Corporate Fashion Platform Dresses 20.000 Employees

Austrian Post is the leading mail- and logistics service provider in Austria. With over 1800 subsidiaries and innovative last-mile solutions it operates the biggest national mail infrastructure in Austria. Nearly 20.000 employees around the country are equipped with corporate fashion and workwear. With the new Corporate Fashion Platform, employees can order, return and manage all corporate fashion orders. Based on an underlying data model and implemented rule-set, the front-end displays personalised interfaces for every employee to provide higher order efficiency and reduce error rates.

Business Needs

In 2018, Austrian Post was able to acquire famous fashion designer Marina Hörmanseder to create a new corporate look for mail carriers and store employees. Based on the expected order increase, it was clear that a smart shop system had to be implemented.

Up to that point, an inflexible legacy system was used in combination with the company’s ERP solution, which created unnecessary manual work at each order and little to no possibility to edit or optimize current fulfillment processes.

Looking at the highly complex data hierarchy structure of a company with 20.000 employees, the main challenge was to set up a shop solution which integrated existing employee and organisational data. The requirement was to implement a highly flexible solution to extend functionalities and business logic in a cost efficient way. However, the corporate shop requirements such as approval processes and personalized shop interfaces according to internal rule sets exceeded functionalities of regular shop systems.

Pimcore Solution

Based on the experience of a previous corporate fashion project with Deutsche Bahn, ACL was chosen as service provider. ACL’s goal was to design a holistic solution with one interface integrating CMS Management Master Data Management (Pimcore) and Shop Front End to reduce complexity, get the product live in less time and increase usability for the responsible Post employees.

To improve usability and flexibility of managing shop data, Master Data Management was moved from Post’s ERP system to the new Pimcore system. Previously manual processes, such as approval by superiors, were set up as workflows in Pimcore and were now ready to be adapted or expanded whenever needed. Furthermore, automatic creation of users upon first log in was triggered based on existing employee data to avoid the creation of multiple user accounts per employee.

A key component of the Pimcore system was the management of entitlement logics, linking employees to article groups and organizational divisions. As a result, store managers where able to only manage those employees who ware linked to their divisional entity and each employee is only able to order items that he or she is entitled to wear.

All orders are processed through ACL’s Middleware Solution and transferred via REST services to Post’s InHouse Fulfillment Partner’s Warehouse Management System.

Business Results

SHORT TIME 2 MARKET
In order to assure an on time GoLive due to the launch of the new corporate fashion design, the project schedule was a critical success factor. Due to the flexibility of the underlying Pimcore software and ACL’s previous experience, complex requirements could be met and the system was set up in time.

OPTIMIZED USER INTERFACES
The responsive web design optimized the user experience for employees and reduced error rates as shop interfaces only provided the individually relevant content. Furthermore, approving or performing orders along the way through mobile devices was now also possible.

REDUCED PROCESS COSTS
The result contributed to the everyday efficiency increase for 20.000 carriers and store employees who are now able to order their fashionable work clothes in a modern webshop system with automatized workflow processes.

NEW SYSTEM AGILITY
Already 6 months after the release, several new integrations have been performed to extend the shop functionality for third party post service providers as well as to integrate further suppliers into the supply chain system.