About the company
Haléns is one of the leading mail order companies in Scandinavia with over 50 years in the business. With 250 employees, a yearly turnover of 75 million Euros and representation on the Swedish, Finnish and Estonian market, Haléns is a local giant in the business. More than 70% of the turnover consists of garment for the whole family with focus on women. Home textiles, home electronics and furniture are also a part of Haléns' assortment. Haléns is owned by The Great Universal Stores Plc, one of the largest mail order companies in Europe, where brands such as Burberry's and Scotch House are found.


The Challenge
Despite all their customer knowledge and experience from the mail order business, Haléns has struggled with the problem of being able to use all this knowledge and experience on the Internet - traditionally a rather impersonal and inflexible sales channel.
"We have been in the business for over 50 years and during that time we have established sound routines for how to best serve our customers" says Gunnar Ryman, CEO of Haléns. "Even so, we have not been able to serve our customers on the Internet in the same way we have been able to do, for example, over the telephone. The simple answer to this is that there has not been any solution to solve our dilemma. We have actively been searching for a solution that can help us make the contact with our customers over the Internet as good as it always has been in our other sales channels."

Strategy & Approach
Before Haléns acquired the Product Predictor they had started taking the first small steps towards personalizing the contact with their customers over the Internet. Until then, categorizing customers according to demographic belonging such as gender, age and a handful of other parameters, had been the way to address the problem. However, every customer is unique and it has proved difficult to satisfy individual customer needs by categorizing the customers into groups according to gender and age. Haléns' strategy for E-Commerce has evolved into transforming the existing business data into new business opportunities by personalizing and automating the business processes towards their customers.

Solution

Solution Brief
Customer	Haléns
Software	Product Predictor
Area of Use	Webshop www.halens.com
Platform	Windows 2000
Database	MS SQL 7.0
Time for integration	5 days
Results	Equally good service, regardless of channel and a more simplified process for the customer.

With the Product Predictor, personalizing their E-commerce solution so that every customer gets unique recommendations of products most likely to appeal to him or her is suddenly a reality.

"By the integration of Avail Intelligences' software into our existing systems, we are now confident that our customers will receive equally good service, regardless of the sales channel they choose to contact us through. Be it through the catalogue, over the telephone, in our store or over the Internet" says Gunnar Ryman, CEO of Haléns. By using Avail Intelligences' personalization software, Lennart Johansson, E-commerce Manager of Haléns, has noticed a more simplified purchasing process for the customers as well as increased total sales over the Internet.

Haléns' goals and expectations by integrating the Product Predictor has been to take the next natural step in E-commerce maturity - to serve each customer's individual needs each time he or she comes to visit - just like good retailing always has worked!