A World-Class Customer Experience
With more than 2,500 stores in 100 countries, L’Occitane en Provence has mastered the art of sharing its brand outside of its home country, France. As the retailer continues to expand its network, the high-quality beauty brand and retailer required a solution with robust functionality that offers innovative management, including customer relationship management, omnichannel integration, optimized replenishment and in-store mobility.
Leveraging Yourcegid Retail, a solution provided by Cegid, L’Occitane is able to integrate POS, store operations, inventory management and merchandising, as well as customer relationship management (CRM) and loyalty across all stores and channels.
“Cegid’s international experience and industry-specific expertise ensured that the solution would be implemented on a large scale across the globe in a secure, well-organized fashion,” says Etienne de Verdelhan, VP of process optimization and CIO at L’Occitane Group.
Spreading the Culture of a Brand
Given L’Occitane’s international presence, a large-scale deployment was required, with real-time access to four centralized servers in each region, challenging both Cegid’s subsidiaries and local partners.
The rollout began in Australia where Yourcegid Retail was introduced across 35 stores in three months. It was then deployed in an additional 350 stores across Hong Kong, China, Singapore and Thailand. In Japan alone, Cegid equipped more than 100 stores with a localized version of the solution. The next step was to deploy the solution in more than 250 stores in North America.
“We finished with 350 stores in Europe, including 220 stores in eight countries in just one night,” notes de Verdelhan. Overall, the solution is deployed across more than 1,000 stores in 25-plus countries.
While L’Occitane’s company-owned stores take priority, all sales outlets will be connected to the new IT system. The solution is currently being deployed in Taiwan, Korea and Brazil, and will soon be deployed in Latin America, India and South Africa.
Using the Cegid solution, the retailer can now match store management, CRM, merchandising and inventory management needs. “At the front line of business, the IT system plays a pivotal role in L’Occitane Group’s brand development by improving operational productivity at every level and offering retail-specific innovation,” explains de Verdelhan.
The solution is localized for each country, including language, tax regulations, credit card payments and more, and includes processes and industry requirements for each specific country.
“We now manage all our stores worldwide with a modern, international IT system,” continues de Verdelhan. “We are able to standardize and optimize our processes at the Group level. And measuring operational excellence at each site has become easy.”
Unified Customer Experience around the Globe
Aligning with the retailer’s customer-centric approach, the solution offers a powerful loyalty management engine that adapts to the needs of each country – from complex points programs in Asia, to customer relationship programs and special offers in Europe. It also provides in-store mobility, omnichannel integration and biometric identification of sales staff.
“We can now enjoy more complex interactions with our customers, manage loyalty points in real-time across all sales channels, customize promotions and offer services such as click and collect,” says de Verdelhan.
With improved CRM and cross-channel marketing, L’Occitane wanted to go even further to exceed customer expectations. To do this, the retailer deployed mobile POS on iPads to enhance the relationship with customers, including omnichannel features such as integration with e-commerce and CRM systems.
The tablets also allow the stores to launch buy online, pickup in-store and online product availability insights. Now, almost 60% of receipts can be tracked to a specific customer, says de Verdelhan, allowing the retailer to create targeted promotions — such as buy-one-get-one-free — that better resonate with loyalty members.
“We introduced mini iPads to improve in-store associate interactions with customers and enable associates to complete transactions from portable devices on the shop floor,” notes de Verdelhan. Through these capabilities, L’Occitane is able to better focus on customer service and access information quickly at a large scale without too many local specifications, such as monetary denominations. It is also financially beneficial to the retailer since the cost of a tablet is considerably less than the cost of the registers previously in use. The mobile devices are also easy for associates to use for both checkout and back-office tasks, such as checking inventory, making the upgrade an easy decision as it benefits the retailer, the associates and the customers.
“We can now enjoy more complex interactions with our customers, manage loyalty points in real-time across sales channels, personalize promotions, and offer services such as click-and-collect,” continues de Verdelhan. “Because of Cegid’s innovative technologies, we are able to introduce click-and-collect as L’Occitane’s new way of shopping, where customers can order items online and collect them within four hours at their store of choice. It’s what customers expect, and we’re delivering on the convenience of online shopping.”
To see this large-scale project through to completion, Cegid relied upon its international infrastructure of more than 10 subsidiaries worldwide and the significant involvement of its local Value Added Reseller (VAR) network. It also, relied heavily on its close partnership with L’Occitane Group.
Substantial collaboration between the Cegid team and L’Occitane’s management team took place. It was through this collaboration that the retailer had the ability to swiftly adapt the core model, responding to business complexities in Asia, the U.S. and EMEA. “Cegid is one of the few, if not the only software provider capable of supporting companies worldwide by offering a single, international and localized solution,” notes de Verdelhan.
The Cegid rollout has enabled L’Occitane Group to share the culture and quality of its products with customers worldwide. Today, the Cegid solution allows the retailer to improve the management of its retail activities, improve merchandising, sales and CRM, as well as unify retail processes into a single, core model.
Leveraging Yourcegid Retail, a solution provided by Cegid, L’Occitane is able to integrate POS, store operations, inventory management and merchandising, as well as customer relationship management (CRM) and loyalty across all stores and channels.
“Cegid’s international experience and industry-specific expertise ensured that the solution would be implemented on a large scale across the globe in a secure, well-organized fashion,” says Etienne de Verdelhan, VP of process optimization and CIO at L’Occitane Group.
Spreading the Culture of a Brand
Given L’Occitane’s international presence, a large-scale deployment was required, with real-time access to four centralized servers in each region, challenging both Cegid’s subsidiaries and local partners.
The rollout began in Australia where Yourcegid Retail was introduced across 35 stores in three months. It was then deployed in an additional 350 stores across Hong Kong, China, Singapore and Thailand. In Japan alone, Cegid equipped more than 100 stores with a localized version of the solution. The next step was to deploy the solution in more than 250 stores in North America.
“We finished with 350 stores in Europe, including 220 stores in eight countries in just one night,” notes de Verdelhan. Overall, the solution is deployed across more than 1,000 stores in 25-plus countries.
While L’Occitane’s company-owned stores take priority, all sales outlets will be connected to the new IT system. The solution is currently being deployed in Taiwan, Korea and Brazil, and will soon be deployed in Latin America, India and South Africa.
Using the Cegid solution, the retailer can now match store management, CRM, merchandising and inventory management needs. “At the front line of business, the IT system plays a pivotal role in L’Occitane Group’s brand development by improving operational productivity at every level and offering retail-specific innovation,” explains de Verdelhan.
The solution is localized for each country, including language, tax regulations, credit card payments and more, and includes processes and industry requirements for each specific country.
“We now manage all our stores worldwide with a modern, international IT system,” continues de Verdelhan. “We are able to standardize and optimize our processes at the Group level. And measuring operational excellence at each site has become easy.”
Unified Customer Experience around the Globe
Aligning with the retailer’s customer-centric approach, the solution offers a powerful loyalty management engine that adapts to the needs of each country – from complex points programs in Asia, to customer relationship programs and special offers in Europe. It also provides in-store mobility, omnichannel integration and biometric identification of sales staff.
“We can now enjoy more complex interactions with our customers, manage loyalty points in real-time across all sales channels, customize promotions and offer services such as click and collect,” says de Verdelhan.
With improved CRM and cross-channel marketing, L’Occitane wanted to go even further to exceed customer expectations. To do this, the retailer deployed mobile POS on iPads to enhance the relationship with customers, including omnichannel features such as integration with e-commerce and CRM systems.
The tablets also allow the stores to launch buy online, pickup in-store and online product availability insights. Now, almost 60% of receipts can be tracked to a specific customer, says de Verdelhan, allowing the retailer to create targeted promotions — such as buy-one-get-one-free — that better resonate with loyalty members.
“We introduced mini iPads to improve in-store associate interactions with customers and enable associates to complete transactions from portable devices on the shop floor,” notes de Verdelhan. Through these capabilities, L’Occitane is able to better focus on customer service and access information quickly at a large scale without too many local specifications, such as monetary denominations. It is also financially beneficial to the retailer since the cost of a tablet is considerably less than the cost of the registers previously in use. The mobile devices are also easy for associates to use for both checkout and back-office tasks, such as checking inventory, making the upgrade an easy decision as it benefits the retailer, the associates and the customers.
“We can now enjoy more complex interactions with our customers, manage loyalty points in real-time across sales channels, personalize promotions, and offer services such as click-and-collect,” continues de Verdelhan. “Because of Cegid’s innovative technologies, we are able to introduce click-and-collect as L’Occitane’s new way of shopping, where customers can order items online and collect them within four hours at their store of choice. It’s what customers expect, and we’re delivering on the convenience of online shopping.”
To see this large-scale project through to completion, Cegid relied upon its international infrastructure of more than 10 subsidiaries worldwide and the significant involvement of its local Value Added Reseller (VAR) network. It also, relied heavily on its close partnership with L’Occitane Group.
Substantial collaboration between the Cegid team and L’Occitane’s management team took place. It was through this collaboration that the retailer had the ability to swiftly adapt the core model, responding to business complexities in Asia, the U.S. and EMEA. “Cegid is one of the few, if not the only software provider capable of supporting companies worldwide by offering a single, international and localized solution,” notes de Verdelhan.
The Cegid rollout has enabled L’Occitane Group to share the culture and quality of its products with customers worldwide. Today, the Cegid solution allows the retailer to improve the management of its retail activities, improve merchandising, sales and CRM, as well as unify retail processes into a single, core model.