Globus Zeroes in on their Processes to Deliver the Perfect Customer Experience

Globus’ customers want to treat themselves to luxury – and that’s exactly what the Swiss retailer’s 13 department stores and 30 specialty shops have to offer. From high-end fashion and cosmetics, to the finest delicacies and exquisite wines, Globus has been stocking goods of the highest quality since 1907.

Their ultimate goal is to deliver a flawless customer experience. Service is paramount in their stores – the staff is there to guide customers through beautifully arranged product displays, advising them and recommending items they didn’t even know they wanted.

With the rise of eCommerce however, competition is tough in retail. To survive, both offline and online experiences must be convincing – and complementary. The company uses an omnichannel strategy to integrate its customers both online and in stores. At present, Globus generates more than 10% of its revenue from online sales.

Their click-and-reserve process, for example, means customers can reserve a product online and then come in to try it on at their leisure before buying it – or not. With over 120,000 products on offer, this is a logistical challenge. 

How small changes can lead to big impact

“These processes are quite new, and it was exciting to see if our definition of them matched the real processes,” remembers Andreas Hink, Chief Digital Officer at Globus.

In the past, Globus couldn’t always deliver on orders and struggled with cancellations. That’s when they brought in Celonis to gain full transparency over their shipping and eCommerce processes. 

Now, we can deliver on our promises towards our customers 99.9% of the time.

“The devil is in the details. We found many little inefficiencies – cumulatively fixing them led to a noticeable reduction in of our cancellation rate,” explains Hink. For example, products that had already been claimed via click-and-reserve could still be ordered online by someone else. If there was only one item in stock, one order had to be cancelled. Globus redesigned the process to make duplicate reservations a thing of the past.

Additionally, Globus found out that the display items – like shoes – were listed in the commercial product inventory. “Needless to say, these were not for sale, so we created a special inventory for them,” summarizes Hink. “Now, we can deliver on our promises towards our customers 99.9% of the time.”

Insights you can act on – immediately

“This simply wasn’t possible with the tools we used before. We have many different business intelligence systems, and it took a lot of time and effort to manually analyze the data,” note the team leads of Analytics & Reporting.

They can now gain full transparency over their processes with one click. They also value the flexibility of the Celonis Intelligent Business Cloud: “We can build dashboards very quickly and react instantly according to what the business needs.”

What’s more, they were able to establish new KPIs and visualize and optimize their throughput time. A number of online orders were originally being fulfilled using items taken directly from a Globus store rather than a central warehouse, for example. These items would have to be sent back to the logistics center before being sent on to the customer, delaying their delivery.

By making sure the product is already available at their warehouse, Globus saves time and money, and delights their customers by delivering their purchases faster than ever.

Faster throughput times and a 20% decrease in cancellations

The head of Logistics is fully aware of how delivering items straight from their stores was causing big delays in their throughput time. “Now I know where the goods are, where they’re from, how they got there. Celonis has become an important tool, a simple way to understand what’s working and what’s not.”

He and his colleagues have introduced new logistics dashboards that visualize throughput times, cancellation and return rates in real time. Throughput time has decreased significantly, and the overall cancellation rate is down by 20%.

Celonis has also made collaboration easier across departments. “We work with the same KPIs with Purchasing and Sales.”

Transparency and control for everyone, at every level

Globus wanted every employee to benefit from their digital strategy, so they decided to implement the Celonis Action Engine, too. Their digital project manager describes it as “an external mail box that sends me e-mails and says: ‘Hi, there is something going wrong.’”

We used to combine data from five different systems to get an overview, but this has become so much easier

The head of Digital In-Store adds: “We now have a better overview on reservations. The Action Engine tells me which reservations have expired and need to be sent back. This also prevents sales we can’t fulfil from going through.”

Celonis has become a tool everyone uses. “The sales staff can take an in-depth look into orders and give customers better information. And their managers can keep an eye on every process.”

Both of them appreciate the usability of Celonis: “We used to combine data from five different systems to get an overview, but this has become so much easier.”

In the future, they plan to provide more employee training to expand the use of Celonis in stores.

Letting people focus on what’s important

Next on the list for Chief Digital Officer Andreas Hink is increasing the automation rate in purchasing processes.

His main objective is not to reduce costs, but to focus resources on what’s important – the product line itself. Retail buyers shouldn’t have to deal with technical difficulties, for example – they should be focusing exclusively on which new items might be interesting for the customer. 

Ultimately, Andreas Hink knows that the majority of his customers still want to see, touch, and feel the products they’re buying. “Within the framework of our digitalization strategy, we are not changing our business model in a disruptive way. We believe in brick-and-mortar retail and the interplay between online and offline.”

With Celonis, Globus can craft this interplay to be as seamless and frictionless as possible.