Maxeda enriches the customer experience with Google Cloud and SAP

Maxeda DIY Group is the largest DIY retailer in the Benelux with Praxis stores in the Netherlands and Brico and BricoPlanit stores in Belgium and Luxembourg. Customer expectations in the retail industry have undergone a massive change due to technological innovation. This has pushed organizations to transform their customer experience to become data-driven, relevant, and personally curated.

To stay ahead of the curve, Maxeda wanted to up its digital transformation game as part of making itself agile and scalable while improving the company’s ability to support its customers’ needs. Creating the kind of experience envisioned by the business necessitated an agile yet stable environment to host SAP S/4HANA with efficient connectivity to the existing systems and processes.

Migration towards smoother integration of business processes and models

Based on their past relationship and Maxeda’s desire for a partner with extensive retail experience, the DIY retailer collaborated with Capgemini to tailor an end-to end solution that fit the company’s needs.

Erik Cuypers, Group CIO from Maxeda, explains: “Our relationship with Capgemini goes beyond a purely transactional one. It is one where we both understand and align our goals and work together towards success. In this endeavor, Capgemini, based on their own technical expertise as well as their understanding of our landscape and needs, proactively suggested moving to the public cloud, as that would not only bring us cost benefits, but prepare us for any disruptions in the future.”

To realize Maxeda’s future vision, the partners agreed to develop an environment that was agile, stable, easy to upgrade, and future ready. In addition, Maxed and Capgemini partnered with Google to reap the full benefits of such an environment.

In the early days of the project, Maxeda and Capgemini met with the Google Cloud team to tailor the solution to fit the project’s requirements. Firstly, through close cooperation, the three organizations facilitated the migration of Maxeda’s infrastructure to Google Cloud with a dedicated project team overseeing the entire process from day one all the way to the go-live date.

Google Cloud delivers flexibility and efficiency

Beyond lowering costs, the solution also expanded Maxeda’s access to data analytics. By upgrading to S/4HANA, the partners ensured a seamless integration with SAP’s data and analytics portfolio.

Theo Van Roekel, Market Unit Leader for Consumer Products, Retail and Distribution (CPRD) at Capgemini Netherlands, adds: “Going forward, it is better to make use of the public cloud instead of running our own data centers and in this case, we have already started to see marked improvements in performance. Google Cloud Platform brings in a flexibility of scaling up or down that might be needed for a temporary peak season of activity or to tackle trickle down effects of any unplanned macro event. Most importantly, we live in uncertain times where products and systems are evolving very fast, and this infrastructure can deal with that kind of change.”

Bolstering the ecosystem to be future-ready

By the end of the project, Maxeda possessed a modern, agile, and stable infrastructure that prepared the company for potential innovations by being able to easily undergo future upgrades. The solution seamlessly blended business processes and business models in a way that now facilitates a holistic view of the company’s customers and products. This enables Maxeda to elevate its customer-first approach by better understanding customer needs in terms of service and products. As a result, the business is better positioned to provide an omnichannel client experience.

To get the best out of this solution, Maxeda and Capgemini have created a data architecture roadmap and planned landscape development for the next 5 years. This will not only bolster the retailer’s ecosystem, but also ensure that it stays at the forefront of the market.