For a brand with a 190-year heritage like Clarks, legacy shouldn’t mean being held captive by technology. Yet, after 12 years on a monolithic, on-premise SAP Hybris platform, that was their reality. Their digital operations were burdened by what their team called “12 years of sticky plasters,“ a series of tactical fixes that made the system inflexible and unreliable. Deploying simple content changes required a process so risky it could trigger up to 10 hours of global downtime, meaning the Clarks website would go offline for customers worldwide.

The challenge: a broken content supply chain

Clarks’ legacy system had created a state of constant friction. As the Head of Global Digital Product, Delivery and Transformation at Clarks, put it, “we just hit our heads against a brick wall basically with the lack of flexibility.“ Their content supply chain was broken because the system’s architecture tightly coupled the front-end presentation layer with the back-end, treating every content update like a major software release.

The key symptoms of this broken content supply chain included:

• Operational paralysis: Simple content updates, such as a promotional banner, took 3-4 days to go live and required developer support. Risky, monthly deployments were the norm, stifling any attempt at agile marketing.

• Static product stories: Their old asset management system, Adobe Scene7, limited them to “flat” and unengaging images. There was no capability to integrate video or create dynamic, localized content for different markets, leaving their rich product stories untold.

• Disconnected experiences: The system’s inflexibility led to poor user experiences, including a cumbersome 7-click checkout process and product images that failed to load on category pages, causing high customer drop-off rates.

The solution: a future-ready content engine

Clarks made the strategic shift to a fully composable architecture, choosing best-of-breed partners for each component of their new digital ecosystem. With commercetools selected to power their headless commerce transactions, they chose Amplience to form the technology foundation of their new content supply chain. This move was supported by a robust business change program, which aligned teams to the customer journey and provided five months of hands-on training to ensure a smooth transition.

The solution was two-fold:

1. Content Hub, our Digital Asset Management (DAM) solution, replaced Adobe Scene7. It provided a single source of truth for all of Clarks’ rich media, including video and campaign imagery. Teams could now manage and optimize every asset from a central library, ready for delivery to any channel.

2. Dynamic Content, our headless CMS, empowered the marketing and merchandising teams to make instant content updates. Our intuitive authoring interface allowed them to create, schedule, and optimize content without developer intervention. Because content is now decoupled from the back end, they can preview every change across any channel and publish in minutes, not days.

The results: agility, speed, and conversion

Replacing their legacy SAP Hybris monolith with Amplience’s modern content platform transformed operational problems into a strategic advantage for Clarks. The impact on performance and efficiency was immediate and has been successfully maintained.

• Radical content agility: Content updates now go live in 5-15 minutes, not days. The team can deploy changes 2-3 times per week instead of once a month, with zero downtime.

• Dramatic performance gains: Site speed increased by 44%, the add-to-basket rate rose by 79%, and they achieved a sustained 19% uplift in overall conversion.

• Enhanced customer experience: Clarks was able to launch a streamlined one-page checkout, implement effective content localization for global markets, and ensure a consistent, high-quality brand experience online.

The durability of these gains is a testament to the Amplience platform. As the Head of Global Digital Product, Delivery and Transformation confirmed, the results have lasted well beyond the initial launch:

“We’re still at that 19% conversion just through changing the platform, making it flexible, composable, scalable.“

Clarks’ story is a powerful testament to what’s possible when a great brand is powered by a frictionless content supply chain. By moving from a system that held them back to a platform that positions them for another century of success, they are ready for the future. To see how Amplience can help you reimagine your content supply chain, book a demo today.