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theMechanism launched a global E-commerce Web site for Jonathan Ward London

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Background

Following the successful launch of its unique range of hand-poured, organic bees wax scented candles into the UK and US wholesale markets in 2008, Jonathan Ward London continues its business expansion with a feature-rich E-commerce Web site and sophisticated back-office systems deployed on the pioneering Salesforce.com cloud computing platform.

Solution

“Jonathan Ward London has a remarkable product range and we knew from the start what a superb opportunity we had in being asked to conceive an end-to-end E-commerce system that would service a global market”, said Anthony Shafto, theMechanism’s Managing Director, EMEA. “What’s more, we were excited by the challenge of providing a single back-office solution that would handle online retail orders alongside wholesale orders without the need for any significant investment in infrastructure.”

Pete Everett, theMechanism’s Project Management Director, EMEA, continued: “We wanted the user experience to compliment the craftsmanship and elegance of the Jonathan Ward London brand and its product line with effortless shopping facilities. A custom-built E-commerce system with comprehensive Content Management functionality and seamless integration with PayPal’s payment processing services was the best way to achieve this.

But the truly unique aspect of the project for us was developing a custom application on the Salesforce.com platform that inter-operates with the Web site in real-time. We store all our user, product and order data in Salesforce.com and expose it to the Web site via Web Services. This is not an archiving approach—the data is manipulated by both systems synchronously. The beauty is that user and order data for retail customers can be entered at either end. It sits in Salesforce.com alongside all account and order data for wholesale customers where everything is then immediately available to the Customer Relationship Management capabilities for which Salesforce.com is renown. In essence, we’ve made a single repository for all the operational data the business needs—and it’s all accessible via a browser and/or an iPhone application with zero infrastructure maintenance costs.”

“One of the great things about the Salesforce.com platform is that you can deploy custom functionality so rapidly. It just wouldn’t have been possible to achieve this level of sophistication in the project’s eight week timeframe anywhere else,” added Oliver Shepherd, theMechanism’s Technical Director, EMEA. “The mid- and long-terms benefits are huge too. Salesforce.com’s CRM capabilities are best-of-breed and the business intelligence we can now harness is excellent. We even have the option of migrating the business’ entire financial accounting to the same application, generating wholesale invoices from successfully closed opportunities at the touch of a button—all without owning a single piece of hardware.”

“theMechanism came recommended as expert user experience designers and developers and I quickly saw why. They demonstrated meticulous attention to detail and showed deep sensitivity and commitment to the brand’s vision. I always felt confident in their ability to deliver a robust technology solution and beautiful design, but beyond that, the intelligence and creativity of their team has touched so many aspects of the business. They are more than just Web Designers, they are smart people who can immerse themselves in someone else’s business with transformative effects.”

Jonathan Ward
Founder and Creative Director
Jonathan Ward London Ltd

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