ARK Bokhandel – SAP Commerce solution with logistics

Challenge

The world's largest e-commerce company, Amazon, will eventually sell Norwegian books and e-books. In addition, online companies like Apple and Google are positioning themselves in Norway.

ARK wants to meet the digital revolution that is taking place in the book business and win the battle for Norwegian book customers. They want to make it easier to search for, find and buy books in stores, online, and on mobile. They want the best service quality and the fastest delivery to their customers.

Solution

Pearl has delivered an SAP Commerce solution to ARK with associated logistics. Pearl is a strategic partner and advisor for the company and has responsibility for the daily operation, management, and further development of solutions.

Customer insight with SAP CRM

SAP CRM contains comprehensive campaign and budgeting functionalities integrated with SAP ERP, BI, and POS. The CRM includes the loyalty program and a customer center that supports all other processes that are set up. SAP CRM is the master for all business logic in all channels.

SAP eCommerce Suite

This includes all online processes for both mobile and web that call on business logic in the CRM and ERP; dynamic pricing, promotions, inventory, and specific customer-oriented content based on the behavior of 900.000 ARK friends in different channels.

Customer's benefits

The customer has increased its turnover by more than 30% and has taken a large market share in a challenging market with increased internationalization. ARK has a leading solution and is considered a beacon in its industry sector.

Success, starting with a blank sheet

“ARK intends to be the leading chain of booksellers in the world, when it comes to meeting the digital revolution. For that we depend on an effective and stable business partner who can supply innovative and technically advanced solutions,” says Kjartan Dannatt, Marketing and E-commerce Director of ARK.

"We want to be at the leading edge and have a rock solid and cost effective solution. We are achieving that by working with Pearl, who think long term and will collaborate with us into the future.”

"Click and collect"

The traditional bookseller is under pressure from online shopping, digitalisation and industry fragmentation etc.

“Our aim is to build a seamless customer experience spanning the shops and the digital offering. We saw that more and more of our customers wanted to buy books online now and again and part of our work with Pearl has been to develop the “click and fetch” service, which in a way symbolises the online world blending with the shops,” says Dannatt.

Significant growth

In 2013 ARK rolled out the new system and Dannatt praises the effect of the solutions.

“We have experienced significant growth during this period, well in excess of retail generally and bookselling in particular. We are quite convinced that a large part of the growth can be attributed to the system, which enables us to offer a good customer experience across the channels,” says the Director.

Important business partner

ARK works closely with Pearl on operations and development, both now and long-term.

“Pearl is an important partner for us. We must also be allowed to boast that when we launched the system in 2013 it was a pioneering project. We are still a long way ahead and the fact that we won the annual prize for Omnichannel Company of the year is visible proof of that," says Dannatt.

ARK Bokhandel.