Takko Holding
            

Since opening its first store in 1982, Takko Holding GmbH has grown into one of Europe's most successful fashion retailers. The company employs around 18,000 people and offers high-quality fashion for babies, children, women, and men in nearly 2,000 stores in 17 European countries.

Maximum connection with customers across all channels with a complete integration solution

The challenges facing the fashion industry are growing all the time. Stricter criteria for production sustainability, market decentralization through influencers, social networks, and their difficult-to-predict hypes, and rising customer demands make things difficult for fashion providers. Solutions are often cobbled together quickly to offer customers the latest services. In IT, that leads to a heterogenous system landscape with numerous service providers and no comprehensive overview for users. Not the best starting position when the objective is to recognize customer needs and satisfy them quickly while maintaining your own competitiveness.

In this highly competitive market, Takko Holding has found a way to attain greater flexibility and transparency. Their goal is to achieve maximum connection with customers across all channels, real-time communication, and flexibility in developing and connecting new services and apps in one uniform IT landscape. Takko chose webMethods to overcome this challenge because the integration platform from Software AG delivers all the important capabilities they need. The data from all existing and new systems can be consolidated and visualized quickly, easily, and with maximum flexibility to gain knowledge and insights.

Process integration across all channels

"Being customer oriented is close to our heart. We want to be available anytime, anywhere – in our stores, our online shop, and on social media. For us on the IT team, this posed the challenge of realizing our heterogenous system landscape on a single integration platform," says Kim Hoffmann, Team Leader for Integration & Application Development, Takko Holding GmbH.

The result: full implementation in a short period of time, transparency and overview of more than 50 systems, removal of complicated interfaces, and a smooth data flow. Takko’s IT team is enthusiastic: "Now we're involved in every project at Takko and can ensure communication between the online shop, OMS, and WMS in real time, so long wait times for customers are a thing of the past," notes Hoffmann with satisfaction. And since webMethods offers so many different adapters and ready-to-go services, the time to value at Takko is breathtakingly fast.

Use case 1: In-store availability

In-store availability was one of the first projects as part of the IT integration. A web service was developed that enables customers to check availability in a nearby store. "Customers can enter the ZIP code to check whether the item they want is available and then decide whether to order it in the online shop or purchase it in the store," explains Hoffmann. With this offering, Takko Holding is very well positioned to face the growing trend of integrating online and offline segments.

Use case 2: Takko Friends app

Another project involved integrating the Takko Friends app, which customers can use to collect points and later redeem them. Using webMethods, Takko sends the master data to the provider and queries the reporting data from the provider to process it further and gain key insights into customer buying behavior – all in conformance with data protection and compliance requirements, of course.

For Takko Holding, the integration solution with webMethods has successfully enabled them to reach their goal of maximum connection with customers. By continually removing old interfaces, the company is honing the efficiency of its processes and cutting costs as a result. The integration solution can also help facilitate the topic of sustainability: Many of Takko’s products are certified to the OEKO-TEX® Standard 100 or GOTS. webMethods transmits this customer-relevant information to the online shop, and it provides another building block in the company's sustainability strategy.

As a member of the Fair Wear Foundation, Takko has been committed for many years to improving working conditions in textile factories. In addition, Takko is a member of Better Cotton and champions sustainable cotton growing and production. With its commitment to sustainability and a seamless, customer-oriented implementation, the company is keeping its finger on the pulse of the times and its customers.