Munro Footwear Group (MFG) has selected Boomi to assist with its eCommerce and digital transformation roadmap goals.

MFG has created an integrated data foundation platform using the Boomi AtomSphere Platform to support its eCommerce transformation agenda, making it easier to scale up and promote better customer initiatives.

The move comes off the back of the pandemic, where the company previously had to shut its retail stores in Australia. They saw an urgent need to strengthen their existing online offerings and sought solutions to enhance and promote better customer experiences.

MFG CTO Keng Ng said that the company prioritised building an intelligent digital back-end that would connect every facet of the business required to deliver a positive customer experience. They set out to solve the historical disconnect between the footwear industry and eCommerce.

"While a slightly too small or large top may not result in a return, the same cannot be said about footwear. For this reason, footwear remains one of the last retail categories to fully embrace online sales," says Ng

"This, along with the internal complexities faced after conducting eight acquisitions over the last decade, prompted us to engage a specialist to help connect our data requirements, integrate multiple systems, and provide us the flexibility to unplug and connect new 'things' so that changes to the business aren't open-heart surgery each time."

Boomi's low-code, cloud-native integration platform as a service (iPaaS) was used to integrate the systems that make up MFGs' brick-and-mortar and eCommerce operations. This allowed for the company's enterprise resource planning (ERP) and ordering systems to be initiated in less than a month. This helped promote business continuity, and MFG enhanced its 'ship-from-store' capabilities across 26 pilot stores in the space of four weeks.

"The Boomi AtomSphere Platform enables us to connect operations so we have visibility and control over our data, allowing us to make real-time decisions and furthering our expansion online," says Ng.

"These connections also helped us mitigate supply chain issues by enacting quick, tactical changes while some of our containers were held up in Asia for several months."

Boomi head of business development for ANZ Nathan Gower says Boomi technology can help businesses of all sizes navigate a tricky post-pandemic climate by providing better-digitised solutions.

"Traditional retailers experienced a battering during COVID-19, with in and out lockdowns across the country testing the business viability of those heavily relying on brick-and-mortar. By using Boomi to create a central nervous system for its systems and data, Munro Footwear Group overcame these hurdles and kept pace with the digital economy," he says.

"From here it's onward and upward for the company, with the integrated data foundation primed to drive intelligence and embed personalisation across the business."