RESOURCE CENTRE

Brown Thomas Arnotts grows online revenue with greater integration.

Seamless customer experiences boost ecommerce sales and customer loyalty.

Brown Thomas Arnotts ecommerce revenue has grown significantly since 2019, aided by Salesforce to establish a more connected and consistent shopping experience, enhancing customer loyalty and business agility.

The Challenge

Promote products and fulfil orders faster to meet customer demand.

Brown Thomas Arnotts, the leading luxury retailer in Ireland, has been delighting customers with international designers, premium products, and exceptional experiences for more than 175 years. Its seven department stores and two websites are continuously evolving to offer a diverse inventory that caters to the ever-changing tastes of its customers.

As part of its commitment to reinvent retail, Brown Thomas Arnotts prioritises the customer journey, which means swiftly promoting new products and fulfilling orders to meet growing demands. However, disparate ecommerce platforms and supply chain systems were impacting visibility, agility, and efficiency.

How Salesforce Helps

Drive profitable growth with greater integration and automation.

Brown Thomas Arnotts has been using Commerce Cloud since 2016 to help provide customers with a consistent and engaging shopping experience across its digital channels. Ecommerce revenue continues to grow steadily while the cost per sale has decreased, which supports overall revenue growth.

For Brown Thomas Arnotts, success is not just about driving profitable growth; it’s about prioritising the customer experience and enhancing loyalty. And that means meeting expectations for accurate stock updates, rapid fulfilment times, and personalised journeys not just for shopping but also for in-store services, such as beauty treatments and restaurants. With Salesforce, Brown Thomas Arnotts can do all this and more.

Real-time stock insights transform inventory management.

When a new luxury item, such as a designer handbag, goes on sale, demand can quickly outstrip supply. Brown Thomas Arnotts uses Omnichannel Inventory and Order Management features in Commerce Cloud to achieve real-time visibility of millions of online transactions a year and 100,000s of products across its warehouse and stores.

The handbag can be listed online within 15 minutes of the retailer receiving stock and availability managed across all channels – from app to store. It can also be shipped to customers faster as Commerce Cloud identifies the most efficient fulfilment option. This has helped to decrease pick times from hours to minutes. Product inventories are automatically updated within seconds of an order being placed thanks to system integrations enabled by MuleSoft.

“We can offer customers quick and easy access to the products they love via our online channels, which helps enhance satisfaction.”

Pippa Casey, Head of Digital, Brown Thomas Arnotts

Personalised journeys augment shopping experience.

If a customer misses out on the handbag first time round, Brown Thomas Arnotts uses Commerce Cloud to allow them to pre-order and Marketing Cloud to automatically alert them when it’s back in stock. It can also make personalised product recommendations, for example a matching pair of shoes, based on a customer’s previous online purchases.

By integrating its customer loyalty system with Commerce Cloud, Brown Thomas Arnotts can personalise the online shopping experience too. It automatically adapts website content to offer free delivery and early sale access to platinum customers. Loyalty programme updates are sent via email and the retailer’s app, which runs on Commerce Cloud, MuleSoft, and Adobe.

Brown Thomas Arnotts partnered with Salesforce Professional Services to develop Marketing Cloud journeys for key stages in the customer relationship, such as order updates and wishlist reminders. The Professional Services team will also be providing the retailer with enhanced support as part of a five-year Signature Success Plan.

“With Salesforce we can efficiently expand our operations, which makes it easier for us to pursue new growth opportunities.”

Paul Baguley, Director of IT & Digital, Brown Thomas Arnotts

Reusable APIs accelerate time to market for new features.

Integrating Commerce Cloud with supply chain, inventory, finance, and other enterprise systems has been critical to enriching the customer experience and optimising workflows at Brown Thomas Arnotts.

The retailer is using MuleSoft to develop a catalogue of around 100 reusable and scalable APIs to help decrease development time and increase time to market. Brown Thomas Arnotts has already achieved an overall reuse rate of around 40% and expects to push this to 90% as more APIs go live.