...Web traffic reached 30 times its normal volume immediately after Hurricane Sandy, says Red Cross vice president of information technology Suzanne Hall. By the time the ensuing telethon kicked into action, there were moments when the organization was processing up to 75,000 donations simultaneously through its website, a rate of up to 22 transactions per second.
"A lot of the times, we'll geo-target the site so that they can immediately see what might be relevant to them," says American Red Cross vp of marketing Craig Oldham. During the height of a disaster, the Red Cross may change personalization rules and content every hour.
With several hundred web sites for its local chapters migrated to a single e-commerce platform in 2012, the American Red Cross put the new site to the test during Hurricane Sandy last October. "Sandy was our first big crisis on the new site, and the site's performance exceeded our expectations," says Craig Oldham, the charity's vice president of digital strategy
...Throughout Cyber Monday and other peak shopping days, Shulman says, the retailer's new technology platform did what American Apparel had expected: provide the flexibility and scalability to handle sudden spikes in traffic and sales. "We never questioned Oracle's ability to scale," Shulman says. "Without it, we wouldn't have made it through the last holiday season. Most certainly, we would have crashed."
"The ability to gain insight into our customers' preferences to make more informed merchandising decisions is a critical component of our strategy to exceed the expectations of our customers." - Finish Line executive vice president and chief merchandising officer Scott Hoffman
"...the ATG commerce platform not only has the robustness but also the ability to customize and personalize, to give the guest a much more personalized experience. Finally mobile was really important to us. We saw a huge uptick in mobile over the holidays. We wanted a platform where we could use that same platform and put a mobile front end on it and we knew it would work well."
The supermarket operator will use the solution to integrate and streamline all aspects of product development, including managing specifications, suppliers, formulations, packaging and labeling, compliance, and quality
CIO Kovac: "Our investment in the area of merchandise planning and allocation is an important piece of enhancing our IT infrastructure to drive business advantage."