Oddbins

This new contract builds on Maginus' successful relationship with Oddbins, which has used Maginus' order management and call centre software to control the direct side of its business for five years. According to Bob Smyllie, Head of IS and Logistics at Oddbins: "There was a time when the direct business model was seen as an 'add-on' to our main high street proposition, but now it's a key route to market for our business. Thanks to our core Maginus technology, our direct model now covers the web, orders taken through our call centre and orders received by fax and post from the Oddbins Direct catalogue."

"Our growth year-on-year in this area is in double digits, which is significantly ahead of current high street performance, so it's essential that our web storefront provides customers the service they expect and is fully integrated with the rest of our business systems. We already had a strong relationship with Maginus and had the confidence in their organisation to manage the project and the design work carried out by their web design partners, Enzyme Design Ltd. Maginus ensured that the project ran to plan, and that the back-end integration functioned in line with our expectations. The design team at Enzyme also demonstrated a clear understanding of the Oddbins brand image, and were able to combine this with an in-depth awareness of the capabilities of our core Maginus system."

The new web storefront offers a number of innovative features, including support for the B2B side of the Oddbins business. A significant proportion of the Oddbins business is to Account Customers such as bars, restaurants and hotels. The new web site provides information and transactional support to these customers, including access to account details, credit limits and preferential pricing. Oddbins expects that this facility will drive increased new business from this sector.

Oddbins Direct's new web storefront also benefits from total integration with the back-end Maginus system. For example, promotions on the web site are now controlled directly by Maginus, whereas on the old web site they were maintained on the web site itself. By controlling all promotions through all the direct channels within Maginus, customers are assured of a consistent offer whichever channel they choose to use. This will both reduce the time taken to manage promotions and improve the customer's multi channel experience.

In addition, Oddbins will have access to all information about a customer, across all channels. Another benefit of the tight integration between Maginus and the new web site is that all information that customers see is sourced from and maintained by a single Maginus database, ensuring accurate and current data on stock availability, product details and pricing.

The new site also includes a 'Content Manager', which allows non-technical staff in departments such as Marketing to change information on the web site easily. This ensures that the site is always up-to-date and accurately reflects the Oddbins offering.

Bob Smyllie concluded: "We expect our investment in the new web site will deliver a return in its first year of operation thanks to improved efficiency and reduced costs".