Leading Retail Jeweller Selects MuleSoft to Deliver Integrated Customer Experience
Announcement posted by MuleSoft 16 Dec 2014
MuleSoft, the company that makes it easy to connect applications, data and devices, today announced that Michael Hill, a leading international retail jewellery chain has deployed MuleSoft’s Anypoint Platform™. The integration platform will improve IT flexibility and responsiveness to changing business and market requirements by automating connectivity between Michael Hill's best-of-breed applications, including its customer relationship management (CRM), mobile and point of sale systems.
Michael Hill's retail footprint includes 289 stores across New Zealand, Australia, Canada and the United States. The company has set aggressive growth targets for 2014 including the opening of 20 new stores around the globe, an increase in e-commerce sales and the move towards implementing a customer-focused omni-channel model.
The first integration project using Anypoint Platform will support these targets by integrating CRM data from six different touch points to create a single view of the customer. This will enable seven key areas across the business including in-store, online, customer care, customer engagement, marketing and mobile to drive a more intimate consumer experience by ensuring coordinated, consistent communication with customers.
Anypoint Platform replaces manual integration practices which had become increasingly time-consuming and difficult due to a growing number of applications within the company.
If the integrations were to be carried out manually, Michael Hill's CRM project would require every touch point to be separately connected to each of the seven areas of the business, resulting in a total of 42 separate integration tasks. By deploying Anypoint Platform, integration is automated and the number of integrations reduces to 13, with one for each touch point and business unit. The platform also provides an easy point of integration for any additional applications that may be deployed in the future.
“One of the challenges of a best of breed philosophy is the need to connect discrete systems and remove independent silos. As we have grown, the scale of integration challenges has also grown. We needed a way to automate this connectivity because if our architecture were to continue to grow without a change in approach, we’d be in danger of looking like typical messaging spaghetti. We see a service bus-driven architecture as a way to avoid that and at the same time, it gives us a capability to become more responsive to changing business demands on the IT department. MuleSoft’s Anypoint Platform provides a natural path for integration and offers a massive improvement to our productivity,” said Adrian Wallace, Software Development Manager, Michael Hill.
Major factors leading to the selection of MuleSoft included the platform's ability to cope with the varied environment of in-house and on-premise applications at Michael Hill, as well as peer and analyst recommendations.
Deployment and ongoing support for the CRM integration project is being provided by MuleSoft partner and Australian-based integration expert, SixTree.
About Michael Hill
Michael Hill aims to be the most people focussed jeweller in the world. The Michael Hill Group operates an international retail jewellery chain of 289 stores across New Zealand, Australia, Canada and the United States. The Group employs over 2,400 permanent employees who are involved in retail sales, manufacturing and administration, and has approximately 3,500 shareholders.
About MuleSoft
MuleSoft’s mission is to connect the world’s applications, data and devices. MuleSoft makes connecting anything easy with Anypoint Platform™, the only complete integration platform for SaaS, SOA and APIs. Thousands of organisations in 60 countries, from emerging brands to Global 500 enterprises, use MuleSoft to innovate faster and gain competitive advantage. http://www.mulesoft.com/
Michael Hill's retail footprint includes 289 stores across New Zealand, Australia, Canada and the United States. The company has set aggressive growth targets for 2014 including the opening of 20 new stores around the globe, an increase in e-commerce sales and the move towards implementing a customer-focused omni-channel model.
The first integration project using Anypoint Platform will support these targets by integrating CRM data from six different touch points to create a single view of the customer. This will enable seven key areas across the business including in-store, online, customer care, customer engagement, marketing and mobile to drive a more intimate consumer experience by ensuring coordinated, consistent communication with customers.
Anypoint Platform replaces manual integration practices which had become increasingly time-consuming and difficult due to a growing number of applications within the company.
If the integrations were to be carried out manually, Michael Hill's CRM project would require every touch point to be separately connected to each of the seven areas of the business, resulting in a total of 42 separate integration tasks. By deploying Anypoint Platform, integration is automated and the number of integrations reduces to 13, with one for each touch point and business unit. The platform also provides an easy point of integration for any additional applications that may be deployed in the future.
“One of the challenges of a best of breed philosophy is the need to connect discrete systems and remove independent silos. As we have grown, the scale of integration challenges has also grown. We needed a way to automate this connectivity because if our architecture were to continue to grow without a change in approach, we’d be in danger of looking like typical messaging spaghetti. We see a service bus-driven architecture as a way to avoid that and at the same time, it gives us a capability to become more responsive to changing business demands on the IT department. MuleSoft’s Anypoint Platform provides a natural path for integration and offers a massive improvement to our productivity,” said Adrian Wallace, Software Development Manager, Michael Hill.
Major factors leading to the selection of MuleSoft included the platform's ability to cope with the varied environment of in-house and on-premise applications at Michael Hill, as well as peer and analyst recommendations.
Deployment and ongoing support for the CRM integration project is being provided by MuleSoft partner and Australian-based integration expert, SixTree.
About Michael Hill
Michael Hill aims to be the most people focussed jeweller in the world. The Michael Hill Group operates an international retail jewellery chain of 289 stores across New Zealand, Australia, Canada and the United States. The Group employs over 2,400 permanent employees who are involved in retail sales, manufacturing and administration, and has approximately 3,500 shareholders.
About MuleSoft
MuleSoft’s mission is to connect the world’s applications, data and devices. MuleSoft makes connecting anything easy with Anypoint Platform™, the only complete integration platform for SaaS, SOA and APIs. Thousands of organisations in 60 countries, from emerging brands to Global 500 enterprises, use MuleSoft to innovate faster and gain competitive advantage. http://www.mulesoft.com/