Launching a brand’s natively owned e-commerce experience.
Filling necessary program leadership gaps and getting the business ready for launch day.
A bet on owning the customer relationship through a major digital transformation.
A $2 billion lifestyle footwear and apparel brand had spent three years on its parent company’s e-commerce platform. Conversion was down, digital sales weren’t meeting projections, and the brand wasn’t being represented to its fullest.
The company decided to build its own end-to-end experience on Salesforce Commerce Cloud, integrated with order management, product information, content creation, and data and analytics tools. A new distribution flow and a new customer service center would also launch alongside it.
In other words, this was a complete overhaul.
Our founder was brought in to lead business readiness, change management, testing, and cutover. Without a formal program lead, the role stretched across every workstream to support stakeholders at every level.
Simultaneous priorities for one launch
A new site, integrations, a distribution flow, and customer service center all had to be ready for the same go-live. Revenue, brand, and customer experience were all at stake if the launch failed, and going back to the old platform wasn’t an option.
The business defined the experience up front and development ran in agile sprints, but they didn’t see the site again until user acceptance testing, so new changes came at the last minute. A complex product structure pushed the selected tools toward manual workarounds, and the work was split across many vendors and two consulting firms.
A team to cover the seams
This program didn’t need one more workstream lead. It needed a team that could cover the gaps across the entire project. The client brought in our founder and her team to lead business readiness, change management, testing, and cutover. Together we filled the program leadership role no one had formally been given, connecting every stakeholder to the same picture of risks and decisions.
Readiness built on impact, proven by testing
We cataloged every business area affected by the move, drove leadership decisions on who would own the new areas, and led process mapping and impact analysis that shaped staffing, training, and communications. We then planned and led user acceptance testing across every area and vendor, making it the place where business and technology could get clarity on what the site needed to do. Cutover was planned minute by minute, complete with resourcing and a day-of command center.
The outcome
A brand that owns its digital experience
The brand moved off its parent company’s platform and entered go-live with documented processes, clear ownership of new areas, trained teams, and a tested site. The launch was on time, every integration succeeded, and conversion rose year over year after launch. The company now owns its digital experience end to end, from site to fulfillment to customer service.
4
core systems integrated: order management, product information, content, and data & analytics
3
operations launched together: site, distribution flow, and customer service center
16
vendors coordinated
We worked alongside the client’s program and business leaders, its technology team, and the integration partner. Our role sat across all of them. We connected the business workstreams, coordinated vendor and internal training resources, and led internal communications while coordinating the external effort.
Programs this complex need someone who will step in and own the whole picture, even if a program leadership role hasn’t been defined. Because of this initiative and foresight, the brand launched its first owned e-commerce experience with the business ready on day one: processes mapped, people trained, and a cutover run minute by minute.
Ownership of digital transformation should sit with a named business leader accountable for the outcome. In our work supporting an e-commerce replatform, no one had formally been given program leadership across workstreams, so we stepped into the gap.
They most often fail when the business isn’t ready for the change, even if the technology works. Common gaps are unclear ownership and too many disconnected, moving parts. Alder45 prioritizes both business readiness and buy-in from the teams impacted by the change.
Retail IT consulting firms typically help retailers select, integrate, and implement technology such as commerce platforms, order management, and data tools. Alder45 leads the business side of those efforts rather than only supplying technical implementation resources. On the replatform discussed above, that meant we led readiness, change management, testing, and cutover, for a successful day-one launch.
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