METRO becomes a MarTech pioneer

By implementing a global marketing platform, METRO and IBM iX bring interactional, transactional, and master data points together to create unique customer experiences.

METRO is at the forefront of Wholesaling and recently extended its business beyond C&C stores – with Food Service Distribution, Hospitality Digital and Marketplace business models. To accommodate METRO’s growth ambition, a standardised Customer Data Platform, boosting conversions to customer activation and delivering revenue to all business models is needed. The goal is to create an enjoyable interaction with METRO for every customer, being fully personalised towards their needs.

See how a global marketing platform changes the whole customers’ interaction with METRO

Transforming the digital future of wholesale

A new era of TechStack for a new era of METRO marketing

The ambition is to launch a global marketing platform, which enables business functions to unify customer data across organisation and to deliver real-time consitent experiences across all channels. For this marketing platform, IBM iX and METRO described a data-driven operating model. The solution also requires an in-depth organisational change, transformation of marketing practice, shift in skills, both in METRO countries and at METRO head offices, and ways of working in marketing-planning and -operations. From a technical perspective, the platform requires the integration of multiple data sources.

IBM iX is working together with METRO countries, METRO.digital, and METRO AG using a standardised blueprint approach, enabling a global roll-out of the use cases to all METRO operated countries. The implementation of the first blueprint was started by METRO in January 2023. As a starting point in the customer life cycle journey, the use case “Onboarding – Welcome to METRO” was implemented. The result of this first use case is the creation and setup of a standardised onboarding campaign that is rolled out and activated in Spain as a pilot country. It builds the foundation for further replications and country rollouts. As of October 2023 the first use case is already rolled out to three more countries.

An enjoyable interaction for every customer –
fully personalised towards their needs

The new multichannel marketing platform supports all relevant customer interaction touchpoints, delivering the best offer at the right time to the right customer.
METRO changes all operating markets from manually selected offers to a fully automated refined 1:1 campaign management – based on a data interaction machine that drives sales and growth as main objective. The new solution comes with powerful marketing automation capabilities that enable METRO to work with automatised major marketing campaign use cases. On the other hand, the platform will allow the company to better understand its customers, target them with more relevant offers, and improve its overall marketing performance.

“Customers want to be understood across all channels. With the new marketing technology, we are able to deliver real-time consistent customer experiences across all channels and bring the whole customer interaction to a new level.”
Roland Maisenhälder
Vice President Business Processes Customer, METRO.digital

More to come: Holding up the promise of business growth

The new tool as well as the new ways of working in the future will secure an increase of efficiency, transparency in regard to success of marketing campaigns, revenue and last but not least higher co-worker satisfaction. Within the next two years, IBM iX will support METRO in rolling out 17 use cases worldwide to all 30 METRO-operated countries.

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