Saint-Gobain: Jewson Digital Transformation

At the beginning of 2020, Saint-Gobain already knew how business-critical e-commerce was, but at what pace they needed to move in early 2020 was unknown back then.

Saint-Gobain is the parent company of dozens of household name brands in the UK and Ireland, including Jewson (builders’ merchants), Graham the Plumbers’ Merchant, Artex and Bassetts bathroom specialists.

When the Covid-19 pandemic hit the UK, and builders’ merchants were forced to close along with other stores, e-commerce suddenly became the only way for many businesses to keep trading.

And in lockdown, demand for building materials continued, as many building and construction projects were allowed to continue. But with stores closed, there was a supply problem. Digital became the only route to market.

Turning Jewson into an e-commerce brand

The old Jewson site only allowed customers to research products and then contact a branch; but not to buy online. But with their digital transformation project already well-advanced, Saint-Gobain were in a strong position to take their e-commerce platform to market within weeks, thanks to the agility and flexibility of their web developers and e-commerce data specialists, including Station10 as part of the cross-disciplinary team.

Saint-Gobain knew that a functional e-commerce platform alone wouldn’t be enough to keep them ahead of their competitors in a changing market.

That’s where we came in.

Data Insight

Jewson recognised that understanding customer behaviour on their new platform was the cornerstone to long-term business success. The Jewson team had the vision and foresight to build a long-term insight strategy.  Setting up the infrastructure to accurately collect behavioural data from the launch of the platform was just the start of this journey.

And then Covid-19 happened, suddenly making digital, and the customer insight surrounding it, even more vital. Digital business transformation takes more than a functional e-commerce website, as some businesses are finding to their cost, as lockdown drives changes in consumer spending habits.

How we helped

Station10’s role in the Jewson e-commerce website was to ensure that they would be able to track and analyse customer behaviour – from who is looking, and when, to basket contents, dropped baskets and purchase history – adding value to the e-commerce proposition.

We worked with Saint-Gobain and their other development partners to document their requirements, design the solution, and implement Adobe Analytics and Target, as well as other smaller marketing tags, and thoroughly test everything.

Station10 was working specifically for the Jewson brand, but we knew Saint-Gobain intended to move other brands over to the ecommerce platform in the future, so we designed our solution with this in mind. This meant ensuring that it would work with multiple brands in the future; allowing ease of use for individual brands only concerned with their own data, while also providing a top-level view across brands.

We then worked with the Saint-Gobain analytics team to upskill them in the tools, both in terms of formal training and ad-hoc support, and stepping in to fill the gap while members of Saint-Gobain and Jewson teams had to turn to other Covid-19 critical deliverables.

We’ve been able to measure the migration of users from the old site to the new, and are now working with
Jewson to leverage the integration between Adobe Target and Analytics to optimise and personalise the website for users.

And in the words of the client: 

Adélaïde Méal – Head of Digital Data Innovation & Architecture, Saint-Gobain UK & Ireland says…

“In the ever changing digital world, Saint-Gobain UK is at the cutting-edge, delivering the very best customer-focused digital initiatives driven by customer needs. Saint-Gobain is
surrounded by a group of partners working in an agile environment who are helping us to deliver some of the most valuable experiences for our customers.

Station10 plays an important role in helping dealing with our challenges, by making sure our systems can handle the surge in demand, transitioning to working from home, securing our environments and ensuring business continuity. They helped us not only to adapt to a new reality, but also gain long term benefits for our organisation.

Thanks to the Adobe stack and Station10’s development, we understand our most profitable customers.  We can personalise as well as optimise in order to deliver an unified user experience and achieve a 360 view across channels.

Station10 help us to orchestrate the SGBD UK data analytics implementation to deliver against strategic recommendations and lead the team with a strategic approach – this includes governance, accuracy, storage, vision, roadmaps, selection and deployment of data analytics tools.”

www.jewson.co.uk