Lasoo Accomplishes Holistic Digital Transformation from a Traditional Offering with Contino

The Client

Founded in 1921, IVE (ASX:IGL) is Australia’s leading holistic marketing organisation specialising in creative services, data-driven communications, production and distribution, and integrated marketing. IVE employs 1800 staff and generates revenue of circa $700 million per annum.

IVE purchased Salmat Marketing Solutions in January 2020 and within this acquisition was a product called ‘Lasoo’. After consultation with PwC, IVE decided to invest in this digital product to re-platform, rebrand and relaunch it to the market later this year.

The Challenge

At the time of IVE’s acquisition in 2020, Lasoo was operating on a single AWS EC2 custom instance with a CMS-driven web and application architecture that had not been updated for years. This was severely limiting the platform’s capacity for data insights, SEO scoring, adapting to current trends or feature updates, monetising the site beyond basic advertising and catalogue product displays, and tailoring search functionality or any other personalisation.

Ultimately, such limitations were causing users to be frustrated by the system’s stubborn non-responsiveness and unsatisfactory search results. In committing to holistic digital transformation, IVE was not only giving new life to the rebranded Lasoo, it was capitalising on the opportunity to continue diversifying IVE as a whole. Its strategic vision was to completely transform a part of the group into a business powered by digital-first consumer offerings.

Specifically, by implementing new ways of working and leveraging modern cloud technology, Lasoo planned to accelerate its ability to attract more retailers and customers, which would in turn enable the highly effective commercialisation of Lasoo’s new digital platform.

The Solution

Achieving this type of holistic business and technology transformation required Lasoo to embrace new frontiers, be bold and deliver the best possible consumer experience at the centre of everything it does.

Additionally, it recognised the importance of the right partners to help execute and implement the solution—ultimately choosing to work with Contino.

Contino pitched an AWS full stack, end-to-end digital reinvention of the Lasoo product, in conjunction with Cognizant, that incorporated brand strategy and thought leadership, UX/UI design, a modern approach to serverless web and app design, and unique digital transformation delivery that is adaptable and supportive of Lasoo’s vision and strategy.

The solution deliverables included:

· Redesign and rebuild of the website and apps in a cloud-native way on AWS

· Enhancement of the app and platform functionality for the onboarding of new customers and retailers

· Improvement of the user experience across the entire platform

· Upskilling of the IVE team to confidently run the platform on its own

Contino’s team led Lasoo through highly collaborative, human-centred design sprints that showcased a data-driven software development approach. This enabled Lasoo to continuously co-create and embrace new digital frontiers, as was its objective.

Lasoo’s executives stepped up to lead by example. They instilled new business practices, comprehensively reviewed all affected people and processes, introduced new executive recruitment, transferred their knowledge to upskill existing employees and adjusted their talent acquisition strategy accordingly.

All of these elements required a highly collaborative, transparent, accountable and equally represented cross-functional team effort from both Contino and Lasoo.

The Business Outcome

By improving customer experience and enabling a far more interactive and tailored offering on the new platform, Lasoo is anticipated to report efficiency, productivity and revenue gains across the board, as well as significant cost reductions. Lasoo’s user base is expected to significantly increase thanks to an enhanced user experience, driving more sales for retailers.

Its partnership with Contino on this project has been unique in its dual delivery of complete digital transformation alongside the upskilling of the Lasoo team. Contino nurtured relationships with stakeholders across all verticals throughout the organisation, with knowledge-sharing being of paramount importance.

By fusing creativity and technology, Lasoo and Contino were able to accelerate future roadmaps and achieve outcomes that delivered immense value back to the business in a timeline not thought of as realistic when the project was first conceived. Lasoo will now be positioned at the frontier of digital catalogues and online specials.