Client Profile
Acquired by a Private Equity firm in early 2018, the client is a fast growing and globally recognized color cosmetics brand designed for an omni-channel revenue model. The company was founded in 2009 and has enjoyed strong growth and financial performance over the past several years. The client’s core business is built on the direct-to-consumer model relying heavily on influencers and social media. The growth plan is aggressive with forecasted growth of 3x over the next five years. This growth is forecasted in both the direct-to-consumer business as well as their wholesale channel along with and increased international presence.
Business Challenge
Auxis was initially hired by the Private Equity firm to perform a due diligence on the client’s IT capabilities in advance of the acquisition. During this due diligence, Auxis quickly recognized that the organization was struggling to support their fast growing business on its existing legacy systems, their e-commerce technology was outdated and was no longer being supported by the vendor, and they had steadily outgrown their accounting solution.
Subsequent to the acquisition, Auxis was engaged to lead the evaluation and selection of new technology platforms to replace the client’s ERP and e-commerce solutions, and subsequently to program manage the implementation of these new, core technologies.
“Auxis quickly recognized that an upgrade of the clients ERP and e-commerce plataforms was required in order to successfully scale and absorb the exponential growth the were expecting”
The client’s management understood that this was a critical project for the business as it would allow them to scale and prepare for the exponential growth they were experiencing and forecasting for the next 5 years. Adding to the challenge of this transformational project was the requirement that all systems needed to be live and stable in advance of Black Friday.
Solution & Approach
Auxis tackled this challenge in multiple phases. Initially, the team interviewed key client personnel and compiled a comprehensive list of business requirements to be fulfilled by each new technology. Auxis then researched available technologies, developed and distributed an RFP, consolidated and scored responses and presented the client with their findings and recommendations so that they could make informed decisions regarding their new core technologies.
Key evaluation criteria included the ability to meet business requirements as well as pricing, implementation timeline and partner.
Once decisions were made, Auxis assembled a cross-functional team consisting of implementation partners for each technology, Auxis consultants, and key client stakeholders.
Systems Under Consideration
ERP Platform
- Netsuite
- SAP Business ByDesign
E-commerce Platform
- Shopify Platform
- SAP Hybris
- Salesforce Commerce Cloud
Ensuring that the selected implementation partners stayed on track and also keeping the client’s core
Results
Ensuring that the selected implementation partners stayed on track and also keeping the client’s core team engaged and focused on their critical tasks was the key to hitting the go-live date ahead of Black Friday.
Auxis had the added responsibility of preparing bi-weekly updates for client’s internal leadership on the overall technology landscape as well as monthly and quarterly updates to the Board.