Macy’s: Right-Now eCommerce at Scale
Mark Simborg
Macy’s became a Right-Now Enterprise, and the number one ecommerce site in the United States, the moment it began to unlock the full potential of its data.
What does unlocking the full potential of your data mean?
The Importance of the 5Ds
Tapping into the true full potential of your data means harvesting it in a way that allows applications to have the “5 D’s” (dimensions):
- Relevancy
- Availability
- Responsiveness
- Accessibility
- Engagement
Relevancy means being contextual by allowing the correlation of customer data across all touch points, which allows for individualization.
Availability means being always on, which allows continuous access to data without any downtime.
Responsiveness means acting in real time to create instantly gratifying and instantly delightful experiences.
Accessibility means being distributed so that data can be replicated across multiple data centers or cloud regions.
Engagement means being scalable to meeting growing business demands quickly and cost-effectively.
Becoming an eCommerce Leader Via Right-Now Search and Filtering
Macy’s used the five dimensions to make itself a Right-Now eCommerce leader, as illustrated by its top-ranked filtering performance.
Having the right database foundation enabled Macy’s to implement intelligent category-specific filters that instantly provided customers the ability to search products based on criteria that are relevant to that product category. In addition, the filters are prioritized for searches based on importance and thematic patterns.
One hundred percent of Macy’s global brick and mortar and dotcom inventory and catalog is managed in DataStax Enterprise (DSE) and DSE Analytics powers the global recommendation engine.
Macy’s filtering experience stands out and is a key component of the customer’s overall experience. Macy’s e-commerce continues to thrive as it changes the game for 55.9 million average monthly customer visits.
Omnichannel, Customer Experience Excellence Using DataStax
A few years ago, Macy’s enlisted the help of DataStax Enterprise to power its omnichannel catalog, enabling it to scale to millions of requests per second and reach this high level of product filtering functionality.
By now it’s a well-know and heavily publicized fact that most customers will leave a brand after just a single poor or mediocre experience. This is the Right-Now Customer, and Macy’s understands the needs of the Right-Now Customer as well as anyone.
Its omnichannel catalog allows it to sell any product, in-store or online, seamlessly and without hiccups. DataStax has allowed its catalog API’s to scale to millions of UPCs and millions of requests per second with sub- 100-millisecond response times and individualize the customer journey across channels.
Now that’s the definition of Right-Now eCommerce.
