“It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity…”

The memorable opening of Charles Dickens’ novel A Tale of Two Cities came to mind today as I reflected on the wide variation in customer service we all experience day-to-day.  First a couple of contrasting examples:

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“The Retailer” magazine (n.b. hyperlink opens up the Jan/Feb 2011 digital edition) is established as essential reading within the retail industry – featuring an entertaining mix of interviews, news and features with contributions from industry experts, retailers and government figures.

As The Retailer is authored by the British Retail Consortium, we are delighted that a Salmon retail project has been showcased; namely our Multi Channel work with Pets At Home.

To assess the full story click the image above, or simply go to www.theretailermagazine.com (the Pets at Home / Salmon story is on pg. 16 of the digital magazine). Alternatively you can read more on http://www.salmon.com/CustomerPetsAtHome.aspx.

If, like me, you hunt down and use apps and software to make your life easier & more manageable, you may be interested to hear that the DIY and paint industry is increasing its involvement in interactive digital activities – to ensure that those home improvement projects get off to the best possible start.

And at the forefront of this innovation is AkzoNobel – the World’s largest paints and coatings company - and in particular their clever people working at Dulux.

The Problem: There is no doubt that creating colour schemes for a home, or turning disparate pieces of inspiration into an affordable offline decorative reality, can often be a painstaking task. And despite inroads made by the likes of online solutions like ColourLovers, getting the right combinations of colours from a screen, into a paint tin and then onto a wall is not child’s play (not for me anyway). To be honest, I could quite easily have a colour in mind but not really know where to start. And furthermore, it’s frustrating to see a colour I like when I’m out and about (e.g. on a poster or already on a wall) and not know what the colour is, or how to bookmark or reference similar paint colours.

The Solution: The answer to my problems is the new Dulux Let’s Colour Studio App which Salmon have been involved in developing, working closely with Dulux’s in-house team.  It’s great.  And is available already for the iPhone, with other smart phone and tablet variants to follow.

How it works: When you have downloaded the app, first up you can simply ‘Browse the Colour range‘.  Easy peasy. And I like the benefits.  No more driving to a store, to be confused by all the brands, to choose a tone, to choose a paint type (matt, gloss etc)….just to pick up the relevant paint swatch card or sample pot.

But even better, using the app allows you to ‘Pick a colour from a photo‘, providing instant colour scheming help when you are out and about.  All you do is take a photo on your phone and select the area of the photo that contains the colour you like – and hey presto, the app selects and displays the closest colour from over 1200 Dulux Tailor Made Colours, giving you its name.

Better still (and I love this bit) as ‘colour experts‘ the clever people at Dulux have then gone a big step further, by showing not only ‘similar’ colours, but multiple colour schemes that coordinate with your chosen colour.

Brilliant.  Saving the amateur DIYer like me from a certain colour coordination #fail.

But that’s still not everything.  Not by a long shot.  The app also showcases some Dulux Masterclasses – ‘how to‘ video demonstrations – with tips and tricks to get the best possible results.

And for the armchair-bound DIY enthusiast you can also order and pay for paint testers (via a neat PayPal integration) which Dulux will then deliver direct to your door.

Lastly there is a neat ‘find your nearest paint stockists‘ facility too.

Lovely.

Salmon have been working with AkzoNobel for some time. Prior to its £8bn ($15.8bn) takeover of Dulux paint maker ICI, we worked on a number of initiatives that you can read about here.  Today we still provide Application Management and Support (AMS) services for their portfolio of pan-European consumer websites.  For the app, Dulux have integrated with servers managed by Salmon and our technical services team developed the PayPal mobile checkout integration code to allow colour samples to be purchased directly from the mobile handset.

Go here to read more about the Dulux Let’s Colour Studio app for iPhone.  Download, be inspired and enjoy!

We were delighted to announce earlier today that Halfords (the UK’s leading specialist retailer for automotive parts and accessories, cycling and leisure) has launched its first ever transactional mobile website, a project we have been planning and working on since the summer.  The project builds on the success of Halfords’ dotmobile site, which went live in August 2010 and is reported on here.

Since the launch of the dotmobile site, Halfords has seen mobile visitor numbers increase to 8% of Halfords’ dotcom total. Conversion levels have also doubled.  However, the announced enhancements enable customers to pay for orders via their mobile phone.

Chris Corbin, Head of Multichannel at Halfords said:

“More and more of our customers are accessing our site via mobile and we want them to have the same experience as they have from a computer. Smartphones point to how trends in shopping habits are changing fast.”

What was pioneering about this project was that the initiative makes Halfords the first retailer in the UK to offer such a variety of delivery options via a smartphone.

To support true cross channel shopping habits, mobile customers have access to Halfords’ extended range of products – but importantly the same fulfilment options that are offered on the main Halfords.com site, offering a compelling and ultimately valuable shopping experience. This means that mobile customers can choose from a variety of ways to shop;

In addition, mobile customers can search for products, read customer reviews, compare products, and find their nearest store with stock.

Payment for goods, a hot topic in mCommerce circles, also saw the Halfords and Salmon teams provide customer choice.  Shoppers can pay by credit/debit card, or by using PayPal; the same payment methods supported by Halfords.com.  In another first, Halfords is the first mass UK retailer to offer PayPal as a mobile payment method.

For those readers who like even more detail, the mobile platform was developed using the same underlying architecture as Halfords.com, namely IBM WebSphere Commerce. Developing the transactional capability involved complex integration by Salmon between the mobile site, DataCash and PayPal to offer 3-D Secure.  Salmon also integrated the mobile site with Multimap (now Bing Maps) , SAP and Store6.

Congratulations to our client, Endsleigh Insurance Services, who scooped the Insurance Times E Business Award at last night’s gala ceremony.

The winning project, delivered by Salmon and detailed here, ensures Endsleigh’s customers benefit from a truly exceptional online experience that includes the ability to purchase insurance & financial products and services directly via the internet.

The awards, in association with Global Reinsurance and StrategicRisk, hosted more than 100 different companies including some of the biggest international insurers and brokers in addition to a host of regional independent brokers, reinsurers and corporates.  The other award winners are listed here.

Congratulations to Allianz Commercial general manager Chris Hanks, who scooped the Industry Achiever of the Year award.  The much anticipated Insurer Chief Exec’s Chief Exec of the year award was handed to Barry Smith of Ageas. Oval’s Phillip Hodson won the vote in Broker Chief Exec’s Chief Exec equivalent.

And finally, congratulations to both Jennifer Day, the Online Sales Manager at Endsleigh Insurance Services  and our entire project team, who all worked so hard on the pioneering project.

Jennifer Day, Online Sales Manager, Endsleigh with Chris Harvey, CEO, Salmon

Earlier this year, Salmon implemented a new online store for City Beach, Australia’s largest surf, skate and lifestyle fashion retailer, which has over 60 stores across Australia.

And at last we have a video testimonial to describe the work undertaken with the brand.

Now customers have the choice to buy City Beach products and engage with the City Beach brand online whenever it suits them, making CityBeach.com.au one of Australia’s hottest online destinations.  And it was all delivered in less than 100 days, using IBM WebSphere Commerce.  You can read more here.

M-Retailing’s editor Paul Skeldon talks to Chris Corbin, Head of Multi-channel at Halfords and Sue Pratt, Account Director at global commerce systems integrator Salmon, about the drivers behind extending Halfords’ online presence into mobile and why mobile is the future both in and out of store.

***Update: 14:22 PM Aug 24th – Halfords: Mobile Site Review by eConsultancy
***Update:  2:52 PM Aug 16th - Since Friday’s launch mobile conversion has doubled!***

Today we announced the successful development and launch of Halfords’ mobile platform, enhancing the retailer’s multi-channel proposition and delivering a unique and compelling mobile shopping experience for its customers.

A staggering 5% of traffic to www.halfords.com is from internet enabled mobile phones, and Halfords have reacted by having us develop a mobile platform such that visitors to Halfords.com using a mobile device will automatically be directed to the new mobile platform.

The solution allows visitors to;

• Search for products
• Read customer reviews
• Make product comparisons
• Locate their nearest store that stocks the desired product
• “Reserve and Collect” the item.

Customers benefit from the same common design elements and features that make Halfords.com so successful.  Here is what the Head of Halfords.com had to say this afternoon;

The internet enabled mobile is becoming the essential tool for shoppers. We are seeing a huge increase in customers who are researching products and making shopping decisions while on the move.  We see a huge opportunity for growth of our online business by improving the shopping experience for mobile visitors. So we are aiming to make our site more relevant to the way people want to shop.
Chris Corbin, Head of Halfords.com

Halfords.com is already growing fast, with online revenues up 70% year on year in the first quarter, with visitor numbers now running at over one million people a week.  Early results from the Halfords mobile platform show that visitors really appreciate the new lay out and easier access to essential information and conversion rates are significantly up.

We’ve been helping Halfords implement their eCommerce and multi-channel strategy since 2005, delivering “Reserve and Collect”, “Home/Work Delivery”, “Text and Reserve” and more recently “Free Delivery To Store”; all of which leverage Halfords’ existing IBM WebSphere Commerce based architecture.

Prompted by reading Seth Godin’s post on the paradox of promises in the age of word of mouth recently, I have been thinking about the issue of honesty in the selling and delivery of services.

We do an awful lot of eCommerce platform replacement projects.  During the initial pre-sales conversations most of our prospective clients have fixed expectations on go-live dates.  Some of these are overly-optimistic.  We are faced with the dilemma of either telling them the truth (with the risk of losing the work) or saying that the project can be done and finding a way to extend the deadline afterwards.

From the projects we’ve rescued and the stories we have heard, honesty is always best.  Yes, we may lose some work (which is always painful) but I believe that the alternative is worse.  Starting out with dishonesty (in this case an unachievable deadline) only causes a very costly, painful implementation and lack of trust between supplier and customer.

And let’s face it.  These projects are always challenging enough anyway.  They are complex, involve many stakeholders (internal and external), and affect many business process and IT systems.  Customer and supplier are going to be working closely together for extended periods, often under pressure.  The overall chances of success are much, much higher if we are honest with each other right from the start.

As an aside, and on the specific point of timescales, some suppliers may reply that they started out thinking that the overly short time scale was achievable – only to discover after they’ve won the project that it’s not.  My view on this is that these kind of responses should be a warning flag to prospective customers because it demonstrates naivety.  An experienced supplier knows what is likely to go wrong or take longer than envisaged and so only makes promises that they know they can deliver against.  That same experience is what will help ensure the overall success both of any initial projects and the ongoing relationship.

On Monday, IBM announced that it had reached a legal agreement to buy Sterling Commerce from AT&T in an all-cash transaction of approximately $1.4B. Yes you read that correctly. $1.4B in cash.

It’s the first major acquisition after Sam Palmisano discussed a pool of cash to the tune of $20B set aside for strategic purchases. Obviously the acquisition is subject to all the normal applicable regulatory clearances and other customary closing conditions, but the deal is expected to close later on this year.  So what is the detail behind the deal and why is it important?  I thought I’d take a look at the details available to ascertain a bit more about what Sterling Commerce do, and what products and services the company provides.  What I found was that B2B integration and the ambition to provide cross-channel selling infrastructure are at the heart of the deal.

So who are Sterling Commerce?

In essence Sterling Commerce is a software and services company that specialises in business to business integration, order management and logistics, as well as cross-channel selling and fulfillment solutions.  Their aim is “to help businesses connect, communicate and collaborate with their clients, partners and suppliers to increase revenues, reduce costs and streamline the way organisations do business.”  Not a bad business mantra at all.  And with IBM aiming to be top of mind and centre of attention when it comes to demonstrating the ability to provide the middleware to support intelligent, dynamic business networks, improved customer experience and seamless cross-channel sales and fulfilment – at face value this seems like a wise move.

Whilst you may not have heard of Sterling Commerce, the company is not new.  For over 30 years, Sterling Commerce has “enabled industry-leading companies to engage in productive collaboration with customers, partners and suppliers and they state more than 18,000 clients worldwide” according to the press materials distributed after the announcement.  And it’s also fair to say that Gartner, Forrester and the analyst community pretty consistently list Sterling Commerce as leader in B2B integration and crosschannel solutions.

Also interesting is the fact that Sterling Commerce’s selling and fulfillment solutions are available both as “on premise” licensed software and as SaaS (Software as a Service) and Managed Services.  This is an area that IBM has typically been quite slow to move into – but is rapidly engaging in.

But why did IBM splash the cash?

There is no doubt that there has been a huge shift in recent years toward fully integrated systems across front and back offices.  In retail that means the integration of key business processes through the entire cross-channel lifecycle – from marketing and selling to order management and fulfilment.  And that is why this deal makes a great deal of sense.  IBM will use this acquisition to provide retail (and indeed manufacturing or distribution clients) with the flexibility to extend the management of their network of business partners through public or private cloud computing environments.  And their ultimate aim?  To make supply chains and partner networks smarter and much more efficient by enabling integration beyond the enterprise while improving the customer experience through a seamless cross-channel sales and fulfillment capability.

There is no doubt in my mind that if you can integrate internal systems AND the entire value chain it is possible to attain rich information that can be used to identify actionable insight in operations, and an agile infrastructure on which to act on those insights.  Sterling Commerce’s strong capabilities in B2B integration, B2B focused cross-channel selling and order management and fulfillment capabilities will only help IBM reach this objective.  And the combination of IBM’s SOA solutions with Sterling Commerce B2B integration accelerates IBM’s ability to extend SOA and BPM capabilities beyond organisational boundaries to clients, partners and suppliers.

It will be fascinating to watch how Sterling Commerce technology be integrated into the IBM software portfolio. IBM’s stated intent is to integrate offerings from Sterling Commerce into IBM’s Software Group as part of the AIM (Application Integration Middleware) division.  We will have to wait for the acquisition to close before we see the beginning of any impact.  But I should imagine IBM’s completeness of vision and ability to execute have been sharply increased.  And it will be up to business partners like Salmon to help realise the potential.