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Case study · Danone · Aug 2023 → Oct 2024

Moving a global DTC estate from a monolith to composable commerce

Global Digital DTC Solution Manager. Recruited with a defined mandate: lead Danone’s transition to composable commerce across brands and markets, while scaling experimentation, analytics and platform governance.

−70%
manual operations
2-yr
platform vision and roadmap
Role
DTC Solution Manager, platform owner
Team
A team of PMs, plus cross-functional stakeholders
Platforms
Commercetools / Magento, SFMC, SAP CDC, PIM/DAM
Partners
Retail (POS/OMS), Merchandising, Content Ops
Scope
Global, across brands and markets

A transformation mandate, not a feature backlog.

Market launches were bottlenecked on a monolithic commerce stack. Pricing, promotions, inventory and content changes all needed manual work, per brand and per market.

I was recruited to change the platform underneath: move to composable commerce (MACH), with API-first, headless integrations, so that brands and markets could change one capability without waiting on the whole stack. Alongside it, the job was to make experimentation, analytics and data governance work the same way everywhere.

The target architecture

Storefronts brands × markets, headless API layer CommerceCommercetoolsMagento CRMSalesforceMarketing Cloud IdentitySAP CDC (Gigya) Product contentPIM / DAM RetailPOS / OMS AnalyticsGA4 · GTMLooker Studio Each capability sits behind an API, so a brand or market can change one of them without a release of the whole stack.
Simplified. The platforms are the ones named in my CV; the drawing shows how they relate, not a full integration map.

Four decisions that mattered.

  1. 1. A two-year platform vision before any migration.

    Set the vision and roadmap for composable commerce first: API-first, headless integrations across brands and markets on Commercetools/Magento, Salesforce Marketing Cloud, SAP CDC (Gigya) and PIM/DAM.

    Why: every brand and market launch was blocked on the same monolith.

  2. 2. Remove manual work together with the teams doing it.

    Partnered with Retail (POS/OMS), Merchandising and Content Ops to deliver pricing and promotion rules, inventory visibility and CMS tooling.

    Why: pricing, promotions, inventory and content changes were exactly where the manual work was.

  3. 3. Experimentation as a practice, on one analytics stack.

    Institutionalised A/B testing, CRO and personalisation, and standardised GA4, GTM and Looker Studio across brands.

  4. 4. Vendor choices on cost and time-to-value.

    Led a build-vs-buy evaluation for ratings and reviews (BazaarVoice vs PowerReviews), and governed multi-platform data and GDPR compliance.

What moved.

−70%
manual operations, through pricing/promo rules, inventory visibility and CMS tooling
2-yr
platform vision and roadmap set for composable commerce across brands and markets
CRO
conversion and CSAT lifted by making experimentation and personalisation a standing practice
1
analytics stack (GA4, GTM, Looker Studio) shared by every brand

The team.

I led a team of PMs and a wider group of stakeholders across eCommerce, merchandising and content tooling, and coached the PMs on Agile delivery. Squad throughput and market engagement improved as the platform work and the team practices landed together.

Stack & practices

  • MACH
  • API-first / headless
  • Commercetools
  • Magento
  • Salesforce Marketing Cloud
  • SAP CDC (Gigya)
  • PIM / DAM
  • POS / OMS
  • A/B testing & CRO
  • GA4 / GTM / Looker Studio
  • GDPR