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As one of the region’s leading telecommunication providers, Liberty Latin America Ltd. keeps millions of people and businesses in Latin America connected.
Operating across Latin America, including Chile, Puerto Rico, the Caribbean, and others, Liberty Latin America has a customer base that is extremely broad and diverse. Not only is there variation in services and product bundles across different regions, there is also a mix of customer economics, scale, and need. For example, in the Cayman Islands, the average customer spend is much higher than Jamaica, just next door.
These types of variations can be readily addressed at brick-and-mortar retail stores, but managing this through digital sales presented a challenge. Liberty Latin America knew it needed a robust e-commerce platform to enhance and unify its digital customer experience. Then the COVID-19 pandemic forced the closure of retail stores – giving a new urgency to the project. As Ed Sherwood-Smith, Senior Director, Digital Platform Delivery at Liberty Latin America, explains, “We were going to build the most perfect digital experience across Latin America in a very measured and controlled way, with a three-year road map. Then the whole world changed – everyone was quarantined – and we had to go digital right away. We knew we were going to need a really strong, flexible e-commerce engine.”
The goal for Liberty Latin America was to build a single e-commerce platform that could support all its markets. “There was no way we could go market by market and customize each time,” says Sherwood-Smith. “It would take way too long and would create additional costs in terms of maintenance and future developments. We needed one platform that could provide a user-friendly and unified customer experience while also giving us the flexibility to meet region-specific requirements.”
Enter SAP Commerce Cloud solutions.
Not only do SAP Commerce Cloud solutions provide advanced business-to-consumer and business-to-business capabilities, but they also can be customized to manage a variety of catalogs, products, and configurations for creating exceptional, hyperpersonalized omnichannel experiences. Plus, the flexibility and scalability of the cloud mean it can be deployed quickly in new markets and integrated with various CRM systems as needed without exorbitant on-premise infrastructure costs.
To get its new e-commerce platform up and running as quickly as possible, Liberty Latin America also took advantage of the telco and utilities accelerator for the SAP Commerce solution. “We started planning in June,” explains Sherwood-Smith, “and were live in four months. By October, we were accepting orders in Jamaica, then in Panama by December. Puerto Rico was in February, and by April, we were live in Costa Rica.”
As Liberty Latin America launched the initial e-commerce stores using the out of the box storefront capabilities , it has also started working with advanced capabilities to start using eCommerce APIs directly to build a true headless Digital experience.
Another challenge for Liberty Latin America was to increase customer value along the customer lifecycle. That means making sure that once a customer has signed on for one service, they keep coming back for more. Again, this was fairly straightforward under the local store model, where sales people could make the direct case for bundles or packages. But engaging this way through digital channels would be difficult.
To address the issue, Liberty Latin America deployed the SAP Emarsys Customer Engagement platform. “Now,” says Sherwood-Smith, “we can craft sales in a way that enables targeted cross-selling and up-selling so that we can help customers experience our services better and increase revenue at the same time.”
Going forward, Liberty Latin America will continue to roll out its new e-commerce platform to current and future markets – from Montserrat, where it has tens of customers, to Panama, where it has many more.
Customer data management is also top of mind – putting SAP Customer Data Cloud solutions next on the list for deployment. “While we’re not dealing with the kind of data privacy regulations you have in Europe,” says Sherwood-Smith, “most of the places where we operate have some type of nascent privacy and data protection program in place. As things get stricter, we need to be ready.”
“The ultimate goal is to drive more traffic through our digital channels. From customer engagement to customer creation and to the actual sale – we want it all going through the same digital platform. SAP Customer Experience solutions are going to help get us there.”
To find out more about how Liberty Latin America is using SAP Customer Experience solutions, check out the replay of CX Live. Then visit us online to find out what SAP Customer Experience solutions can do for your business.
