Helping a Leading European Retailer Create Value with Customer Data

Driving personalised experiences with a 360-customer view

Given the nature of its business, our customer from the retail industry collects data from millions of customers on a daily basis.

By implementing a one-stop-shop data solution, we helped them engage their customers with personalized shopping experiences, driving loyalty and customer value.

About the Customer

over 100.000 employees
over 100 companies
12 billion EUR in sales (2023)
strong investment in new technologies and innovation
number of strong retail chains included in the company group

Customer Challenges

Low Quality of Data

Data was being saved and updated manually resulting in outdated or mismatched data.

Fragmented Customer Data

Customer data was stored in silos, making it impossible to unify it or generate insights.

Limited Personalisation

Due to data management practices only limited personalisation options were available.

Further complications came from the existing digital architecture since many systems did not work well together. We needed to find a way for all these solutions to operate as one, increasing marketing effectiveness and making data accessible to everyone in real-time.

The Solution: A customer data management system that provides a complete 360-degree view of the customer and enables personalized communication.

The SAP Customer Data Platform was chosen as the foundation of the new customer data management system. The solution is a market leader when it comes to data unification and consolidation, so was a perfect match for our customer and this project.

The SAP CDP’s strong suite is it’s integration capabilities, as it’s in constant communication with peripheral systems such as online shops, brick-and-mortar stores, loyalty systems, etc. This allows it to analyze and unify customer data no matter where it is coming from, providing a full omnichannel experience to the customers.

To get the most out of the new setup, we also integrated it with SAP Emarsys – a solution that empowers retailers with personalized marketing automation to improve customer engagement. This means that the company can shape their communication with each customer based on their demographics and past behavior – all of which is saved within the customer data solution.

Project Highlights

Creating a ‘Single Source of Truth’

The main goal of the new customer data management system was to establish a ‘golden record’.
This serves as a trustworthy single source of truth for customer data within the company, while providing access to everyone who needs it in real-time.
As a result, information is always reliable and up to date, breaking down data silos and avoiding confusion, errors, and duplication in customer data.

Complete View of the Customer

In the new setup, SAP CDP serves as a one-stop shop for customer data, combining it into a complete 360-degree customer profile.
With this, we enabled them to unify customer data regarding past purchases (such as top categories or products), behaviors, and demographics.
As a result, the customer vastly improved the personalization across all channels while sharing the data with their shopfloor employees to make the overall sales experience more enjoyable.

Meaningful Customer Engagement

By integrating Emarsys, the company was able to target their customer communication based on specific context or behavior.
By using an iterattive approach, we started from a couple of use cases (abandoned carts, birthdays, win-back campaigns, etc.) and then optimized and expanded the scope.
When empowered with the CDPs segmentation features, the system was also able to automate targeted marketing campaigns – driving customer loyalty and value.

Results of the Emarsys ‘Card Abandonment’ Pilot Campaign

During four months (October 2022 – February 2023), the company piloted using Emarsys to send out automated emails to customers who started their shopping but abandoned their cart before checkout.

Here are the results after just one campaign:

open rate

increase in conversion rate

additional revenue in EUR

Thomas Ziegler | Chief Customer Officer, NETCONOMY

Our biggest achievement in this project is the strong connection between offline and online touch points, which helped create a seamless experience. The technology help teams within the store to work more closely and effectively with their customers.

Technical Foundation

SAP Customer Data Platform
SAP Emarsys
SAP Commerce Cloud
Google Cloud Platform
React-Based Archibald Storefront by NETCONOMY

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