(Left) Jirayoot Karnjanamayoon, Chief Information Officer, The Mall Group Co., Ltd. together with (Right) Watchara Jiracharoensuwan, Deputy Managing Director, Enterprise Commercial Business, Microsoft Thailand
Announcing the advancement of its retail business using cloud technology to satisfy customers for all lifestyles and situations
Bangkok – 9 November 2022: The Mall Group is moving forward to achieve its business goal to ‘Modernize Retail’ by partnering with Microsoft Thailand, bringing the cloud technology ‘SAP on Azure’ to empower its business potential, connect online and offline services seamlessly, and transform all systems into a centralized model to serve customers of all lifestyles.
Companies in a wide variety of industries agree that Customer Experience (CX) is a key to success in their business and when it comes to retail business that needs to please a lot of customers daily, more important than knowing customer needs is adjusting the business strategy in a timely manner and serving customers under all circumstances.
The Mall Group, one of Thailand’s largest mall operators, has vision on this challenge – a lot of customers have been using online services since COVID-19 began two years ago. Comparing the number of customers served through online services and at the department store – after the historic disruption caused by the pandemic, the big player in retail business found that the online service is still a distribution channel favored by some customers. As it has the ‘Customer Journey Ecosystem’ at its core, The Mall Group intimately understands all customer needs. This has led to its ability to bring quality products and excellent services to customers.
This interesting insight inspired The Mall Group to adapt its strategy into a seamless O2O business model combining online and offline seamlessly. The mission was to create a multi-channel distribution system connecting two distribution channels – as if they were part of the same. To complete the mission, the forward-looking mall operator chose a cloud platform as its major weapon and brought unique experiences to their customers through the extended service ‘M ONLINE APPLICATION’ the app that lets customers be able to shop in department stores e.g. The Mall, Emporium, Emquartier, Paragon and M Lifestore through their smartphone, where services and promotions are matched perfectly in all places. This conversion aimed to maintain The Mall Group’s ability to serve customers holistically, yet with more convenience for all lifestyles in any situation.
Moreover, the customer-centric retailer also works following its strategy ‘Redefined 4P’s’ (Product Curation, Privileges, Personalization, and Partnership) by presenting M ONLINE FASHION & LIFESTYLE COMMUNITY CITIZENS, which combines the shopping experience on online and offline channels, aiming to satisfy the new generation shopper – as what they need isn’t just general products but high quality with unique styles as well as personalized and high-end branded products. If shoppers are into fashion, lifestyle, and beauty, the products they are looking for must be trending products.
The mission of ‘taking an on-ground department store online’, which The Mall Group was eager to make happen, was empowered by new technology and innovation able to ‘Modernized Retail’. The new business model has increased business agility, allowing The Mall Group to respond to customer needs faster and satisfy customers with the best service. All of this success will enable the company to expand its business as the future of retail.
Jirayoot Karnjanamayoon, Chief Information Officer, The Mall Group Co., Ltd., said: “Running a business that is able to quickly adjust to various situations and meet customer needs, we found that cloud technology was the solution to enable business agility. Here, the major migration of The Mall Group was to connect online and offline stores. In particular, we worked on this mission while considering the importance of security systems e.g. data security. The IT team was trained to use the new technology in the correct way. The world class security systems in Microsoft’s technology took the biggest part, making the transformation smooth and putting us at ease when it came to data security. The solution from Microsoft also allows us to expand our business through up-to-date technology and innovation for any situation in the future.”
SAP on Microsoft Azure was chosen by The Mall Group as the solution that meets the company’s business goals, which are transforming to seamless O2O and setting high-level security. In this case the trustworthy retailer put data security as the first priority due to it having vast amounts of data to manage and store. SAP on Microsoft Azure gave the company an advantageous system to comply with regulations e.g. PDPA, without losing business agility, effective workflows, and the scale of flexibility needed for business expansion.
Jirayoot Karnjanamayoon, Chief Information Officer, The Mall Group Co., Ltd. demonstrates when customers use the machine at The Mall Lifestore Ngamwongwan
“Our goal is to serve customers with the latest technology for retail in Thailand; we are very determined to succeed. For the last 6-7 years, our IT system has improved rapidly as we have fully invested in technology, with the confidence that it would be a turning point to create new opportunities. And we’re expanding relentlessly for that. Migrating to SAP to Microsoft Azure is a huge project that has completely succeeded in a very short period of time – only 3½ months. This is the fastest IT system management I have ever witnessed. I appreciate the effective system and tools in Microsoft Azure as well as the Microsoft team, who came with a perfect work-plan and strong strategy that made every step untroubled, and allowed us to continue to be able to serve our customers regularly even when the system was in the testing phase,” Jirayoot added.
Apart from the technology, The Mall Group plans to fill their IT team with the new generation as the retail company continues to bring in the latest innovations and allows the IT team to test, learn and improve their skills with it, following the advancement of technology. The Mall Group’s IT team works as IT center, responsible for all departments’ backend systems, allowing team members to have a chance to learn with excitement and fun in various campaigns and be a successful part of IT and business at the same time. The IT team members also have an executive as their mentor to learn from and have a chance to develop themselves for a successful future career.
“Microsoft Thailand appreciates the opportunity that The Mall Group gave us to bring our technology to be a part of its business transformation. I’m confident that the technology we presented: ‘SAP on Microsoft Azure’, will empower business potential endlessly. I would like to give credit to Metro Systems Corporation, who worked with us on The Mall Group project. Our technology will support serving customers seamlessly as well as be fundamental in creating a trustworthy cloud solution for this retail businesses to achieve its goal of ‘Modernized Retail’,” Watchara Jiracharoensuwan Deputy Managing Director, Enterprise Commercial Business, Microsoft Thailand added.
SAP on Azure solutions helps you optimize your enterprise resource planning (ERP) in the cloud using the security features, reliability, and scalable SAP-certified infrastructure of Azure. Solutions are designed to manage transactions and analyze data in one step for speeding business, creating effective business, and connecting all IT systems together.