Retail and eCommerce highlights this week include: WPP has launched a global strategic partnership with Optimizely. Optimizely has also announced that its Content Marketing Platform (CMP) has been selected by NEOM, located in northwest Saudi Arabia.
StrongPoint adds Blue Yonder’s Warehouse Management System to its portfolio of e-commerce fulfilment solutions to support its automation offering. English football club, Burnley FC, has partnered with Visualsoft, a leading eCommerce provider. CommerceHub have implemented its eCommerce platform powered by ChannelAdvisor, with Miravia, a premier selling channel in Spain.
Retail technology supplier StrongPoint is formalising its partnership with supply chain and digital fulfilment leader Blue Yonder. Cohesity’s management appointments to fuel the next stage of growth and public company readiness. WPP and Optimizely partner to bring informed digital experiences to brands and consumers
WPP launches global partnership with Optimizely
WPP has launched a global strategic partnership with Optimizely. This is WPP’s first dedicated digital experimentation partnership and Optimizely’s first global strategic partnership. The announcement demonstrates the two organisations’ commitment to supporting clients in delivering optimised digital experiences to each and every customer.
With consumer expectations at an all-time high, Optimizely will help WPP’s enterprise clients unlock innovative, digital potential. As a platinum partner, WPP clients will have full access to Optimizely’s full suite of DXP tools, including content marketing, content management, commerce and experimentation. By implementing these tools, companies can use data to continuously develop digital experiences that maximise conversion and engagement. WPP says this leads to better efficiencies and return on development investment.
Notably, the partnership also offers clients seamless integration with Optimizely Web Experimentation and Google Analytics 4 (GA4), in light of Google’s upcoming September phase out of Google Optimize, its web analytics and testing tool. WPP and Optimizely are teaming up to support the seamless transition to a new experimentation platform to help brands deliver relevant content and features.
NEOM selects Optimizely Content Marketing Platform to support its content strategy
Optimizely, has also announced that its Content Marketing Platform (CMP) has been selected by NEOM, located in the north west Saudi Arabia. NEOM is where the greatest minds and talents come together to build regions, cities, communities and a place for future innovation. This CMP deal is among the largest in Optimizely history.
With an ambitious construction timeline, NEOM is rapidly scaling its organisation. With this growth came the need to increase brand awareness. NEOM adopted a content-first approach to help educate the world about its vision. Driving the need for a content marketing platform to power agility, reduce operational overhead and increase content reuse as marketing efforts ramped up.
NEOM partnered with Starcom, a global creative network, to identify a platform that would meet NEOM’s current needs and seamlessly scale as the company continues to grow. Starcom consulted with NEOM and explored multiple CMP options to find the best solution. NEOM selected Optimizely because its CMP offers a comprehensive set of features and provides marketing teams with the capability to manage the full content lifecycle.
With Optimizely’s Content Marketing Platform, NEOM has a de facto tool for everything content-related across its organisation. The intuitive platform allows for quick adoption and collaboration across NEOM and amongst partners. NEOM plans to use Optimizely CMP in order to manage its content process from start to finish – including strategy, planning, prioritisation, progression, release management, localisation and the curation of a single source of truth Data Asset Manager.
Burnley FC scores big in eCommerce with Visualsoft partnership
English football club, Burnley FC, has partnered with Visualsoft, a leading eCommerce provider. The partnership aims to enhance its online retail operations and transform the overall customer experience.
Founded in 1882 and located in the north of England, the prestigious football club has a rich history and a passionate fan base. The club competes in the top-tier English football premier league. Striving for excellence both on and off the pitch, the club recognised the need to improve its eCommerce platform. The club aims to better serve its fan base and expand its international reach.
Visualsoft designed and launched a brand-new eCommerce site, reinvigorating the customer journey. The new platform offers seamless browsing, navigation and payment processes, providing fans with an enhanced shopping experience. In addition to the improved interface, innovative eCommerce solutions and partner technology integrations were implemented, enabling Burnley FC to offer a wider range of options to its fans and significantly boost online sales.
Burnley FC’s pre-existing site failed to provide the desired level of engagement and interaction, leading to fewer retail sales. By teaming up with Visualsoft, the club aimed to revamp its online presence and maximise its growing retail potential.
retail sales.
CommerceHub partners with Miravia to fuel its eCommerce growth
CommerceHub has implemented its eCommerce platform powered by ChannelAdvisor, with Miravia, a premier selling channel in Spain. The integration will power Miravia’s mission to become the everyday eCommerce ecosystem where brands, buyers and creators connect.
With its implementation of CommerceHub’s unified commerce platform, Miravia has access to CommerceHub’s robust and comprehensive eCommerce solution. This supports connections to tens of thousands of brands that can sell and promote their products on the Miravia marketplace. Through the partnership with CommerceHub, Miravia will help these merchants reach new buyers.
Miravia launched last year as a new eCommerce model in Spain. The company says it provides users with a vibrant and agile online shopping experience. It is both a marketplace and entertainment space where consumers can access a wide offering of products from numerous brands. Users can also learn about the latest trends in fashion, beauty, and lifestyle through innovative solutions like exclusive content created by influencers or virtual make-up try-on lenses.
It is also a unique platform for sellers and brands where they can have their own stores. Users have the freedom to design them, select the products they offer, define prices and promotions. Furthermore, they can interact directly with customers and users, and apply their own loyalty programmes.
CommerceHub acquired ChannelAdvisor in 2022, providing customers with a unique ability to leverage a single, powerful platform that gives retailers and brands the operational agility to connect with more of today’s consumers efficiently, scale their online business profitably, and grow eCommerce revenue. CommerceHub’s unmatched platform supports more than 40,000 retailers and brands, 420 channels, and processes more than 2.4 billion eCommerce transactions per year.
StrongPoint partners with leading supply chain solutions provider Blue Yonder
Retail technology supplier StrongPoint is formalising its partnership with supply chain and digital fulfilment leader Blue Yonder. The scope of the agreement provides StrongPoint with reseller rights for Blue Yonder’s Warehouse Management System (WMS), adding to its already comprehensive suite of eCommerce fulfilment solutions. The agreement gives StrongPoint the rights to sell, implement, support, and, where applicable, host Blue Yonder’s WMS for its customers in its core markets: Norway, Sweden, Spain, UK, Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania.
The StrongPoint eCommerce order fulfilment suite is an end-to-end solution designed to help retailers manage and deliver online orders, maximise order picking efficiency whilst also offering a full range of last-mile options. The suite includes software and hardware solutions for order picking, last-mile delivery, click & collect parcel and grocery lockers, and Micro-Fulfilment Centres (MFC’s) as a distribution partner of AutoStore.
Cohesity Appoints new management team
Cohesity, a provider of data security and management, has appointed Eric Brown as Chief Financial Officer and Srinivasan Murari as Chief Development Officer.
Brown, who is an experienced public company CFO with over 25 years of proven operational experience and skills in helping companies scale, will manage Cohesity’s financial strategy as it expands its multi-cloud portfolio for data protection, redefines AI-powered data security and data management, and continues the path to profitable long-term growth. His industry experiences include a range of enterprise technology markets, including security, data analytics, data management, collaboration, and interactive entertainment.
In 2021, Brown led Informatica’s initial public offering as CFO, raising $1B in proceeds at a $10B enterprise value. Prior to that, he served in several public company CFO roles, including Electronic Arts, McAfee, and Polycom. Brown is a technology enthusiast, his passion dates back to his MIT days when he co-founded an AI/data mining company with his classmates.
Murari, who is a visionary technology executive with over 35 years of experience building world-class products and services in cloud and enterprise technologies, will be responsible for Cohesity’s engineering and R&D teams as they continue to innovate across AI, security, and multi-cloud.
He most recently served as vice president of Engineering at Google Cloud, where he was responsible for the productivity of approximately 20,000 software engineers encompassing compute, storage, networking, security, databases, analytics, AI/ML, Kubernetes, serverless, cloud console, platforms, and fleet management. Before Google, Murari served as SVP of Engineering at VMware, leading teams across the company’s Storage and Availability, vSphere, and ESX portfolios, and brings deep experience in Compute and Storage across multi-cloud environments.
Retail and eCommerce news from the week beginning 31 July 2023
