OSF Digital delivers integrated SALESFORCE COMMERCE CLOUD SOLUTION for L’Oréal Canada brand Biotherm

Biotherm is a French luxury skincare company that was acquired by the L’Oréal Group in 1970. A pioneer of skincare since 1952, Biotherm products are formulated with unique ingredients from the pure extract of Thermal Plankton. Utilizing their expertise in biotechnology, Biotherm has positioned itself as a global leader of healthy, sustainable skincare. Today, Biotherm is the number one Men’s skincare brand worldwide.

To address the growing number of consumers making their purchases online, parent company L’Oréal Canada decided to invest in a major re-platforming project for their ecommerce sites Biotherm.ca and Biotherm-usa.com. Their needs were clear: Biotherm needed a fresh new storefront to attract and retain customers, and the back-end of the website needed to be integrated and streamlined to simplify the purchasing process. The website would be replatformed to Salesforce Commerce Cloud, the industry-leading cloud commerce platform used by thousands of brands around the world.

L’Oréal Canada came to OSF Digital in 2012 with a clear set of goals and challenges, and after learning about OSF’s successful portfolio of Salesforce Commerce Cloud implementations it was decided that they would be the partner to develop, implement, customize and integrate the websites using the latest technologies and best practice methodologies.

"Consumers' online shopping behavior is constantly evolving, so having the right platform and innovative partners are key to meeting our customers' expectations," said Martin Aubut, Director, Interactive Marketing and Ebusiness Strategy at L'Oréal Canada. "OSF assisted us with new technology and gave us the ability to deploy many brand sites in an efficient manner, making technology our driver for growth."

Using Salesforce Commerce Cloud best practices and an Agile development methodology, OSF got right to work implementing Salesforce Commerce Cloud, a move that gives the new sites the flexibility and scalability to grow with the company. To ensure potential future projects would be fast and easy, L’Oréal Canada and OSF built the Biotherm site on a ‘core cartridge’ – a repeatable architecture that can be used for future implementations of other L’Oréal Canada brands.

One of the ‘must-have’ features for Biotherm was mobile optimization. The website was developed using responsive design, a mobile-friendly development method that allows the site to respond based on what type of device is being used. As the user switches from a laptop to a tablet to a smartphone, the website automatically adjusts to accommodate for resolution, image size and scripting abilities. By avoiding the costs and resources needed to build and deploy separate mobile websites, Biotherm was able to quickly and easily optimize their webstore for m-commerce.

To keep everything running smoothly behind-the-scenes, OSF performed extensive back-office integrations that ensure information flows seamlessly from application to application. BazaarVoice, Avatax, DOTS, Cabestan, CyberSource and SAP are among the third party platforms that L’Oréal uses to enhance the shopping experience and were all integrated by OSF. By using a management application, the client is able to enable/disable individual integrations for each site or brand – making future projects even easier.

Included in the new Biotherm site is an all-new skin diagnostic tool. This unique feature allows customers to answer a set of questions pertaining to their skin type, and then be offered product recommendations based on their answers. Personalized content is a powerful feature for internet shoppers as it can help them weed through lengthy product catalogs to find the exact products that will meet their needs.

By partnering with OSF, L’Oréal Canada was able to successfully re-platform, re-design and launch a feature-rich webstore that was designed to deliver a one-of-a-kind shopping experience. The flexibility and scalability of the core cartridge developed by OSF not only enabled Biotherm to quickly and easily launch on a new platform, but will allow other L’Oréal Canada brands to do so in the future.