Schoonis, MD of Google Cloud Benelux
"By moving our on-premise data to the cloud and leveraging Google Cloud technologies, we can provide our customers with the best possible customer experience—digitally driven and supported by data. Developments happen at lightspeed in retail, and we want to be a market leader when it comes to digital applications and use of data for a better customer experience and operation of the business. We worked intensively with experts from Google Cloud and partners to realise the blueprint for cloud migration."
— Gordon Smit, Global IT Director at Hunkemöller
[See references: Hunkemöller Collaborates with Google Cloud to Provide Data-Driven Retail Experience]
🌄 Clientele APP developed with SAP Business Technology Platform (BTP) by Expertum | October 2022
Expertum, last year in October, announced they developed an in-store Clientele App for Hunkemöller. The app is deployed internationally in over 900 stores, and delivers improved in-store customer experience and upselling through omnichannel technology.
Hunkemöller wanted to expand its omnichannel strategy to include an on-site sales tool that would boost in-store customer experience and increase upsells. Unable to find a suitable off-the-shelf solution, they turned to SAP experts Expertum to deliver a tablet-based clientele app built for this purpose.
The Clientele App needed to make Hunkemöller’s complete online catalog available in an inspirational and visually attractive way for sales staff in every store; the sales potential of smaller stores would then no longer be limited by their capacity to carry physical stock.
At the same time, the app needed to fit perfectly with Hunkemöller’s exquisite brand and close attention to delivering great customer experience.
Expertum chose the SAP Business Technology Platform (BTP) because it allowed them to use SAP’s UI5 technology to exactly match Hunkemöller’s branding, while also combining this with other technologies available on the platform.
This choice guaranteed stability, speed, product integration, and good looks!
On SAP Business Technology Platform, Hunkemöller and Expertum have developed an iPad app that is used by the store employee and that supports the sales process of any item, in-store or delivered via omnichannel services on the same receipt. If an article is not available in the store, the customer simply scans her customer card and the items is delivered to their home in the following days.
The iPad app has made ordering in store an inspiring, user-friendly process that has a strong positive impact on overall revenue and mainly on the revenue generated by the order in store process.
The Clientele App is now successfully running on sales representatives’ tablets across 900+ stores. The look and feel match Hunkemöller’s perfectly, and it runs with the speed, stability and features required from true enterprise software. It also has remote-to-local support capabilities available.
[See reference: SAP Innovation Awards 2023 Hunkemoller Clientele app]
Gordon Smit, Global IT Director at Hunkemöller, in an interview with SAP, tells the whole story.
[See references: Hunkemöller boosts omnichannel experience with Expertum and SAP]
What is Clienteling? - See the definition of Mercaux who provided both Scotch & Soda and Emma, The Sleep Company, its Clienteling App
Being able to provide a highly personalised customer experience is quickly shifting from a competitive advantage to a minimum requirement across the retail industry.
Clienteling is a technique that allows retailers to improve the shopping experience by personalising the interactions they have with customers.
When clienteling is used to its full potential, retailers have easy access to data about consumer preferences, behaviour and purchase history - these insights allow retailers to deliver a seamless and hyper-personalised customer experience.
When it comes to online shopping, the personalised experience is seamless as the majority is achieved through automation, but what about other channels where the data is not so readily available, such as in-store?
One of the main reasons that clienteling is so valuable is that it impacts heavily on a very important success metric: customer lifetime value (LTV).
[See references: Mercaux’s Composable End-to-End In-Store Platform]
References
Proposal for a DIRECTIVE OF THE EUROPEAN PARLIAMENT AND OF THE COUNCIL on substantiation and communication of explicit environmental claims (Green Claims Directive)