Horizon Platforms: Creating competitive advantage through digital transformation

Is it possible to digitally transform a successful offline business in just 10 months? The new Horizon Platforms ecommerce portal lets customers self-serve and go from ‘quote’ to ‘order’ in a single step and has reduced back office administration dramatically. Read more about how customer experience insight, a strategic technology roadmap and an iterative approach were used to create a future ready digital platform that has the flexibility to grow whilst also providing value now.

The challenge

Horizon Platforms wants to be the first in their industry to transform and enable a fully digitalised operation.

They were looking to reduce the amount of time spent on labour intensive administrative processes and redeploy that time more effectively in delivering value to their customers.

Not wanting to wait years to replace the existing system, Horizon Platforms needed a roadmap that would realise value within a three to six month period and would allow for iterative improvements beyond that.

Demonstrating a vision for strategic transformation, Profound was able to align Horizon Platforms’ strategic objectives with a digital transformation roadmap.

The Transformation

Within the first month Profound was able to put together a proof of concept (POC) and implement a new online experience. This experience was built on top of the existing website and legacy ERP system.

Over the course of the following six months an iterative approach was taken to the design and implementation of a new customer facing website experience. This new website enabled customers to search for products and place their own orders directly into the ERP system..

A foundation of connected headless technologies was established which enabled the project team to iterate and build new experiences in an agile and responsive fashion as new customer experience research and insight were uncovered.

The value

Profound helped Horizon Platforms to migrate from an unsupported proprietary CMS quickly and iteratively. At the same time Profound created a suite of API microservices on top of the existing ERP system which meant that Horizon Platforms did not need to replace their ERP system in order to offer a fully integrated digital experience to their customers.

Horizon Platforms Customers now have access to a fully integrated, omni-channel experience where they can self-serve should they wish to. This new digital channel has helped reduce the admin burden on the Customer Support team, freeing them up to proactively look for ways to add more value to Customers.

The Horizon Platforms marketing team now have full control of the new website using a modern headless CMS, which helps them to create and update content quickly and easily without the need for developers.

Horizon Platforms now have a technology stack that enables them to respond faster to Customer feedback, helping them to ensure that engagement of the digital platform is always improving.

Horizon Platforms now have a strategic technology roadmap which can deliver future strategic growth plans.

What the client said...

We knew that delivering a better Customer Experience would need a successful strategic digital transformation. Profound were invaluable in helping us create this experience, from their use of customer insight to the technical implementation. The use of customer evidence combined with a technical proof of concept gave us greater certainty and confidence in all our decisions, particularly as we were considering a modern headless architecture. It’s rare you find a trusted partner like Profound with a passionate focus on the customer experience and the matching technical vision and capability to implement it. It also helps that they’re actually really easy to work with.

Marco Maccio

Head of Digital

About the client

Horizon Platforms provides equipment and services to the construction, property and maintenance sector in the form of safe and easy access platform hire, sales and training. They offer a fleet of cherry pickers, scissor lifts, boom platforms and personnel lifts, an experienced team of driver demonstrators, and UK coverage through a nationwide network of trusted partners providing access platforms to customers. They are renowned for providing the best quality equipment from the finest manufacturers and maintaining it to the highest of standards.