New e-commerce platform boosted sales at Gyldendal

Theilgaard Mortensen a/s has implemented IBM WebSphere Commerce at Gyldendal, Denmark’s biggest book club, leaving the customer fully satisfied. ”All our expectations of the new e-commerce platform have been honoured. Month after month we see sales increase and we are now way ahead of our competitors”, says marketing manager Jesper Jespersen from Gyldendal.

Never before have so many books been sold as in 2005. The Danes purchased books for more than four billion kroner - a pick-up in sale of books of 11 per cent compared to the previous year, corresponding to 30 billion books. Part of the expansion is due to consumers buying increasing numbers of books online via e-commerce systems. Systems that have been under development since the mid-nineties and are now considered sufficiently mature in terms of technology, so that more and more companies now take it seriously and dare include e-commerce platforms in their business strategies.

Like many other book clubs in Denmark, Gyldendal jumped on the Internet during the pioneer years in 1996-97. Gyldendal, which was established 40 years ago, had faith in its own system based on Lotus Notes, which developed by gemmating. Some years ago, however, Gyldendal realised that it did not measure up to their needs.

Standards of a modern e-commerce system”We gradually realised what we expected from a modern e-commerce system”, says marketing manager Jesper Jespersen from Gyldendal, then listing the following criteria for a new platform:

• The system should be a standard system with a powerful ”engine” so that Gyldendal was not left alone developing the system
• The system should be able to handle a large number of transactions
• It was important that the supplier could demonstrate solid and pertinent references
• Gyldendal wanted to decrease all manual entries, over time

”On the basis of these criteria, Theilgaard Mortensen helped us make a specification requirement. We invited three tenders for the project, including one from Theilgaard Mortensen a/s. Since all three of them were quite close to each other, and having been satisfied with the working relationship so far, we asked Theilgaard Mortensen to implement the system based on IBM WebSphere Commerce – well aware that this was their first installation of the kind”, Jesper Jespersen tells and adds: ”At that time Theilgaard Mortensen was already working on the IT infrastructure at Gyldendal. Systems are connected, and it is crucial to have a competent supplier when an e-commerce system, like ours, is deeply integrated in all systems, including the billing system”.

Quality in order and timeline respected
”This is exactly what we like about Theilgaard Mortensen. A deal is a deal, and they keep their word. Projects are kept within the time-frame and the budget. And the quality is right. Besides, we find competent sparring in them in all areas within IT. They often come up with better ideas than us, saying: Have you thought about this and that? Couldn’t you do that in a smarter way? In that sense, Theilgaard Mortensen offers proper business development. It is not just us ordering a project, which the supplier solves separately and then perhaps later it turns out that it doesn’t fit into our overall business”, says Jesper Jespersen.

”The fundamental challenge for Theilgaard Mortensen was to increase the performance of the e-commerce platform and to make possible a dynamic design on the website of Gyldendal. That has been done. A distinctive challenge in the course of implementation of WebSphere Commerce was...”, according to Jesper Jespersen,”... to suddenly allow for a situation where multiple users in a book club want to cancel a certain book - simultaneously. This problem gave the developers at Theilgaard Mortensen something to think about. But this problem was solved too”.

Flexible e-commerce platform supports all of Gyldendal
”Also the combination of Theilgaard Mortensen and IBM has pleased us. IBM had the best references. They showed up and conducted a convincing presentation at the right time”, says Jesper Jespersen.

”Since then, it has turned out that in addition to the core output we have been able to build a lot on this platform, not only supporting the book club but all of Gyldendal. This means that we have been able to add a vast number of shops, clubs and other types of e-commerce. And we can do it as quick as lightning”, says Jesper Jespersen, referring to Gyldendal buying three book clubs of the competitor Egmont in September 2006. After the acquisition, their existing e-commerce systems were swiftly integrated to Gyldendal’s e-commerce platform.

Next step of the technological development is towards easier ways for the costumers to serve themselves online. Gyldendal has the best and widest choice of books at very low prices. "We want to sell more books to the Danish consumers online because this is how they prefer shopping. The Internet is the future", says manager Tine Weppler. In the future, almost every fifth book will be sold online. Tine Weppler finds it an exiting challenge: "Trading books online is already big and it will become even bigger. So, naturally, it is our clear objective to occupy this market ".

The challenge: To improve performance and create a dynamic design
The solution: To migrate from a Domino platform to WebSphere Commerce. In this context MQ integration to Domino and XML integration to hosting systems.

Contact:

Kim Theilgaard
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Theilgaard Mortensen a/s, Niels Hemmingsens Gade 9, 4th – 1153 Copenhagen K – Phone +45 3344 8555