Oracle E-Commerce boosts Christmas sales

It sometimes takes a while for retailers to work out not just how successful the festive season was, but also why. For Lenox, the luxury dinnerware retailer this was the first time they had been using the Oracle E-Commerce solution to help boost their sales during the period. Oracle has announced that Lenox increased their sales by 26% year on year with the help of Oracle Commerce.

Lenox sells several well known brands such as Dansk, Marchessa, kate spade New York. The Oracle platform enabled Lenox to apply different promotions across different market segments. With the solution also supporting consistency of approach across multiple channels the online discount experience was exactly the same as that experienced by those customers dialling into the call centre.

Having delivered the changes Lenox have now been able to report and analyse the outcome. During the holiday season their focus was on reporting and analysing so they could respond faster to market demand and promotional response. The problem with the old system was that adding discounts on different lines meant recoding the system. With Oracle E-Commerce it is just a case of reconfiguring the system to add a discount.

With a fully configurable solution Lenox appears more confident about how it can approach high volume trading, maximising both turnover and  profit. Mario A. Castano, vice president, E-Commerce Implementation, Lenox commented: “Since Black Friday, we were able to implement a more robust and enhanced promotional strategy, and have achieved a dramatic lift just based on the fact that we can promote at the product level. Using Oracle, our peak period outpaced sales from the last two years by 26 percent.”

Oracle E-Commerce extends into back office.

It is not just on the website that Lenox are seeing the benefits of the E-Commerce solution. The customer service team uses the Oracle console to access data about customers, including their purchase history and their personalised coupons according to their preferences. Customers have a unified experience be it always receiving free shipping for orders over $29 or discounts off holiday ornaments regardless of the channel they use to purchase.

Jill (Puleri) Standish, senior vice president and general manager, Oracle Retail commented: “The consumer is digital, the household is ‘virtual’. Smarter consumers demand smarter retailers who are looking into multi-channel customer service. Oracle is committed to helping retailers create and innovate, to strengthen relationships with new and returning customers. We will continue to deliver the solutions that make this possible for retailers of all sizes and segments.”

Interestingly while Lenox is claiming that Oracle E-Commerce is making a difference, it is not the only software application used by Lenox on its web site. Marin Software provide analysis around the online advertising performance. The site is also hosted on IBM Softlayer according to W3techs.

Conclusion

It will be interesting to see how Lenox benefit in the next holiday period after the lessons learnt from this year. One would expect a degree of improvements over the previous year merely by implementing a new eCommerce site. As the year progresses Lenox should be able to learn more about the capabilities of the solution and identify new market segmentation that will allow a more personalised experience for customers and greater revenue opportunities.

Lenox supports several lines and if they can leverage the personalisation across some them, such as the Disney figurines and collectables they may achieve even greater growth during the quieter part of the year.