Petit Bateau sails ahead with the OneStock Order Management System

Petit Bateau’s Click and Collect and Ship from Store services represent, on average, 11% of online sales and 6% of store sales.

We’re taking a look back at the omnichannel conference held at Paris Retail Week 2022 with Petit Bateau‘s Omnichannel Product Owner, Myriam Renaudin, and E-commerce Country Manager, Claudia Ferraris.

Together with OneStock Sales Director, Jérôme Piccolin, they discussed the Petit Bateau order management project: the changes required in-store to implement the OneStock Order Management System, how the solution has been received by employees, and the results.

Improving customer satisfaction with an Order Management System

In March 2020, COVID-19 forced the world into strict confinement. Shops closed and, as a result, online orders skyrocketed. With such a swift change in consumption habits, a new problem arose: the quantity of orders increased preparation times, which increased delivery times, and forced retailers to find new ways to work.

It was at this point that Petit Bateau decided to set up an Order Management System (OMS) to benefit from better control of its stock and an enhanced online catalogue. After a careful selection process, OneStock was chosen for the quality of its solutions, its expertise with over 70 customers and the flexibility in configuring the tool.

Petit Bateau had three key points it wanted to address to improve the customer experience across seven countries: to offer Click and Collect as a fulfilment method for online shoppers, to limit out-of-stocks online with Ship From Store, and to intelligently allocate (or orchestrate) every order.

The implementation of these solutions required some rearrangements on the store side.

Petit Bateau anticipated the large flow of Click and Collect customers from the start, installing signage that directed them to a dedicated queue for online order pick-up, separated from the in-store checkout queue.

It was therefore necessary to reorganise the shops to create specific Click and Collect areas for supply, packaging and storage areas.

The implementation of Ship from Store helped the company cope with the explosion in online orders during the winter sales. The fine-tuning of its orchestration rules allowed Petit Bateau to respond to higher order numbers with in-store teams working hard to fulfil a maximum number of orders. The Ship from Store solution also required a reorganisation of the shop floor to provide a specific area for preparing parcels and facilitating their handover to the carriers.

A promising business project for Petit Bateau

Once OneStock OMS was launched, two committees were set up to ensure the sustainability and monitoring of the solutions:

• An operational committee that meets on a weekly basis and is led by France for the entire scope of the project

• A strategic committee that meets monthly and is led by the digital department for the entire scope of the project

The two groups each set KPIs that were constantly adjusted to adapt to the real needs and challenges in the field in order to achieve better results.

And the results were not long in coming: Petit Bateau’s Click and Collect and Ship from Store services represent, on average, 11% of online sales and 6% of shop sales.

The change has been most noticeable in France and the United Kingdom. In France, online sales increased 14%, mainly due to an extensive store network where the solutions have really been able to demonstrate their effectiveness. In the UK, the OMS has above all made it possible to overcome challenges linked to Brexit that have impacted the customer experience in recent years.

The crucial winter sales period also benefited from the implementation of the OMS. With well-defined KPIs, Petit Bateau was able to meet the demands of its customers with a 20% larger online catalogue available across Europe. This correlated with a 20% increase in the number of products added to shopping carts.

The OneStock omnichannel solutions have proven their worth by increasing Petit Bateau customer satisfaction. But the success of the project is also down to the support of colleagues who have put an end to any digital/store rivalry through a project that improves all levels of the company.

Join Petit Bateau in improving the customer experience. Contact us about your OMS project today.