Indigo Books and Music Inc.
Chapters.Indigo.ca Implements Microsoft-Based Technology to Streamline Operations and Cut Overall IT Spending
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Company Overview
Indigo Books & Music Inc. is a Canadian company committed to satisfying the booklover. The retail chain has 260 locations across Canada, and a major Web presence through one of Canada’s leading online shopping destinations, www.chapters.indigo.ca, which offers shoppers a choice of over a million products including books, CDs, DVDs, gifts, jewellery, and more. The Internet portion of Indigo’s business, which includes in-store kiosk terminals and the Web site, is key to the Company’s performance.
In mid-2001 Indigo merged with Chapters Inc., and following the merger, the number one priority for the Internet side of the business was to reduce overall costs. Part of Indigo’s business strategy was to closely align the retail and Internet portions of its business, ensuring a consistent, hassle-free customer experience.
Business Challenge
“Part of the process we went through was looking at ways we could drive the costs out of running the online business,” said Doug Caldwell, Chief Technology Officer, Indigo Books & Music Inc. “Our Internet business is very strategic from a customer standpoint. We wanted to ensure we were offering the functionality required by our customers to have a positive shopping experience, while creating greater efficiencies within our underlying technology from both an agility and cost savings perspective.”
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Solution
In an effort to reduce the costs of operating its Internet business and reduce the complexity of its technology infrastructure, Indigo reviewed all of the existing software used to run the Web site. Following this review, the Indigo team opted to upgrade and replace existing software with a complete Microsoft-based solution, using Windows 2000 Server Standard Edition, SQL Server 2000 Enterprise Edition and Commerce Server 2002.
Working closely with Microsoft Consulting Services, an organization with more than 100 offices, and just under 4,000 consultants worldwide, Indigo developed a plan for its new technology infrastructure that would map its IT needs with its business requirements, and help avoid any disruption to the e-commerce site. Microsoft Services acted as part of Indigo’s technical team throughout the planning and implementation of the new Microsoft infrastructure.
“Indigo’s key goal was to drive the costs of its IT environment down, part of which was planning for future growth,” said Robert Wood, Service Line Architect, Microsoft Consulting Services. “By moving to Commerce Server 2002, we positioned Indigo to be ready to take full advantage of XML Web services and have the business agility required to play in the connected world. Every step of the way, Microsoft Services was committed to the overall success of Indigo’s solution and enabling the company to realize maximum business value from its investment.”
Underlying Technology Powering chapters.indigo.ca
To power the Internet business, Indigo decided to migrate to Commerce Server 2002 to take advantage of the .NET framework, a set of Microsoft software technologies for connecting information, people, systems, and devices. Commerce Server 2002 is designed specifically to help enable organizations to easily connect online business to customers, partners, and communities by supporting the .NET Framework to enable the delivery of core e-business systems as XML Web services.
For Indigo, several features of Commerce Server form the heart of its e-commerce system. Visitors to www.chapters.indigo.ca use Commerce Server’s functionality such as sophisticated cross-catalogue searching and flexible cross-order processing to make buying more convenient. Commerce Server also includes tools to tailor order and merchandising processes to fit Indigo’s current requirements and future growth.
Searching Through A Million Items
Offering shoppers a selection of more than a million products, chapters.indigo.ca catalogues over 20 times the number of products sold by many competing online shopping sites. To handle the challenge of managing this extensive catalogue, Indigo implemented SQL Server 2000 Enterprise Edition. Microsoft SQL Server 2000 is the complete database and analysis offering for scalable e-commerce, line-of-business and data warehousing solutions.
When visitors use the search function on Indigo’s site, they are running a search through SQL Server’s database to retrieve the relevant product information. For the million-plus titles, SQL Server is used to house all of the content related to a specific book, video or DVD, including descriptions of the product, publisher’s information and reader reviews. In addition to the text related to each product, SQL Server houses the graphical page layout. Previously, this information was housed in some 5,000 different files. Indigo has now reduced the total number of files to less than 50.
“For each product we offer, we aim to provide our customers with as much information as possible,” says Caldwell. “When you are dealing with more than one million products this can be very challenging and SQL Server has provided a solid solution dealing with our intensive database needs.”
Business Benefits
By moving to Microsoft-based technology and taking full advantage of the interoperability of the servers, Indigo has been able to streamline operations, improve performance and reliability, and most importantly align IT spending with business objectives by reducing costs.
Streamlining Operations: Generating Cost Savings and Efficiencies
As an e-commerce operation, performance and reliability are key to Indigo’s success. Through the use of Microsoft-based technology, Indigo has been able to significantly improve the overall performance and reliability of its technology infrastructure.
In implementing Microsoft-based technology, Indigo’s primary goal was to drive down the costs of doing business online. One of the major steps in this process was the selection of SQL Server 2000 as the basis for the catalogue and search functions on the site.
“We looked at our overall solution, and we knew we had to consolidate in order to reduce both acquisition and maintenance related costs,” says Caldwell. “SQL Server costs less than one year’s maintenance for our previous technology platform.”
Following Indigo’s rollout of the Microsoft-based platform, the company has been able to further reduce IT related costs through server consolidation. “Prior to this upgrade, we maintained between 30 to 40 servers,” says Caldwell. “We have been able to reduce our total number of servers by half, reducing our overall hardware spend considerably and ultimately providing Indigo with greater business agility over the longer term.”
A .NET Future
Following the upgrade to Commerce Server 2002, Indigo is now ready for future growth and will be poised to take full advantage of the connectivity benefits offering by XML Web services. As customers and suppliers start to demand XML-based Web services, Indigo will be in a position to respond quickly, ensuring the company is able to maintain the reputation for customer service it has become famous for.
For More Information
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