Case Studies

Company Overview
Lands' End is a leading direct merchant of traditionally styled, casual clothing for men, women and children, as well as soft luggage and products for the home. The company's products are offered through regular mailings of its primary and specialty catalogs and via the Internet. Lands' End is known for providing products of exceptional quality at prices representing honest value, enhanced by a commitment to excellence in customer service. They also operate 20 outlet stores in the US and UK.

The Business Challenge
To become a trend setting e-retailer, Land’s End chose the electronic gift certificate as an early addition to its Web site. The application was designed and implemented by Covansys, which provided all of the benefits of automation. Although it is a seemingly routine enhancement to an existing application, Lands’ End claims to be one of the first e-retailers to implement such an integrated solution. Lands’ End requirements:

• Seamless integration with the existing shopping cart.
  (The technical challenge was integrating non-inventory items into their order entry system and legacy custom-built shopping cart, while providing a unified shopping experience.)
• Provide a fun and fast customer experience, as well as a way to send a last-minute gift certificate on-line.
• Provide options for delivery of gift certificates that would meet customer needs: traditional paper and electronic.
• Designing and delivering a creative gift card selection process.
• Providing an intuitive easy interface to collect the necessary information needed to successfully deliver the gift certificate.
• Provide all the user-friendly management screens needed for Lands’ Ends reporting, including financial tracking.

The Covansys Solution
Through its on-site and off-site delivery model, Covansys delivered a fully integrated Web application, which has been implemented since early 2000. The technologies used include:

• Sun Systems 8-processor machine running Solaris UNIX
• Vignette Software to deliver the gift cards
• HTML 4.0 to service the majority of browsers
• CGI and C++ for checkout features
• MQ access to legacy IMS Mainframe systems
• Advanced email capabilities designed and implemented by Covansys, and processed through a Web-based mail Application Service Provider to the recipient
• Web Server running Apache Web Server Software

Results:

• The ability to link customers directly back to their e-commerce enabled Web site, where they can immediately spend their certificate
• Better control and accuracy on maintenance and delivery
• Integration with existing personalization, which enhanced the value of this option
  
• Increased validation in the redemption process, lowering the customer service costs
  
• Decreased human involvement in the process, increasing productivity in other areas and reducing errors

Last but not least, every recipient of a gift certificate is now potentially a new long-term Lands’ End customer!