Situation

$3B public medical device business with slowing growth due to lagging innovation, thinning acquisition opportunities and declining leverage with distribution partners. Fragmented business units each with their own non-transactional web presence lacking a cohesive on-line image and marketing strategy. Corporate web presence used primarily to perform basic investor interface functions. No common technology platform to build upon across the globe and no common data warehouse to draw consistent product related information from. Industry moving more towards telephonic and web based transactions and away from in office ordering and fulfillment. Company had significant business which was direct to doctor which was drawing transactional e-commerce traffic to nascent but poorly supported and disparately designed sites. Distributed businesses had little to offer to attract customers to transact business on line. Overall business had a powerful clinical education program which could be further scaled and offered on line to attract traffic.

Action

Developed and implemented a global platform (Hybris & Adobe) for transactional e-commerce including a powerful data warehouse to collect and maintain information, photos, and videos required to support over 300,000+ SKUs on line in multiple languages around the world. Utilized clinical education and cross business unit marketing to draw traffic to the site across both direct and distributed businesses. Transactional platform supported all major global currencies and was integrated into multiple ERP systems for transaction and inventory processing. Eliminated 30+ independent web sites around the globe in the process.

Result

Platform remains in place today as the go to location for product information and clinical education and has been revitalized to handle significant expansion due to M&A activities over the last several years. Online transactional activity continues to grow faster than any other channel on this platform around the globe