Burberry is one of the first luxury traders to massively implement CRM systems

Recently, this British traditional luxury goods maker went completely online using the digital platform of the company called Salesforce.com. This company provides its solutions based on a cloud system for some time already but Burberry is the very first of the conservative, luxury goods producers who decided to implement the CRM (customer relationship management) platform. It seems to be another logical step in a trendy way of the CEM (customer experience management).

Companies all around the world solve the same problem – the traditional marketing has its limits and we are no longer able to recognize what decision processes drive our customers. They realized it is all a lot emotional and one cannot be really persuading his customer through a single TV spot. A perfect, unified experience is now considered as the best marketing tool so if you go to Cartier for example, you can make a complaint if they do not offer you a glass of champagne. Chains all around the world use the very same perfume, furniture or fresh flowers in every local store. The burst of the new digital media gave this trend another tool to use – digital platforms which are able to unify all your company systems, databases etc. and help you with managing the relationship with your customers.

Back to Burberry. The company’s CEO Angela Ahrendts decided to create a social enterprise which goes digital from one end to another. They tried to take all the elements which make the feeling of Burberry and pack them into the one, complex digital code. They literally moved the world of Burberry to the digital environment to make it accessible from anywhere. The goal is to allow a total access from any medium possible, the only condition is the internet connection. In the terms of CEM the intention is clear – to create an environment which gives the very same feeling of the brand to anybody who tries to touch it.

What I personally find good about it is the fact that they can use the range of all possible digital media and provide their company’s elements – fashin shows, online stores, acess to all possible products, history footage, have any kind of up-to-date information just one click away. On the other hand, it sets an industry standard which might not be so enjoyable at all. Burberry opens its gates to anyone in terms of getting information, people suspiciously consume it on the field of social media and one can lose its distant, luxury status of something unreachable. Another thing you might lose on the way creating the social enterprise is the local esprit. Not everyone desire for the unified experience. From time to time we want to feel the local sense – shopping in the Burberry store on Savile Row should be different from the Burberry Dubai let’s say. But it’s slowly happening that it’s not.

One might say that shift goes in a wrong direction but on the other hand, tablets and smart phones are just yet another medium. A new medium which slowly replaces store or a fashion show – the old medium. An interesting thing is to see such an quick digital media implementation by a company which was, several years earlier, completely negative about even an online store. In the past, these luxury makers were boldly declaring that they would never going to lower their standards in such a manor. Yet, here we are and they are investing some big amounts of money to build a social enterprise which goes totally online, accessible from anywhere in the world.

Angela Ahrendts about Burberry's cooperation with salesforce.com