Composing a New Commerce Ecosystem

In any category, there are long-established companies whose status transcends from legacy into legendary—becoming the standard by which all competitors are judged. HARMAN is one such firm, a company that stands at the pinnacle of the audio and infotainment summit. HARMAN’s brand portfolio includes AKG, Harman Kardon, Infinity, JBL, Lexicon, Mark Levinson, and Revel, all revered by audiophiles.

HARMAN wanted to optimize its direct relationship with its consumers, which would require building a more streamlined, experience-driven commerce ecosystem that could ultimately lead to strong brand loyalty. The ability to impact consumer relationships was hampered by technical hurdles—HARMAN operated 10 completely different commerce platforms around the planet, resulting in a system that was not optimal for its brand or its consumers. Astound was asked to partner with HARMAN to create a multitiered migration and development plan to transfer its entire catalog to Demandware (now Salesforce Commerce Cloud).

After our digital strategists mapped out HARMAN’s global digital commerce ecosystem, it became clear that consolidation was essential: a single global experience-driven commerce ecosystem that would optimize operational efficiencies, maximize site performance, enhance revenue, and begin to develop a unified customer experience to propel engagement, activation, loyalty, and highly valuable concierge services. HARMAN also required the ability to scale its commerce rapidly and easily around the world, allowing it to effortlessly establish and nurture new brand sites in new regions.

Our digital strategists, experience designers, and engineers knew they had to design a holistic commerce ecosystem that was robust, scalable, and resilient. We developed and configured 35 transactional sites with nine separate payment procedures encompassing 13 countries and seven languages. We did all of this in conjunction with the company’s digital marketing and customer experience objectives, ensuring a seamless experience for HARMAN’s valued customers.

Our collaboration with HARMAN has resulted in a comprehensive and responsive experience-driven commerce ecosystem worthy of the company’s renowned brand. The result is a powerful ecosystem that harnesses technology, design, data, and storytelling to convey the HARMAN story all around the world.

Astound’s seven-year partnership with Demandware (and now Salesforce) continues to pay dividends for clients, with the HARMAN project serving as the latest success story.

• Sales growth increased 6x over four years
• Site speed increased by 800%
• Year-over-year SEO traffic increased by 115%
• 50% increase in page growth
• HARMAN nominated Astound for—and we won—Demandware’s Fast Track Award, which is presented to clients who’ve harnessed Demandware to achieve “…lightning speed-to-market [for] one or more commerce sites…”