This is our story of co-creating an agile solution with a leading e-retailer

As we know…

Content is the lifeline of e-commerce business. It is imperative for retailers to focus on providing a positive and personalized experience to shoppers through streamlined, interactive and engaging content. But delivering high-quality and consistent content (aligned with brand value) is challenging, especially as companies expand their online footprint with larger assortments, new product lines and entry into new markets. The failure to deliver a superlative customer experience can not only impact sales, but result in gradual brand erosion.

The challenge for an e-retailer was

Its content management, marked by non-standardized processes across the globe, was not aligned to meet the demands of a rapidly expanding business. As the company continued to grow at more than 40 percent Compound Annual Growth Rate (CAGR), it lacked an effective end-to-end system that could deal with business variability, adapt to market demands, maintain cost and quality balance, and deliver improved throughput. Moreover, the company was looking to deliver a superior customer experience to its premium customer base.

Here’s what we co-created as a solution…

WNS developed an intelligent operating model to transform the e-retailer’s content management operations. This model was designed keeping in mind the business need for agility and scalability.

Key elements of this solution included:

• Strategically Aligned Operating Model:
  A hub-and-spoke delivery model was deployed to align with the company’s expanding global footprint, and leverage the benefits of centralized and strategic delivery

• Automation-led Technology Implementation:
  An end-to-end content management platform was deployed to standardize operations, streamline workflows, and manage volumes and variability

• Focused Business Process Re-engineering:
  Value Stream Mapping (VSM) helped map the entire process life cycle and drive lean operations by eliminating all non-value adding activities.

After a pilot proved the efficacy of the re-engineered operations, an outcome-driven approach, underpinned by analytics, led to further improvements in process and technology.

Our learnings and outcomes from the process of co-creation are…

Streamlined and automated operations enabled the e-retailer to leverage high-quality content for exceptional customer experience. The company now has a view of all transactions in real-time. Other benefits include:

• ~40 percent improvement in productivity

• Improved speed-to-market, as new products are now available online within 48 hours as opposed to the previous duration of 8 days

WNS and the e-retailer are continually expanding the scope of partnership, collaborating on areas such as content creation, curation and design. The engagement now includes the development of Augmented Reality (AR) content and 3D imaging to further enhance customer experience.