CHEFS Catalog serves up a satisfying shopping experience with sophisticated search and navigation service from IBM.

“IBM OmniFind Discovery Edition powers the entire navigation experience—portlets, images and navigation menus—to help shoppers find what they need in a way that’s most convenient and natural for them.”

—Dale Schuman

“I can’t even imagine what our staffing situation would be without IBM Omni Find Discovery Edition technology.”
—Dale Schuman

Why Become an On Demand Business?
Delivering contextually relevant product information increases responsiveness and helps eliminate customer frustration

For over 25 years, CHEFS Catalog has been a leading resource of advanced electric appliances, fine cookware and cutlery, and state-of-the-art tools for chefs and culinary professionals. When CHEFS Catalog was purchased from Neiman Marcus by private investors, the company had only seven months to build its infrastructure and launch a new online store. It was a tall order, given the strategic importance of online shopping to the company.

“Nearly half of our business income comes through our Web site,” explains Dale Schuman, director of information technology for CHEFS Catalog. “Additionally, our customer service staff relies on the site to respond to customer inquiries, so the impact on our success is even greater.”

In developing its online store, CHEFS Catalog wanted to create an atmosphere that would help turn shoppers into buyers. “Understanding shoppers’ intent, analyzing their behavior and then guiding them to the right product information are vital in helping shoppers make purchase decisions,” adds Schuman.

Preparing a recipe for success
Making it easy for shoppers to locate the products that best match their needs required more than traditional online search techniques. It required the ability to:

Tap product attributes and descriptive merchandising text throughout its catalog and present shoppers with intuitive hints to direct their searches.
Provide targeted browsing options that allow shoppers to iteratively select key attributes to help them discover the most appropriate products the company has to offer.
Empower marketing personnel to monitor customer behavior and enhance the online shopping experience.
Rapidly implement capabilities leveraging adaptable commerce-specific user-interface templates, configurations and vocabulary.

While the company initially focused on pulling content from its existing catalog, Schuman wanted the flexibility to draw information from numerous data sources, including recipes, how-to guides, expert advice and streaming video. By doing so, CHEFS Catalog could position itself as an industry authority to further differen­tiate itself from its competitors.

At the same time, with only three IT staff members, Schuman needed to ensure the company’s marketing team could manage site content and implement online promotions without relying on the IT department. “We’re a small company,” explains Schuman. “We simply don’t have the IT resources to keep the site fresh and support other business requirements as well.”

Understanding customer intent improves response
CHEFS Catalog selected IBM Commerce Module for OmniFind Discovery Edition software to deliver advanced content discovery and management capabilities to its more than two million customers. An IBM Information On Demand solution, the Commerce Module software enables CHEFS Catalog to better understand and meet customer expectations by steering them to pertinent product information.

“Our whole site depends on this tool,” says Schuman. “IBM OmniFind Discovery Edition powers the entire navigation experience—portlets, images and navigation menus—to help shoppers find what they need in a way that’s most convenient and natural for them.”

Shoppers and customer service staff now can search through more than 3,000 catalog items using traditional keyword searches, rich natural language queries, navigation based on product attributes, or a combination. Because each product can be associated with a comprehensive list of characteristics, including brand, category, price, construction (e.g., stainless steel versus copper cookware) or even product shape (e.g., heart-shaped or square), customers can refine search results based on the product attributes that matter most to them. In fact, the ability to find contextually relevant product information from both structured and unstructured content and narrow these results with attribute refinement and sorting options makes the search box one of the most heavily used features on the site.

“A customer may be looking for a CHEFS knife,” explains Schuman. “They may have a budget, a favorite brand or a favorite product line within that brand. By helping shoppers more easily find what they’re looking for, OmniFind Discovery Edition software enables us to provide customers with a very positive shopping experience, so that they don’t abandon the site in frustration.”

The company expects to gain greater business insight into customer needs through the solution’s reporting and analytic features. “With OmniFind Discovery Edition software, we can review customer search terms to understand what customers are looking for and enhance our merchandise mix accordingly,” Schuman adds.

Adapting to change efficiently
Additionally, IBM Commerce Module for OmniFind Discovery Edition software puts control of site promotions and content in the hands of the marketing department for increased efficiency and responsiveness.

Using the software’s Management Console tool, marketing staff can manage and change images and promotions on a weekly basis to keep customers returning. They can update relevance criteria and weighting or add new cooking industry vocabulary relationships to fine-tune search responses. They can modify navigation options to direct users to specific products, such as seasonal offerings. And they can even create specialized landing pages for targeted e-mail promotions.

Learning how to use the software and managing the site has been easy for the company’s marketing staff. “In general, our graphic designer and marketing specialists can control most changes with no technical assistance,” adds Schuman.

Meeting an aggressive launch deadline
Working with IBM Content Discovery Lab Services, CHEFS Catalog mapped the catalog content and implemented content discovery and management capabilities in less than eight weeks. “We wouldn’t have met our implemen­tation deadlines and site requirements without OmniFind Discovery Edition technology and the support of IBM Content Discovery Lab Services,” says Schuman.

IBM technology also provides a robust platform for data integration and order processing. As customers place orders, IBM WebSphere MQ software allows data sharing among the company’s order management, customer service and catalog management systems to enable real-time processing. DB2 system provides a flexible, easy-to-manage database for select customer-related information such as wish lists and registries. IBM System i technology provides a resilient platform to help strengthen availability of the site’s online ordering capabilities.

The solution’s overall value and fast deployment made it the right choice for the company. “IBM technology provides extensive functionality at a better price point than competitive products,” says Schuman.

Boosting revenues through better service
By strengthening online service, CHEFS Catalog is well-positioned to improve its market ranking. “With IBM Information On Demand technology, we can improve how we interact with customers online,” says Schuman. “This is critical in increasing conver­sion rates and effectively competing against much larger companies.”

The company can also respond rapidly to market needs, seasonal sales, and cross-sell and up-sell opportunities to increase revenue. For example, using IBM OmniFind Discovery Edition technology, CHEFS Catalog implemented a highly successful clearance promotion that helped liquidate slow-moving items. “By enabling our marketing staff to change our presentation regularly, we are more nimble and can more effectively time promotions to maxi­mize sales,” says Schuman.

Finally, the solution has helped the organization optimize its resources to reduce operational costs. “Our primary goal is to run a profitable business and that means managing expenses closely,” Schuman adds. “I can’t even imagine what our staffing situation would be without IBM OmniFind Discovery Edition technology.”

On Demand Business Benefits

• Creating a contextually relevant search and browsing experience for shoppers improves customer satisfaction, thereby increasing conversion rates
• Dynamically analyzing catalog content to present intuitive browsing options helps shoppers discover the most appropriate products available
• Empowering marketing personnel to author online promotions and manage content without reliance on IT increases responsiveness to market opportunities

Key Components
Software
IBM Commerce Module for OmniFind™ Discovery Edition
Other software: DB2®, IBM WebSphere® MQ
Servers
IBM System i™
Services
IBM Content Discovery Lab Services

For more information
Please contact your IBM sales representative or IBM Business Partner.

Visit our Web site at: ibm.com/software/data/enterprise-search

You can get even more out of Information Management software by participating in independently run Information Management User Groups around the world. Learn about opportunities near you at: ibm.com/software/data/usergroup

For more information about CHEFS Catalog, visit:
www.chefscatalog.com