Page 10 - CBM13

~ Intershop ~

from mobile devices. We embraced a mobile-first approach To successfully personalise offerings for customers, PIERCE
in the early days to give people a great experience regardless uses a lot of data. “Now that our front-end architecture is
of the device they are using.” with Intershop and the PIM and CRM are in place, we
work on data exchanges between these platforms to create
Vos continues: “In our vision statement, we say we want more compelling, segmented and personalised customer
to offer a state-of-the-art shopping experience. As a user experiences. On top of that, we are starting to work with
experience pioneer, we decided to change our store to a Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Machine Learning (ML),
Progressive Web App (PWA) when implementing the both to improve UX as well as to put more intelligence in our
Intershop platform. This gives us cleaner architecture, and operations,” illustrates Vos.
it has the added benefit that we can work with different
teams on front and back-end development, which are now The next step: globalisation?
separated. It is still a relatively new development, and with About six months ago, PIERCE soft-launched a global
it, we initially faced some teething problems. For one, store. With this shop, it is testing in which international
Google’s web speed measuring tools are based on loading markets it can get traction. The soft launch is also useful
entire pages. PWA’s, however, first load the structure of a to finetune global delivery and support operations. “Our
page and only then do they call for the specific elements a offering is interesting to many bikers all over the globe. We
visitor requests, certain products, for example. The PWA see the first results coming from the Australian, Canadian,
allows you to complete loading requests faster, thereby and Asian markets. Our assortment can be very interesting
improving the overall user experience (UX). It did raise for these markets. It is a business that can become quite
some eyebrows in management until site speed and substantial. Our focus is to keep growing organically and
performance were compared against the old platform using in a profitable way. We are, therefore, taking on the global
traditional tools. Now, these parties are catching up with market somewhat opportunistically. At the same time, we
this progressive setup,” states Vos. may have to reconsider our supply chain with our central
warehouse in Poland when this business really starts taking
Be personal: FitMyBike off. This soft-launch really is to test and finetune our global
One of the areas in which the platform can help improve operation; we do not want to expand at the expense of our
UX is related to creating a more relevant and personalised service.” ••
experience. “We try to be as close to our customer as
possible. This is something we do in many ways,” says Vos.
About PIERCE:
“For example, we have a tool called FitMyBike that allows
PIERCE has been nominated for the D-Award, a competition
consumers to find all available spare parts for their specific
by Svensk Digital Handel that looks for brands that think a step
motorbike brand, model and year. It is a powerful concept further to influence people’s lives and the world we live in. “All our
that we have built over the years, which we use on the web staff have worked very hard to build the company that PIERCE
and in email communication. It is about being relevant and is today. Being nominated for such an award is a real testament to
a truly amazing team of people that helps petrolheads around the
helping the customer in the purchasing process, filtering out
world live their passion every day,” says Vos.
the (ir)relevant content.”

10