Discover how Danone, BMW Group and Ulta Beauty transformed their digital commerce journeys with commercetools and Google Cloud.
What do a fast-moving consumer goods (FCMG) brand, an automotive group and a beauty retailer have in common? In addition to being household names, Danone, BMW Group and Ulta Beauty all noticed early on that, with increased customer expectations and ever-changing market conditions, they needed more flexibility and agility to enable frictionless customer experiences — and found the answer in pairing commercetools with Google Cloud.
Previously locked into monolithic commerce platforms, this trio faced a myriad of issues, from the inability to launch new features quickly to handle online traffic peaks to inflated total costs of ownership (TCO). Betting on cloud-native commerce was, therefore, vital to tackling these challenges head-on, so they could improve website performance and speed, switch from bug-fixing mode to innovation, as well as reducing costs related to IT infrastructure, maintenance and upgrades.
How Danone deployed new digital commercial models at scale
The leading food and beverage company has products in more than 120 countries, spanning a wealth of brands in B2C and B2B models. With the rise of prominent eCommerce players and rapid home delivery, Danone adopted direct-to-consumer (D2C) strategies, enabling consumers to purchase products directly from its online store. In addition, Danone pivoted to the cloud-native solution by commercetools and Google Cloud to manage consumer goods shortages and adapt to sudden supply chain changes.
Back in 2013, Danone created a D2C online shopping experience to handle a baby formula shortage in Europe. The company ensured the in-store shortage wasn't replicated online by implementing rules limiting the number of units purchased. More recently, a similar setup was deployed across markets severely impacted by COVID-19. Because commercetools on Google Cloud can scale automatically and across the globe, Danone could handle traffic spikes without downtime.
Because commercetools on Google Cloud is able to powerfully scale to meet demand, we didn't have to worry about spikes in traffic causing sites to crash.
Head of Data and Technology, Danone
Furthermore, Danone’s healthcare division enables B2B customers to order medical samples directly. Connecting commercetools and Google Cloud allow Danone to collect and analyze this sampling data and stream it into other software to help sales reps tailor their conversations with healthcare professionals.
How BMW Group created future-proof digital customer experiences
Serving markets worldwide and housing a multitude of brands were the ambitious requirements for the new eCommerce solution for the premium manufacturer of automobiles and motorcycles.
In addition to showcasing its enormous catalog of automotive products and accessories, the BMW Group aimed to present complex digital products, such as Connected Drive and bookable services, including routine maintenance checks, oil changes and more, via digital commerce interactions. These requirements perfectly matched the modern commerce approach pioneered by commercetools on Google Cloud.
With its cloud-based headless commerce platform, commercetools offers an uncomplicated integration with inventory systems. In this way, existing processes can be retained and customers can experience modern and high-performance eCommerce at the same time.
Product Owner (Business), BMW Group
Moreover, the cloud-native capabilities enabled the automotive leader to auto-scale capacity across multiple touchpoints, driving up omnichannel sales like never before.
How Ulta Beauty manages holiday surges and supports year-round innovation
The largest U.S. beauty retailer strongly focuses on creating seamless shopping experiences in stores and online, such as Ulta Beauty’s Virtual Beauty Advisor for personalized recommendations and GLAMLab for virtual makeup try-ons. Handling online traffic peaks in the background was critical to support holiday surges without causing disruptions to the business.
Ulta Beauty decided to re-architect its infrastructure for greater agility and stability, selecting commercetools on Google Cloud as the technology foundation to enable omnichannel commerce at scale.
With these changes [cloud-native commerce], we are ready for a holiday season that everyone — even those of us in IT — gets to enjoy. We’re positioned to continuously focus on new, better ways to serve our guests.
IT Architect, Ulta Beauty
When the holiday shopping season begins, Ulta Beauty is prepared to handle surges in traffic through auto-scaling while maintaining high-speed performance with Google Cloud and commercetools.
Get started with commercetools on Google Cloud Marketplace
With cloud-native architecture, you can achieve infinite scalability and availability, security and experimentation with ready-to-use building blocks — easily available with complete tutorials. These are, in a nutshell, the immediate benefits of leveraging commercetools on Google Cloud for your business.
Kickstart your modern commerce with a commercetools Composable Commerce free trial on Google Cloud Marketplace.
Manuela Marques Tchoe is a Content Writer at commercetools. She was a Content and Product Marketing Director at conversational commerce provider tyntec. She has written content in partnership with Facebook, Rakuten Viber and other social media platforms.