Four years ago, Michelle Anderson, executive general manager of digital marketing at The Warehouse Group (TW Group), started working with Salesforce Sales Cloud. Anderson was part of a team tasked with developing systems to support TW Group brands in the increasingly digitised, always on, world of retail.

"We had a website and an email partner, but reporting and customer processes were missing. We discovered that simple integration would allow us to push customer data from our web platform into Salesforce, where we could manage customer lifecycles," said Anderson.

The move also captured insights about purchasing behaviours and provided cues for targeted communication. Development continued, and Salesforce was applied to fulfilment management, where dashboards showcase orders, sales, and backorders.

A manual back-order process puzzled customers. In-store order pickers placed goods on back-order when they couldn't locate order items. However, the process was almost impossible to manage. There was no immediate data to inform activity – or customers. How old is the order? Has the item been shipped? At what point is a refund due? Salesforce has streamlined the process, and now everyone is in the picture.

In 2013, TW Group launched beauty brands website ilovebeauty.co.nz. The website offers a range of about 5,000 global cosmetics, fragrances, and hair-care products at market-best prices.Close to 10,000 people signed up to the site before it launched. Clever marketing automation targets offers to the right customers. The Salesforce system, integrated with email marketing, invites customers to sign up for weekly deals, and triggers emails and other campaigns based on the pages customers have visited.