Company News • 24.07.2013

NS Shopping Selects IBM to Transform Customer Experience with Mobile and Analytics Technologies

Leading South Korean home shopping network taps IBM

NS Shopping, a leading home shopping network in South Korea and part of the US$4.5 billion Harim Group, is working with IBM (NYSE: IBM) to transform the company by employing new tools to simultaneously improve customer experiences and the organization’s technology infrastructure.

The enterprise-wide transformation with analytics and ecommerce technology from IBM's Smarter Commerce initiative enables NS Shopping to uncover data insights about individual consumer preferences while developing mobile applications to deliver a consistent, connected customer experience across multiple devices.

NS Shopping currently sells its merchandise via television, catalogues and online, missing out on significant opportunity from a broadening set of sales channels where consumers are actively connecting with retailers. IBM will connect mobile and social technologies to empower NS Shopping to more easily reach shoppers wherever and whenever they prefer to browse and purchase products, providing seamless integration with the company’s operations and back-end systems.

NS Shopping will derive insights from Big Data gathered on the company's mobile and web properties. This information will be used by the company’s e-commerce and marketing teams to provide shoppers with personalized product recommendations, enabling smarter marketing and engagement with individual consumers.

A critical aspect of improving customer experiences will also be led by IBM Interactive, a leading global digital agency, which will strategize and implement improvements to user experience at NS Shopping’s online properties. IBM Interactive will focus on both the creative and digital components of NS Shopping’s web-based and mobile platforms and will design a renewed look and feel to not only deliver a differentiated shopping experience, but also strengthen the retailer’s brand image and customer engagement.

IBM technology will also allow NS Shopping to have a centralized, real-time view of customer and product data from across the company to better manage its supply chain and ensure effective order fulfillment. This visibility will give NS Shopping the insight and confidence it needs to further expand its product assortment to solidify its place as a one-stop shopping option. Rolling out these new capabilities is also a critical step in expanding the company’s omnichannel sales platform and achieving its long and short-term growth agenda.

Using IBM's MobileFirst Platform, NS Shopping developers are able to expedite the application development lifecycle and quickly deliver valuable mobile services to customers, thus improving customer satisfaction.

“Shoppers in Korea and around the world are in the midst of a major shift in how they engage with retailers, and are more frequently using mobile devices and social media to browse and purchase goods,” says Sangjun Hyun, Partner, Global Business Services, IBM Korea. “Retailers like NS Shopping are, in turn, expanding their sales channels and leveraging advanced analytics to deliver a smarter, more personalized customer experience.”

IBM's Smarter Commerce initiative features software and services that help companies transform their business processes to more quickly respond to shifting customer demands in today's digitally-transformed marketplace. The initiative is driven by business executives and department heads who are increasingly looking for ways to bring new levels of intelligent automation to marketing, sales, customer service, procurement and supply chain management.

IBM will provide IBM Power Systems and IBM System x servers as the foundation of NS Shopping’s infrastructure. Combined with software from IBM's Smarter Commerce initiative and IBM's MobileFirst Platform, this comprehensive solution will help NS Shopping streamline its IT infrastructure management, consolidate data flows and provide a single view of customer information and internal data.