A Perfect Fit for Perry Ellis

We are fortunate to have formed a partnership with Perry Ellis, one of the leading designers of a broad line of high-quality men’s and women’s apparel. In reflecting on our first and subsequent meetings, I’d like to share some thoughts on how we were able to establish why Starmount was the right solution to help them revolutionize their stores. In our first meeting, our prospect discussed the need for a line busting solution and they talked about how our competition stressed the importance of being able to transact with a customer and complete a sale. We listened and agreed that it was important to be able to take care of customers and be able to shorten their wait time and minimize the need for them to stand in line to check out.

However, instead of just running with the opportunity to sell a line busting application, we asked if we could interview key business stakeholders and key store personnel to get their perspective for how they thought technology could help improve the customer experience within the store as well as on their eCommerce site. What these discussions revealed was, in fact, a different need for implementing mobile technology in the stores. According to the business stakeholders, line busting turned out not to be the primary need, but it was actually more important to empower sales associates to be more successful by giving them better tools.

The store associates wanted more customer information, they wanted to be able to use technology to look up inventory, and they also wanted to be able to sell products that weren’t always stocked in the store. The IT people we interviewed wanted to be able to bring rich information down to the mobile device but weren’t sure how to deliver this information, considering that it resided in many different corporate systems. Plus, the information had to be delivered FAST. Additional questions from IT, such as, “What if we change our POS system?” and “What do we do with the investment in the mobile platform we just bought?” also needed to be taken into account.

What we were able to provide was a solution that solved the key business issues that we were able to uncover through our interview meetings and discovery sessions. In addition, we were able to give them a roadmap that addressed how our solutions would be able to meet their expectations for the future. First of all, they wanted a mobile platform that was independent of their POS solution. Second, they wanted a way to integrate into their corporate systems as well as third-party applications without having to do point-to-point integration.

Our Engage solution gave Perry Ellis exactly what they were looking for in a mobile device — a POS and hardware agnostic solution with a roadmap for the future. Our Connect is a fast, easy-to-manage platform that will provide them with a way to integrate into their corporate systems and third-party applications like BazzaarVoice. _­

Post by: Joe Pisano | Jul. 2, 2012 11:37am EDT | Permalink