Newell Rubbermaid Undergoes Online Overhaul

They would seem to have little in common, apart from being among the most recognizable brand names in the world: Rubbermaid, Sharpie, Graco, Calphalon, Dymo, Goody, Irwin Industrial Tools and Paper Mate. Yet they, and more than two dozen others, are all part of Newell Rubbermaid, the $6.5 billion consumer and commercial products company.

 

Despite belonging to one company, these well-known brands didn't share a consistent technology strategy for success on the Internet. Newell Rubbermaid maintained separate Web sites for each, using a combination of commercial and open source technologies.

 

"We determined that neither of our corporate managed legacy Web site platforms nor the various other platforms being used by our brands were meeting our needs," says Bert Dumars, vice president of E-Business and Interactive Marketing for Newell Rubbermaid. "They required too much work to maintain, and we had a lean IT staff. When we needed updates or simple content changes, we had to go through agencies -- an expensive and time-consuming process."

 

According to Alex Alexandrou, director of E-Business Global Information Technology, the technology behind the brand sites forced them into common templates that made their appearances too similar. To address these issues and others, such as integration with the company's SAP enterprise resource planning (ERP) system, Newell Rubbermaid sought to manage its more than 30 Web sites in a consistent and cost-effective way, yet allow each site to be designed and function as distinctively as possible.

Newell Rubbermaid chose to base its new content management and Internet strategy on Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007 and Microsoft Commerce Server 2007, and to use Microsoft BizTalk Server 2006 R2 to integrate the e-commerce functions of its new Web sites with its ERP system.

 

The company began implementing the strategy with a new site for its Graco baby products brand, and turned to digital agency LBi Atlanta for design, user experience and technical implementation. Gracobaby.com went live in December 2008, and the other new sites are expected to follow it onto the Microsoft platform through 2011.

 

For the Graco site, the agency created an innovative, interactive carousel of images that presents the breadth of the brand while allowing site visitors to click an image to go directly to the product or category in which they're interested. Additional features, such as a configurable workflow, automate and speed the process of approving new or updated site content.

 

Newell Rubbermaid is also taking advantage of capabilities to set up blogs, RSS feeds and MySites in order to increase in social interaction among customers and between customers and the company. MySites, for example, is the foundation for "MyGraco" personalized pages that visitors can use to make and share product wish lists, receive news related to the products they already own and customize their page views.

 

Big Savings

Aside from being cost-effective, brand managers can now implement content updates on their own without the need for help from outside agencies. Updates that previously took days can now be implemented within hours, and new features implemented on one site are easily deployed to other sites. That means big savings.When the new Web sites are fully rolled out across the company's brands, the savings in maintenance fees is expected to reach $1.5 million over two years, according to Dumars.

 

Integration with SAP is another key benefit. "Our Web sites don't exist in a vacuum," says Alexandrou. "Conducting e-commerce means integrating the e-commerce front end with credit verification, inventory data and distribution functions that are handled by SAP. On our new sites, this integration is seamless -- another win-win for us and our customers. Because e-commerce is now easier for us to do, we expect to do more."

 

One of the most exciting new directions enabled by the move to Microsoft-based Web sites is the increase in social interaction among customers and between customers and the company.

 

"Now, with the introduction of social media tools, we can orchestrate the conversation with our consumers and guide them to find and purchase our products," closes Dumars.