Changi Airport Group (CAG), the manager of a leading air hub in Asia Singapore Changi Airport, bagged the Best Innovation Award- The Disruptor in the recently concluded SAP Best Run Awards for Southeast Asia (SEA) for the successful deployment of SAP Commerce Cloud that enabled the Group to revamp iShopChangi.com (ISC), Changi Airport’s online shopping portal. With SAP Commerce Cloud as the Commerce Engine for ISC, the Group was able to overhaul the 5-year-old legacy platform and build a sustainable travel retail marketplace.

E-commerce is steadily growing in the Asia Pacific, largely fuelled by China, Indonesia, and India (Changi’s five key markets). The region’s massive digital transformation has advanced digital retail, resulting in the emergence of numerous online retail brands and online marketplaces. Today, more than ever, enterprises aim to provide a seamless omnichannel experience to gain a competitive edge, attract customers, and increase brand loyalty.

Recognising Challenges

Changi Travel Retail grew faster than passenger growth before COVID-19. Anticipating the changing retail landscape including changing traveller profiles, the arrival of the digital consumers, renewed competition, new business models, and Changi’s very own transformation, the Group embarked on a digital transformation journey dubbed as “Project Sunbird” to support the growing market opportunity for e-retail, unlock new sources of consumer value, and seize the opportunities to access incremental revenue pools to serve traveller needs. 

To do so, the organisation needed to urgently address key issues and limitations of its platform iShopChangi.com such as:

• Technology limitation to deliver CAG’s value proposition to retailers and consumers 
• Immature Commerce and Order Management System 
• The platform was not scalable to enable ISC’s growth ambition 
• Lack of suite of APIs to enable easy integration with other products/platforms 
• Limited marketplace capabilities to scale tenants and product range 
• Complex and limiting promotions configuration 
• Custom and bespoke legacy application

Deploying SAP E-Commerce Solution

The project was directed at implementing a commerce platform that is sustainable for the next five years based on business needs, with a capacity of up to two million transactions per annum. CAG selected SAP Commerce Cloud, a modern, scalable e-commerce platform, as the commerce engine to revamp ISC. The implementation was completed in a short period of 10 months due to the maturity of the capabilities and APIs of SAP Commerce Cloud, enabling CAG to ramp up its business initiatives at a faster pace.

Here are some of the remarkable outcomes of the SAP Commerce Cloud implementation:

• Merchant expansion by 5x, SKU expansion by 3x, and customer base expansion by more than 70,000– all in just six months
• Increased stability and scalability to manage twice the transactions of previous systems with no lag
• 150{aa282f308afcc222aaa21b0478c79e01a8fedd01972e2180867097bd93930f22} increase in transaction volume for both peak and average periods
• More robust security and controls
• Merchants and CAG users can have ease of access to the various platforms via SAP SSO
• Improved workflow and processing times of orders
• Faster/real-time reporting and analytics

“We launched our new platform in the middle of 2020. This has enabled us to pivot and scale the business beyond pre-COVID levels, serving our customers amidst the pandemic,” said Teo, Chew Hoon, Group Senior Vice President, Airside Concessions.

CAG won the Best Innovation Award against two equally commendable contenders from Vietnam: Golden Gate Trade & Service JSC and Loc Troi Group Joint Stock Company.

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