Where were they?
M&S were on the verge of deploying a brand new e-commerce capability built in conjunction with Amazon, to leverage the functionality inherent in Amazon's e-commerce platform. Recent management attention had been focused on getting to launch. Berkeley was asked to provide the impetus behind extending management's capacity to consider future possibilities and how to harness the new platform's capability in both existing and brand new markets.
How did Berkeley help?
Berkeley worked with the management team to model the multi-channel market potential in core product categories and to understand the success of competitors in exploiting market opportunities. This served to highlight key developments required to improve the positioning of current offers as well as the extent of step out activity required to meet the five year revenue target.
By tapping into market and consumer trends, Berkeley then helped to generate a number of future propositions; assess their market potential; and highlight the challenges involved in their implementation. This analysis then fed into a prioritisation exercise to establish an optimum running order for implementation of the strategic programme.
With the Direct leadership team aligned behind the plan, Berkeley also helped to set out structures to coordinate the overall programme and to establish project roles and responsibilities for execution.
Where are they now?
Following board approval, the first phase of the multi-channel strategy has now moved into execution. As part of a prioritised plan, Berkeley managed the deployment of a new “made-to-measure” shirts offering, involving integration with a third party. An end-to-end solution was brought online within just six months, and has contributed to a 75% uplift in e-commerce sales this year compared to last.