On-demand webinar: Tech meets underwear in the best fit

Today, a seamless customer experience is a prerequisite for a successful omnichannel strategy. Challenges such as orphaned shopping carts and customer churn are just two examples of a lack of customer experience. More than three out of four shoppers do not complete the purchase process. This costs the e-commerce industry around 16 billion euros in revenue per year. Abandonment rates could rise even further in the future. The solution is to create a seamless and relevant customer experience across online and offline channels. After all, customers expect nothing less than a complete understanding of their needs, an inspiring digital brand experience, and a successful purchase - all in real-time. Data and a customer data platform are the foundation for this.

Our webinar will show how textile manufacturer Wolford is becoming an omnichannel role model through data-driven business. Join us as Wolford and Tealium explain how to create a unique digital shopping experience analogous to a memorable flagship store visit with the right strategy and technology in the real world. 

We will also explain how individual technology components and solutions work together in a "best-of-breed" approach and their essential role in the customer journey and brand experience. 

Key Facts:

• Creating a successful omnichannel strategy using the example of

• Wolford Best of Breed vs Best of Suite

• With data-driven business to a seamless customer experience

Julia Miksch: Good afternoon for today's webinar. Thank you very much for tuning in. My name is Julia Miksch. And I would like to welcome you together with Tealium and diva-e to the webinar on the topic of Tech meets Underwear, how Wolford is becoming an omnichannel role model through data-driven business. I would like to welcome Frank Rauchfuß, who is moderating the webinar today. And I'm also handing over the moderation to him. Thank you very much.

Frank Rauchfuß: Thank you very much, Julia. And welcome from my side to the webinar Tech meets Underwear in best fit. My name is Frank Rauchfuß. And I'm Managing Director at diva-e. And today I'm here in the role of moderator. Ultimately, best-in-class customer experience requires nothing less than a best-of-breed IT solution approach. Anyone who still believes that they can create a customer experience with mediocrity in the frontend and backend areas, who believes that a customer journey can ultimately do without data, has not yet fully grasped the turning point in our view. Customers expect nothing less than a seamless customer experience and customer journey. Omni-channel, offline channel and online channel together to ultimately create an inspiring, digital brand experience.

Rainer Knapp, Global Director IT and Digital at Wolford AG, joined us live from Bregenz today to show us how this should work. With his extensive IT background, Rainer is a proven expert when it comes to B to B and B to C business models. He will tell us about his Wolford X mission. How he is ultimately turning Wolford into an omnichannel company. What is ultimately hidden behind the meaning of MACH and what significance it has. Why customers no longer have to compromise with Wolford.

Sitting next to me in Munich, Johannes Höller, Head of CDP and Data Analytics. Johannes is also an expert with 15 years of experience. Especially in the area of Customer Data Platform and Data Analytics. But also the whole topic of tracking data. And he will explain to us today what the rules of data play are. And how to ultimately identify customer journeys. But also why these customer journeys are becoming increasingly fragmented and are receiving more and more data points. Ultimately, it is also about presenting individual use cases that are ultimately exciting for you and that a CDP maps. Last but not least, my regards to Alexander Willkomm, Director Strategic Account at Tealium, in Hamburg. Also a recognized expert, especially when it comes to Real Time Marketing but also Customer Experience. Today he will give us insights behind the scene. How you can ultimately create a 360-degree view of the customer via a customer data platform. What the role of digital transformation in the company is. And above all, what role cookie-less tracking and data protection play. And last but not least, he will give us an outlook on the MarTech market from the Tealium side. What developments he anticipates from the Tealium side. And now I don't want to keep you in suspense any longer. And hand over to Rainer Knapp in Bregenz.

Rainer Knapp: Thank you very much, Frank. A warm greeting from me too. I'm delighted to be able to tell you a little bit about Wolford today, and in particular about our omnichannel initiative Wolford X. My name is Rainer Knapp. And I work at Wolford in the role of Global Director IT and Digital. Yes, that's right. Business is looking for transactions, customers for experiences. And I think these two sentences perfectly summarize what we at Wolford are ultimately all about. More on that in a moment.

Allow me to begin with a few introductory words about our company. Wolford was founded in Austria in 1950. We are listed on the Vienna Stock Exchange. Our main shareholder is the Fosun International Group from China. With a portfolio of about 500 holdings that they have. We have around 1100 employees. We are very active in direct sales channels. With e-commerce, stationary retail. With around 180 monobrand stores throughout Europe, North America and Asia. And what perhaps also distinguishes us a little from the competition is that we produce exclusively in Europe. At our main site in Bregenz and in Murska Sobota in Slovenia. And we also attach great importance to sustainability. And we have a very strong development department in the company. And we have attached great importance to this for many years. For example, we are the first and only company in the world to be certified for the Cradle to Cradle Gold technical cycle. This means that a product from this collection, which we call Aurora, is not harmful to the environment at any point in its life cycle. All fibers and yarns are biodegradable. And if you bury one of these items in the ground, you will actually have compost after six months.

Let's start by taking a look at a fairly recent study by the Austrian trade association. What you see here is information from the Omnichannel Readiness Index 2021, a study that was conducted around three quarters of a year ago. So almost exactly one year after the outbreak of the pandemic. And as you can see here, the gap between the percentage of customers for whom a certain feature is important and the percentage of retailers who can actually offer it afterwards is still considerable. This is despite the fact that 93 percent of retailers have now introduced completely new services in their webshop or stores during corona. For example, call and collect. Or the booking of online consultation appointments. And I'd say that's surprising on the one hand, but not on the other. Because omnichannel is easy for the customer. That's our ultimate goal, but it's quite complex in the background. And you need a lot of specialized skills to do it right.

At Wolford, we were faced with the decision to relaunch our webshop last year. But in light of all the dynamics caused by the pandemic and the demands that our customers have these days, we actually wanted to take a different approach. And we realized relatively quickly that we needed a procedural and technological paradigm shift if we wanted to live up to our motto: We want to be able to serve our customers without any compromise. You have to think holistically about omnichannel. I think that's very, very important. And we have therefore set ourselves the goal of developing and building a new architecture for precisely this purpose. And our initial situation was very similar to that of many other brands and retailers. In our case, for example, the existing online platform was not being used to increase the brand's appeal. For example, there was no real storytelling, no engagement. Also due to limited content. And then, of course, at some point you are faced with the question of what to do now to really improve this situation substantially. Just another new web store? Will that really get us anywhere? To where we actually want to be technologically. And our answer was very clear: no, it doesn't. Because as Henry Ford knew, if you keep doing what you've always done, you'll keep getting what you've always gotten. That's why we took a step back and thought, instead of just building a new web store like we've always done, what would we do if we were to build a completely new application landscape? If we didn't have anything yet. In other words, no restrictions from any existing systems with limited functions and technical restrictions. What would such an application landscape, truly designed on a greenfield site, look like if we had the opportunity to do so? Just as a design mind game.

And the result is a completely new and, we believe, innovative omnichannel architecture. We are convinced that once it is fully implemented, it will take us as a brand to a completely different functional level. And behind this Wolford X programme is a broad-based digitalization initiative. With a total of nine sub-projects. And this goes across all direct sales channels. From stationary retail to e-commerce, social media and marketing.
And without reading it all out here, I would perhaps like to emphasize the third bullet point in this list, because I think it is really important. It comes across as a bit underrated. But we have a great dynamic here on the customer front end. And the customers' expectation is to receive relevant content, whether editorial, product or service-related, exactly when and where they want it. As a result, we actually have to get away from these cumbersome aircraft carriers. That don't move. When you turn the wheel, they need three quarters of an hour to change course. Instead, we need specialized speedboats. That little phrase from earlier, serve our customers without any compromise, has a really big impact if you take it seriously. Because if you ask yourself the obvious and exciting question of how to achieve this in concrete terms, you quickly realize that you actually have to think outside the usual parameters. In our view, it all starts with a truly uncompromising customer-first approach to design. This means not starting with technology and thinking about systems, but really with added value for the customer. And this mentality is actually traditionally very common in start-ups. While established companies are often preoccupied with themselves and their ERP systems. And what they can pack into them. Startups actually have their eyes on the customer right from the start.

And the second important point, and here we are once again putting on our technology glasses, is the keyword Composable Enterprise. MACH is an acronym for this. And that stands for microservices, API-term, cloud-native and headless. And this puts you in a position to develop truly open best-of-breed architectures. Like a modular principle, where every component is basically interchangeable. And the whole construct is thus also flexibly expandable and scalable. Here you can see an example of what a composable omnichannel architecture can look like and the basic building blocks required for it. You have the classic backend area at the lower end. With the legacy systems, ERP, finance and possibly also warehouse management. And in the middle you have the actual commerce and marketing core. With a group of cloud commerce systems. Like a web store perhaps, checkout solutions, marketplaces, possibly also social shopping, if you're already that far along. Then experience management, a CRM, loyalty, marketing automation, promotions, stored value cards and so on, and the execution area. With payment, tax calculation, personalization mechanisms, search and merchandising. And at the very top you then have the customer-facing front-end layer, which is actually decoupled from the rest. And more or less only serves to visualize and interact with the customer. For example, a web store for end customers. An app. Either natively or as a BWA. Or perhaps a voice frontend. After all, Alexa has shown us all that you don't always have to order via a graphical interface, you can also do it by voice. So essentially, and this is an important design principle, it's about breaking down these previously separate monolithic systems for different channels into individual components and then layering these similar, functional building blocks on top of each other again. And to cover them with highly specialized solutions. And if you transfer the whole thing to our Wolford X initiative, it looks something like this. In our case, there are now nine sub-projects. A very comprehensive portfolio of new applications, twelve to 15, which we are introducing here. These include a CDB, a very important building block in the whole thing. But also a new big data and advanced analytics architecture. And very, very importantly in my view, a hybrid integration layer for cloud-to-cloud and cloud-on-prem integrations. Incidentally, this is one of the key success factors for a project like this. And we have been working on the implementation since last summer. And we are already planning the first pilots and go-live steps. There are many parallel rollout streams, which also add a certain complexity to the whole thing. Especially when you have so many sub-projects running at the same time. But only through the interaction of these different solutions will we gradually become fully omnichannel-capable at some point.

Perhaps we can now move on to one of the central components. Namely the CDP. Customer Data Platform. And a CDP like this perhaps solves one of the biggest problems that marketing has had to solve in the last 15 to 20 years, namely the identity of our customers. Known-customer resolution and unknown-customer cross-device identity management and how to connect these two types of data. Then on the one hand we have this known data or personally identifiable information. This comes from filling out a web form, an order from the web store, customer cards and so on. And on the other hand, we have the so-called unknown data. The typical customer today owns several devices. Four to five on average. And may have hundreds of active cookies running. Different IDs for different platforms that they interact with. And every time they see an ad, visit a website or play a video game, or even enter a store with beacon technology, they may create a unique identifier that exists in isolation from all the others they may have. And that makes the customer journey really difficult today. So you kind of lose the customer across the touchpoints and can't merge them together.

And that's where today's complex data protection landscape comes into play, which makes marketing more difficult than ever. This is also a fundamental field for CDPs. Namely the management of the various consent flags. For example, data collection in and of itself. Yes. But also the analysis, the targeting, the forwarding of data. Re-identification. And without such consents, marketing would be limited to a binary system, so to speak. All or nothing. And a CDP is an excellent solution for all of this because it can create customer profiles, even anonymous ones, from various sources in real time. And it can enrich them with data on the customer's transactions and behavior. But that's not all. This information can then also be reused in real time via dynamically created segments or even in relation to the individual alone for communication or personalization at all touchpoints. And in this way, we form the single point of contact with our customers. And are able to serve precisely these megatrends such as personalization or individualization.

Here you can see a list of the new capabilities that we at Wolford X are gaining through our initiative. I would like to highlight a few. Firstly, there is the topic of individualization and personalization. These have been megatrends for several years now. And I want to address the customer as individually as possible when he or she interacts with the brand. In the web store, for example. At the content level or in the search results. In merchandising and product presentation. And I would like to give you an example. So if we know that a customer likes the color red, for example, because they are constantly searching for red products and we can save this in their profile in the CDP, then we will achieve better engagement and more conversion if we bring the red products to the top of a category page in real time, for example. We all know that revenue equals visits times conversion times shopping cart size. Such personalization has a direct impact on business. Then we have the whole topic of omnichannel transactions, for example.

The transactions from different store systems are consolidated in a central OMS. This enables a centralized view of the customer and all their transactions. Regardless of which channel they come from. And also cross-channel processes. At the same time, this OMS is also the new master for all B to C stocks. And the central system for personalized shipping options. This means that offers such as Online Store, Ship from Store, Return in Store, endless Ale, suspended Basket can now be mapped. All of this is possible with a central OMS. Then we have sale from anywhere. This is made possible by the mobile checkout application in our landscape. With which I can complete a transaction on a cell phone. Including checkout and payment. And that enables applications such as remote selling. If I have my cell phone with me, I can actually sell something wherever I am. Yes. And this mobile checkout can be done via a QR code or a payment link.

This omnichannel OMS also makes it possible to manage stock centrally and across all channels. This enables me to sell from all connected warehouses via the store front ends, for example the checkout application or the webshop. And also send them everywhere. This means it will be possible to use the stores that we have in our city center locations, for example, as fulfillment centers. And to deliver extremely quickly from there to customers who live close by, for example in the city. Via the integration layer and the API approach that I have already mentioned. I can also integrate and use these applications in this overall architecture as central microservices from other applications. And one example of this would be promotions. With a cloud-based, centralized promotion engine like the one we use, we are able to centrally manage discounts and promotions for all channels on one platform. And this ranges from anonymous product-specific discounts to personalized promo codes or even loyalty-driven price deals, for example for Level A customers, if they have one. And via a CDP, which I have now integrated here, it is also possible to do dynamic segmentation, for example.

Data is then collected from all touchpoints in real time. About user behavior and the transactions that someone carries out. And I can also use all of this in real time for this dynamic segmentation. If, for example, user behavior, purchasing behavior or interests change, then the segments also change automatically. And I can also use this information in real time on the front-end side for personalization or targeted interaction. So in its entirety, this Wolford X program is what we believe to be a fairly revolutionary overall solution. In other words, it is an architecture that is probably relatively unique in the German-speaking world at the moment in terms of its planned scope and complexity. But we are convinced that we are on the right track. And we are already looking forward to the results and the new possibilities that we will then have. That brings me almost to the end of the presentation. Finally, a few thoughts and challenges resulting from our concrete experience with this project. First and foremost, I think you need a very strong vision of where you want to go. Really take the time to do this and think about your customers in detail. People often make the mistake of thinking about what is feasible in the short term. And a call here would really be to think big. People are often far too quick to focus on the technological aspects of individual components. But it is so incredibly important to think holistically, what skills do I need to really become best in class in my industry? And in addition to an application portfolio in which the individual components should be selected according to these MACH criteria wherever possible, this also includes strong internal architecture expertise. Where integration really is the key to success. So start with that. Build your basic framework with smart integration services. With the help of these, you can also connect your old legacy world, if you still have it, with modern cloud solutions. And be prepared for the fact that you will have to manage a certain amount of complexity. But if your architecture is really flexible, you will find that you can always solve certain problems in multiple ways. And these are all skills that I think you need to have in House. You can have external front ends developed or interfaces coded externally. Depending on the size of your project, you can then scale these resources. But you have to set the goal yourself. And you should also be the architect who can specify which of these capabilities are located where exactly. And which paths, for example, data objects such as a customer or the product take in your landscape. So in a way, it is always a living entity that continues to evolve during implementation. Thank you very much for this first part of the presentation and for your attention. And please feel free to ask your questions in the chat, we will certainly be able to answer one or two of them at the end and respond to them.

Johannes Höller: Great, thank you very much, Rainer, for the great insights into how you did it at Wolford. I would now like to take one or almost two steps back from our point of view, from the diva-e point of view. And tell you a bit about our experience. Of course, we don't just talk to Wolford, but to many other companies.

And one thing we always notice is that every company is at a completely different stage on the path to becoming an omnichannel expert. One challenge, as we heard from Rainer earlier, is the same for most, namely how to address customers. Customers today literally expect to be addressed in a high-quality, personalized way. This means that it is no longer enough to send out standard newsletters and hope that people respond to them. That is definitely not enough these days. It needs to be as personalized and individual as possible. Just like Rainer described, with all the advantages. But why is this important in general terms? Customer satisfaction is ultimately what determines whether I am successful with my business or not. And in our experience, this approach has a significant influence on this. And of course this doesn't just apply to the content of an online store. It goes far beyond that. It applies to any type of content or appearance that I present to the outside world as a company. What is the challenge here? We've already heard a bit about that too. Because it also affects Wolford, of course. The number of customer contacts is almost immeasurable these days. It increases by an average of 20 percent every year. And the graphic illustrates quite well where the problem lies. There are simply more and more of them. And one thing that all these customer touchpoints have in common is data. Every single one of these touchpoints produces data. And it's easy to imagine that having the yellow data under control and having an overview of it is still relatively manageable. When it comes to the pink area, it becomes almost impossible. That means I have to think about how I can ultimately use this data, how I have it under control, how I can use it, how I can benefit from it.

And that's not all. It's not just the touchpoints that are increasing. It's also the channels themselves or the devices, can you give me a quick click to continue, thank you. Exactly. To the channels. Or it could be devices, but everything else is also increasing. This means that the customer journeys themselves are becoming more complex and longer. Sure. It doesn't have to apply to everyone, some may become shorter. It also depends a little on customer behavior. But as a rule, our experience is that customer journeys are becoming more complex. It's not just the number of touchpoints, it's also the number of channels that are created via the customer journey. And, above all, the type of touchpoints or channels that are created here. Traditional media such as paid content or newsletters are now mixed with social media, of course. It goes into the offline area. The customer is in the store, uses their customer card there, makes purchases and is contacted again via a survey. Perhaps a satisfaction survey. Visits a trade fair, is perhaps present at the company's trade fair stand and is also part of a loyalty program at the end. All of these are completely different contact points where the customer has to be picked up somehow. And that in combination is simply the great challenge of creating these, yes, we call it unique Newmans. To achieve this individual customer approach. That's why it's extremely important to know how to do this.

First of all, quite simply, by knowing how to play this dataplay correctly. By being a professional in handling the data correctly. What does that mean in concrete terms? First of all, I need to be aware of which touchpoints I have, which channels I have and how I can manage to collect all the resulting data centrally in some form. In the next step, it is important to know whether there are patterns in the data. Is there related data. Which user is perhaps identical to the data of another user. Where can the user profiles be bundled? In order to then derive the relevant data from this. And to activate customer profiles in a targeted manner in order to use them in campaigns. To analyze them further. Or, in short, to create precisely these individual customer experiences. And as Rainer rightly mentioned, a CDP, a customer data platform, can be a tool to achieve this. Simply to bundle data from previously separate areas, whether that's a data warehouse or an ERP or, on the other hand, the store or perhaps an existing marketing automation solution, into one system and simply benefit from the fact that I now have the opportunity to access this data centrally. Now some or many of you may be asking yourself the question, is it even worth it? It sounds pretty complex and time-consuming. And what Rainer has shown us is not entirely trivial either. We would say yes, it's definitely worth it. But of course it also depends a little on that. To back this up, we brought along a survey that was carried out in over 100 companies that already use a CDP. To find out whether the use of a CDP creates any added value at all. And if so, does it also have an impact on company KPIs? In a positive sense at best, of course. And that shows very well that it does in itself. Everyone agrees that yes, it has added value. There is something to be gained from using a CDP. But the way in which this is seen varies greatly. Some, who perhaps see a CDP from a marketing perspective, would say that my marketing or advertising measures in particular have become much more efficient. I am simply in a better position to implement them. Others would say that I simply save time and resources. Ultimately, this also saves costs when it comes to the whole issue of data management. Others also see one of the core functionalities of a CDP as a clear added value. Namely, this individualized view of a single customer profile. This 360-degree view, as it is so often cited. And others would claim that the greatest added value comes from the fact that I am now in a better position to measure my success. Success in general as a company or for individual campaigns. And others simply see themselves in a position to make better decisions based on uniform, centralized data in order to simply derive further measures.

What can you do with a CDP? Everything you've already heard from Rainer at Wolford, of course. But we also took a look at what our other customers and partners are doing here. Of course, this standard use case is almost everything that comes from the topic and area of personalization. Playing out individual content. The personal approach and, of course, getting the whole thing out in the best possible way for specific channels and devices. But then it quickly moves into the area of product recommendations. And that goes far beyond pure cross-selling, as we know it from webshop systems. I'm not only able to see the customer's purchasing behavior in the web store, I can also incorporate their entire browsing behavior on the website, for example. Or the social interaction on Facebook or LinkedIn. Or completely different sources to find out what really interests the user the most. What are the products they are most likely to buy? And individually tailored to this user. And ideally in real time. Influencing shopping behavior is another area that is often tackled as one of the first use cases. What is behind this? Classic, of course, or well-known things such as shopping cart abandonment or second purchase. But also, if you then try to make better use of the data on an individual basis, things like the whole topic of vouchers or promotions. It is not absolutely necessary to always offer all customers free shipping or a 20 euro discount on everything. Wouldn't it perhaps also be interesting to know which user needs exactly which voucher amount in order to supposedly make a purchase. Or do they need one at all. Is it perhaps something completely different that motivates them to buy? And maybe I'm just wasting budget by sending them the voucher emails. Of course, using a CDP and all the data makes it much easier to answer and address all these questions. You can take it even further.

You can also approach the customer relationship with CDP as a use case. For example, I can integrate the support system or customer support in order to support complaint management in a positive way. Remember, a customer has an open complaint, is already dissatisfied because something didn't fit or a delivery was wrong or something is broken. And you keep sending them emails, re-targeting, trying to motivate them to buy more. This will probably not meet with much acceptance. In other words, if the CDP knew that there was an open case, we would simply leave it out of all campaigns temporarily. And then perhaps approach him again individually to perhaps significantly improve or rebuild the slightly damaged trust. A CDP can also be used for this purpose.

With all the use cases, the question naturally also arises, and not just the one question, what do I have to do at all? This is just a small collection of questions that we are often asked by companies, even though many are still in the early stages. Do I need a CDP at all? And if so, what is the right one for me. What can I do with it? What does it cost me, a very important question. What can I replace with it? Will it replace all the other tools I may already have? Do I still need a BI department at all? Can I automate marketing away? How does it even fit into my IT landscape? Who works with a CDP like this? And of course, as we have heard, data protection is also a top issue that needs to be considered here. These questions have one thing in common: they all have their justification and it is important to ask them. And at the beginning. In other words, you really need to deal with these kinds of questions as early as possible in order to be able to make the best possible decision at the end. And, above all, to prepare or coordinate the entire company for the use of such a CDP. And then also to have the acceptance in the company that you are behind it as a whole and that everyone can simply work with it. In our experience, it makes a lot of sense to follow a process that is as structured and defined as possible in order to achieve this. This starts with the assumption that the selection and application should not ultimately be an exclusive marketing decision. In any case, other stakeholders in the company should also be involved at the outset. This also means involving sales. Especially IT, of course, as a CDP can ultimately deliver added value for the entire company. You can see an example of the kind of decision-making or implementation process that we like to use in our projects here. It starts with what we call Learn and Refine or Apply. It's really about working out what the use cases are first. What are the challenges and the questions that I am really trying to solve in order to determine whether it is a CDP case or not. That is also quite conceivable. And if so, in which direction is it going? What type of CDP is the right one for me? There is a wealth of possible solutions on the market. But they all have special features. And special functionalities. And finding that out is based on these use case requirements, which are at the very beginning.

Once I have answered the question, the next step is of course to draw up a shortlist from a potentially larger list, a longlist of solutions. I can compare these tools. And look again in detail at requirements, perhaps also functional requirements. And in the best case scenario, with a proof of concept phase, select the most suitable solution for me and make the decision at the end. Once you've done that, it's naturally time for implementation. However, this preparatory phase, in which the aim is to reduce the whole thing, is also important here. It is not advisable to implement a CDP in its entirety because you are likely to get bogged down. That really means individual use cases. Pick out a maximum of one to three. Try to implement them in a kind of MVP approach and put them on the road. And gain initial experience there. Once you've done that, there's hopefully nothing standing in the way of implementation. Everything that is necessary can be done on the software side. The tool can be configured. And release management and, of course, ongoing optimization and the implementation of further use cases are then no longer an obstacle. But what does the whole thing look like from the perspective of a CDP solution, namely Tealium in our case, how does Tealium meet these challenges, which I have now taken very generally from the customer's point of view. And a colleague, Alex from Hamburg, will now explain to us in more detail what solutions are available here. Alex.

Alexander Willkomm: Thank you very much, Johannes. Thank you very much, Rainer. I hope that my slide will be here soon. I've learned an incredible amount of exciting things. Specialized speedboats, I'll come back to that in a moment. But let me start with this. Three months ago, this picture popped up in my LinkedIn feed a few times. And from my point of view, it kind of describes the state of personalization in 2021 or, to be fair, the state of today. When I look at my email inbox, relevant newsletters rarely make it into my inbox. And even if I have made a purchase from the company, I can still expect downstream advertising on Facebook or Spiegel or wherever. That's not really what the customer expects. If we look at what the trends are that are currently happening and look at the headline. Rainer has already highlighted them relatively well. An incredible number of new sources are being added. Even if I completely change the systems very progressively, as Wolford has now done, there will still be other sources where there is customer data, new device options and so on, new expectations that I will have to address somehow if I want to have a condensed profile.

The consumer has a phenomenon. They expect personalization. And at the same time there is this big, but please privacy. My data protection and I'm a bit of a stickler when it comes to cookies, I don't know what they are, so I'd rather reject them. If you now take this further into a somewhat international context, then we are already overwhelmed in parts with the GDPR and have a lot of uncertainty, which is also resulting in case law. For the companies, Rainer, you are active in Asia and around the world. Then there's K in Turkey, CCPA in California and so on. So it's a huge issue. How can I personalize. Smart. With the appropriate privacy in the background. And the good thing is, I just had a great conversation last week, we completed the digital transformation last year. No, wrong approach. There's more to come. New topics are being added. It's getting more complex. Google is pushing us forward. It is switching off third-party cookies. So these are also topics that we are looking at, where we are paying close attention to how we can somehow help our customers with this customer data. A very brief outline of Tealium.

What do we do in a nutshell as a CDP provider? We take exactly this part. We collect this data from these different elements. From stores. Flagship store in Bregenz, the checkout system. Or from the mobile app or the website, from the personalization engine, we pull them together to create a uniform picture of the customer at the end of the day. This is then made available for real-time applications in the corresponding systems. I have tried to illustrate this a little in this part of a data supply chain. For various reasons. Rainer has a very exciting role. Global Director IT and Digital. So we're not just talking about the marketer, please don't take this disrespectfully, that we're addressing them in such a marketing-heavy way, but there are complete chains of use cases that go beyond this stack. Where I need precisely this uniform, central profile in the middle. In order to then cleanly address the systems that we have seen, the ERP, the analytics view, the email service provider, the ad tech providers or other engines that run in the background. As automated as possible. That a real feeling of one-to-one personalization beyond my initial slide then happens in a cleanly coordinated way on all channels. Johannes, you've shown a bit about what, which CDP provider we need. You forgot to write Tealium at the bottom, but that's a different topic. I would now like to give the audience the opportunity, when they look at the CDP, and Rainer, you also said this, the point that you highlighted, agile, flexible reaction to future opportunities, then when we make technology decisions, we are now looking at a time window of five or six years, where such a technology part must also function.

And I would like to focus on this first part, data collection. We have various sources. These sources have two options. I can have these sources stream data into the platform. That is one. That's relatively elegant. Website integrated, falls in, I can build my profile. That's nice. But we can make it a bit more complex. Does a CDP also have pull mechanisms to extract customer-relevant data from my SAP CDP, from my SAP ERP? To transform it and push it into the CDP. The same applies, I'm more of an old gentleman now, you can still meet me on Facebook. Not my daughter. She's on TikTok. The latest hit is Twitch. I'm a big fan of Eintracht Spandau. If you haven't seen it, it's an e-sports team from the retort. Super. This means that if you want to advertise today, the channels at the front are changing so incredibly quickly that you have to maintain this agility on the activation layer, not just, we've built it in now. Efficient advertising measures, efficient budgets, and these are generally no longer being used in order to address my customers consistently and cleanly.

The biggest part, I've just pulled it out, is Consent. That means can I build these profiles at all, yes or no. We can also make it as complex as we like. The customer card says I can, but not online. That's not nice. In other words, this is where the CDPs come in, who first say how exactly do we build the profiles, taking into account consent and privacy. And likewise, the second blow, the right lock before the activation layer. Where did the data go? Again, as I said, this is a small audit trail that is there to say that we have not activated the data, but that it has been built up and used in accordance with consent. Consent anyway, I'm a big fan. It's a new discipline in marketing that actually offers incredible opportunities. Just this morning from BVDW publication. Consent management. Wonderful. Also a bit of a guideline. There are so many wonderful possibilities. Look, here you have your special offer for tights on our site. But unfortunately you didn't give me the consent. Special offers always resonate. It's like the lottery. You can win something here, it always works. So there is a nice part, only the marketers or the users have to implement it a bit and then develop new strategies for these topics. The important thing is that the technology is properly integrated into this part.

The last point I would like to highlight, if my slide changes to one here. That's the identity part. Johannes, you just made that point. Rainer, you picked up on the point. Identity. If my third-party cookies are removed. And I am de facto flying blind in the purebred, external advertising channels, then the modern CDP must be able to bring together A, profiles on more than one identifier. If I come from different devices and different channels. That could be the loyalty ID. It could be the email address. It can be transactional things. It can go all the way to payment matters. It depends a bit on what is agreed. But they all have to be made possible. In addition, there are an incredible number of topics that are also very exciting. We have ID providers, that's the newest part. NetID, ID five, Unified ID Plus. And what it's all called. Some are strong in the US, others are strong in Germany. It's all a bit of an answer to the old-third party. They are somehow gone. That means I have to have flexible interfaces to enable whatever comes along that catches on. That's all fine. I can use my own IDs, but I can also use external ones. The latest thing that's coming is biometrics. Transmit security, things like that. I only look into my camera, I'm omnichannel integrated, wonderful. My CDP has to enable exactly that. That whatever comes, that the customer profile is consistently available for that real-time application across all the channels. So. I want to wrap this up a little bit. We'll take this part, more channels are coming, it's getting a bit more complex. The personalization issues, it's a topic in itself, taking privacy into account. I have to keep things like AI in mind. And always keep digital transformation in mind when I choose my CDP. It's getting more, it's getting faster. And that means you can be a bit progressive and think in specialized speedboats so that you can continue to support growth, as Rainer has pointed out. Thank you very much.

Frank Rauchfuß: Yes, thank you very much, Alexander, Rainer and Johannes, for the great insights and the content you shared with us. As we said at the beginning, there is the option to post questions in the chat. I haven't seen any questions there yet. That's why I'd like to take this opportunity to post them again. Ultimately, I have a few questions on the topic of digital transformation, which is not entirely insignificant. And maybe, Rainer, you can give me some more insights. In terms of starting a Wolford X mission, it's a completely new way of thinking, as you described, a completely new approach. And what resistance did you encounter in the company? How did you overcome them? What were your approaches and experiences that you could perhaps share with the group?

Rainer Knapp: With pleasure. So I think there were two main challenges. On the one hand, if you look towards MACH technologies now. In terms of design. Application portfolios, then you can certainly find candidates there that are perhaps not so familiar to the decision-making bodies, the typical ones. So if you now want to replace the well-known classic webshop with a new headless system, you may find it difficult to argue why this new system is suddenly better than the world-famous fashion webshop that everyone has always used. So you have to look deep under the hood. And also be able to argue in detail why this architectural approach is the right one. Yes. It's less about deciding between brand A and B, and more about what features these solutions offer. And are they the right ones for the way I want to build architectures in the future? And there's another challenge that is more relevant to the specialist area. The specialist department sometimes finds it a little difficult to follow a new architecture in its entirety, to understand the details of why certain things are done. And that's a challenge that you actually face throughout the entire project. Because a project on our scale is now really big. Yes. There are nine sub-projects. Over 60 people are working on it. And you yourself. And all the architects. It's not a huge group, they just don't manage to be at every meeting. And there's always a tendency to ask questions that one person can't answer. And then decentralization tendencies develop that you have to catch again and again. That really is a challenge right up to the end. Keeping everything focused on the vision. And not straying from the technological path that we once thought up. I believe these are two key challenges from my personal experience.

Frank Rauchfuß: If I may respond to a question that has just been posted, what is the time frame for a project like this? And the question is actually for all three speakers from their respective perspectives. What is the actual timeline if you have to think in terms of the dimensions you have just described. Which perhaps also includes preparation times and ultimately the duration of the project. I think it would be very interesting to hear about this again from a different perspective. Perhaps we'll start with Alexander from the technology side. Johannes, Rainer, what is your view on this

Alexander Willkomm: Let's say it's a bit difficult to answer that. We have certain-. I have to make an assumption. We have made a technology decision. We have a project team together. And we have said, yes, we want to act. Then we need about a month to write up the use cases properly. To put together project resources. And if we then look at a timeline until my microtopic is live in the big context of Rainer, this micro CDP thing, I would like to have the thing live after 90 days in the sense of a minimum viable product. With a handful of use cases. Not this big complexity part. All of them, at least that's what we're seeing, are running a bit on time to value. When do we see what. That even if we release the budget, when can we see the return on investment. And that's kind of what we're trying to do. To go live as quickly as possible with elegant things, sometimes simple things, consolidations of profiles, in order to also provide this proof.

Frank Rauchfuß: Thank you very much. Johannes, from your point of view?

Johannes Höller: Yes, there's not much left to add. Alex has already said it perfectly. I might add something else. Let's assume that no technology decision has been made, I'm really at the very, very beginning. This whole phase, let's call it evaluation or self-discovery, if you want to be provocative, you can talk about several months, you have to talk about several months. As Rainer said, it makes sense to take the time to really do this preparatory work in detail. Because everything you forget to do at the beginning will come back to haunt you later in the implementation phase, making it much more difficult and complex. I would say that. Basically, it depends on where you are, yourself. If we start from the very beginning, then it doesn't make sense to select a CDP right away without giving it much thought and then implement one or two use cases. That would probably even work. But you wouldn't be satisfied with it in the long term. Because this whole integration into the existing setup, this IT landscape, is an absolutely essential point. A CDP does not replace five other tools. As a rule, it fits into the existing landscape. And that's where the real challenges arise in the details if you don't take enough time.

Frank Rauchfuß: Thank you very much. Rainer, from your side, what timeframe have you set yourselves?

Rainer Knapp: Well, for us, we started from scratch, you could say it was about three to four months until the basic setup was in place. Until we also decided on this best-of-breed approach. We hadn't finalized all the systems yet. But at least we had shortlists for every component that we wanted to build. And then there is certainly a longer phase until these negotiations have all been finalized. Yes, until you have reached an agreement with ten or twelve manufacturers, that takes a certain amount of time. Legal is also always involved. And it always takes time to check all these documents. So it was a good six months before we were really ready for the implementation phase. And from then on, I would say it was certainly another twelve to 18 months. But that's due to the scope of our initiative. Because B to C really did a complete tabula rasa. And rebuild everything here. And it also depends a bit on the business deadlines, yes. You can't go live with a new web store at any time today. Even if you were technically ready. There are times when there are redzones for the business and you can't do it at all. These are the sales phases. Or when the big sales targets are realized. Like in the fall in particular. Just before Christmas. Thanksgiving, Black Friday, they don't like it so much when you launch a new online store. And in our case, with the introduction of the new mobile checkout solution, that's probably the longest stream until we've rolled it out in all our countries where we have checkouts and stores, with the international and local requirements, tax legislation and so on - I think that's the longest part, which will probably extend to a year and a half. But in terms of scope, you have to imagine it's about 3500 external man-days that are going into it. It's starting to look a bit like an ERP project on the bottom line.

Frank Rauchfuß: Okay. Wonderful. We have another question in the chat that I can call up. Does it make sense after a CDP to also use a, now I have to see. CERM after a CDP. Or can it be used.

Johannes Höller: Alex needs to know that.

Frank Rauchfuß: Exactly. I would like to ask Alex, may I pass the question on to you?

Alexander Willkomm: A what? C?

Frank Rauchfuß: C, A-.

Julia Miksch: C, E, A, M.

Frank Rauchfuß: C, I, A, M.

Alexander Willkomm: What does that stand for?

Frank Rauchfuß: Exactly. Maybe we can add that again in the chat. So that we understand the context better. Maybe it would also be a CRM. That would be great if you could add that again. As far as the question remains open and one more addition.

Julia Miksch: Customer Relationship Management.

Frank Rauchfuß: Customer Identity and Access Management System was asked there.

Alexander Willkomm: That-. Good. CIAM.

Frank Rauchfuß: CIAM.

Alexander Willkomm: Exactly. So these are two different things. At the bottom, we structure the profiles across the entire range of topics. It's a bit like the web of the future. You can already see that with Bild DE. You can already see it at Spiegel. The cookies fall away at the back. And we're all pressing, register here. And give me a piece of this identity somehow. We'll take that part as soon as I have any attribute that I can grab. Is that a piece of a cookie that comes from some other system that I can grab. Which has a certain duration. Is it the email address that I see that's there. Whatever it is. And I use it to build these profiles. I build the segments. And then make them available for applications according to the logic, according to the defined logic. That's how I need my CIAM. It's debatable what exactly that is. The classic is that we are moving towards it and we all want to have the identity of the users on the website. It has to be elegant, otherwise nobody will browse. If I say up front that this is the exclusive store, you come to Wolford and log in first, 50 percent are gone. Then the own your sale strategy is not the right one. So now there are things, I just mentioned Transmit Security earlier. Which is exactly this Customer Identity Access Management part. But only via biometric features. That means I look at the camera, I put my finger on the laptop and I'm automatically logged in to the device. That will speed up this part even more. It's nice for us to have the interfaces to this CIAM system and get it out. There are other approaches via ID, graphs and issues like that. The CDP itself. So the question was, does it make sense? Yes, from my point of view. That's my personal-. I don't know if our company has a different view on it. But it's exactly these parts, this indication of getting the attributes and then pulling them in, that's exactly what makes up the part of the CDP.

Frank Rauchfuß: Thank you very much, Alexander. Perhaps another question that we are always asked by customers is, when we talk about connectors, what quantity of connectors or channels that I can connect to a CDP are we talking about? Yes. Is it 100, is it 500 et cetera. Perhaps we should also ask Johannes and Alexander what the dimensions are, yes, where I can ultimately connect channels, information channels or customer channels. On what scale are we actually operating? And are there differences between Europe and the USA? Perhaps from Alexander's side. And then another general view from Johannes.

Alexander Willkomm: Perhaps generically. We have around 1400 ready-made standard connectors, which we also maintain. Client-server side. That's a bit different. The large channels are also covered. Plus this flexibility, if it's not there, API calls, webhooks, JavaScript, whatever, to allow customers to do exactly that specifically. You can definitely see things in America. You already have 200 different providers on the pages here. It's generally not quite like that in Europe. But we are already moving into three-digit source and target systems. That means I have to somehow bring these topics under one roof. It would not be technically limited, at least from our side, because, as we have shown, new things are always being added.

Johannes Höller: Yes. There's no such thing as can't. That's actually true. When you work with Tealium, the basis is simply huge. Nevertheless, I say, especially when we take another leap back, MVP approach, 90 days, one to three use cases, it really is important to limit the number of connectors. And to what is necessary. Of course, I can connect a lot. But the decisive factor is what I need, what makes the most sense. Because just connecting the data so that it runs in doesn't actually do anything. It's really about implementing these selected use cases holistically. And it is often enough to have a handful of connectors and set them up properly. And then gradually dock the other connectors based on the use cases. But the library or the amount that Tealium makes available to us is really huge, that's true.

Frank Rauchfuß: Then there is actually nothing to stop a large amount of data, as you outlined earlier, Rainer, in the omnichannel sense, and Alexander from the software side, from ultimately taking this on board. The goal that we outlined earlier is to map a seamless customer journey with technology and ultimately create a best-in-class customer experience. I would like to thank Rainer, Alexander and Johannes for the great presentations and exciting content. I look forward to many more events with you. And say goodbye for today. Greetings from Munich. And here's to a webinar soon. If you were unable to attend, you can still watch it online. We will make the link available accordingly. Thank you for your attention. And see you soon.

Rainer Knapp: Thank you very much. Bye to everyone.

Frank Rauchfuß: Bye.