Royal Horticultural Society Ecommerce Replatforming

Client logo for RHS

James provided invaluable knowledge and support to our recent project to select a new ecommerce application and SI partner. I have no hesitation in recommending him for his expertise, the focus he had on our needs and his ability to engage effortlessly with stakeholders at all levels of the business.

Client photo, Matt Rooke of RHS
Matt Rooke
Digitech Director, Royal Horticultural Society

Project details

Fully managed service for ecommerce vendor and SI agency selection.

Services provided

  • End-to-end project management
  • Ecommerce platform evaluation & selection
  • Systems integrator partner RFP management

Overview

The RHS used a legacy ecommerce solution that couldn’t deliver growth cost effectively and wasn’t operationally fit for purpose. Matt Rooke, Digitech Director, engaged with Digital Juggler to provide external market context and expertise for ecommerce platform selection, complimenting the in-house IT team’s deep integration knowledge.

Project delivery

The project focus was on upskilling the internal project office (PM/BA) and IT teams to enable them to navigate the cluttered platform ecosystem and make a technology decision aligned with business goals and growth needs.

In week 1 we ran collaborative workshops to understand the different types of ecommerce platform on the market and current tech trends such as API-first and headless commerce. This collaborative approach enabled Matt and his IT team to rapidly shortlist viable technology approaches and agree which platforms were best aligned with the business and technology principles, speeding up the process for doing platform analysis and selection & resulting in a management report that gained Committee approval quickly.

The platform options were narrowed down to Magento Open Source (to avoid license fees & for Magento’s product data model), BigCommerce (the open SaaS architecture ticked the boxes for the integration requirements) and Episerver (to compare a Gartner quadrant leader for CMS and personalisation vs. a modular approach).

Digital Juggler then defined demo scenarios, advised on agency partners and facilitated workshops/demos using its contacts with vendors and agency partners. The Client team, led by Alison and Wumi, their brilliant PM & BA, were engaged throughout to ensure knowledge transfer and to enable them to hit the ground running once the platform & agency partners had been selected.

Outcomes

  1. Board approval for the ecommerce investment plan including Magento platform, agency partner and 3-year TCO cost model
  2. Successful delivery of project below budget and to the agreed 10-week timeframe
  3. Project phasing to enable a fast MVP implementation and continuous roll-out plan

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