From beginners to pros, artists around the world agree: Wacom is the top name in drawing tablets. Working with its digital tablets and pens feels as natural as sketching across a pad of paper. In the hands of a designer, Wacom tools are used to create bold pen lines, fluid brush strokes or even detailed edits in Adobe Photoshop. For more than 35 years, Wacom has helped inspire creativity and equip designers and artists to thrive in digital spaces.

For most of its history, Wacom has worked through partners who either sell Wacom products to consumers or use Wacom technologies in their own products. But in recent years, the company has started to shift its digital strategy, keeping in touch to consumers and businesses directly through e-shops.

Balaji Ganesan, Vice President of Information Services at Wacom, has been a key player in this transformation. His team oversees all IT across Wacom, from infrastructure and hosting to webservices and enterprise apps. For Ganesan, one of the biggest challenges for e-commerce at Wacom was the company’s global reach.

“Many of our regional teams had already set up e-commerce sites, but they were all owned and managed locally,” explains Ganesan. “If we were going to get serious about e-commerce, we needed a standardised platform and consistent experience that we could roll out worldwide.”

Wacom wanted an e-commerce platform that was powerful, flexible and scalable enough to support many e-commerce sites around the world. Wacom also needed support from an expert partner capable of handling such a complex global roll-out. The company found the answers it needed with Adobe Commerce and Merkle.

“Adobe Commerce had the features to handle all of our use cases and create regional e-commerce sites that are both consistent and flexible,” says Ganesan.

Pulling off a global roll-out with Merkle

Consolidating multiple e-commerce sites is no easy task, particularly when moving to a new platform. Ganesan knew that Wacom would need support from an expert implementation partner to get the project started while Wacom built internal knowledge in Adobe Commerce.

“We needed a global partner that had experience handling complex implementations in multiple regions,” says Ganesan. “After looking at our options and consulting Adobe for recommendations, Merkle was the obvious choice.”

The Merkle team met with Wacom teams to scope requirements and understand regional stakeholder requirements. This resulted in a list of over 900 requirements that Merkle looked to bring to life.

Wacom began its Adobe Commerce transformation with a pilot store in the EU. Merkle refined the design, optimising the user interface to guide consumers through the sales funnel. Merkle then used this design as a template and supported roll-outs in the United States, Australia and Southeast Asia.

“Constant communication was key to a project as complicated as this,” says Matte Dole, Head of Commerce at Merkle ANZ. “Each country required localisations and integrations, from payment gateways to product databases. Adobe Commerce allowed us to combine global and regional elements to create shops that are stable and flexible.”

Enhanced customer journeys with Adobe Commerce

By standardising on Adobe Commerce, Wacom can create a more consistent shopping experience for anyone everywhere. Customers visiting any Wacom e-commerce site will see the same product search, sales funnel and checkout flows. Regional teams can better share insights and optimisations with each other instead of reinventing the wheel for every site. They can also take advantage of the community of Adobe Commerce developers to add pre-built capabilities without having to invest in their own in-house development resources.

With a solid foundation to start from, regional teams spend more time optimising local marketing and content, from writing engaging copy to creating intriguing offers based on the latest market trends. Adobe Commerce is intuitive enough to use that content creators don’t have to wait for support from developers or IT teams. The result is greater agility and faster updates, leading to better customer experiences.

“We’ve seen a 50% increase in conversion rates after switching to Adobe Commerce, indicating that we’re improving customer shopping experiences,” says Ganesan. “We also increased revenue by 25% after migrating the US and European regions to Adobe Commerce. Establishing a better e-commerce platform helped Wacom service our customers during the pandemic.”

One of the biggest benefits of Adobe Commerce is how it easily integrates with all systems to keep the e-commerce site running smoothly. Merkle worked with Wacom to add integrations with numerous third-party systems, including SAP ERP, Microsoft Dynamics and IBM Watson. Integrations can be adjusted depending on the region, connecting to different payment gateways or ERP systems for regional sites. Integrations with third-party translation services streamline the localisation process so that more customers can shop in their native languages.

“Standardising on Adobe Commerce is beneficial for marketers, site teams and customers, but it also helps IT,” says Ganesan. “By consolidating investments, we reduce costs and simplify support. We can focus on delivering new services to continue improving e-commerce sites.”

Evolving its digital market strategy

Wacom is still rolling out e-commerce sites worldwide and Adobe Commerce has the scalability and flexibility to meet all current and future use cases. Adobe Commerce has strong B2B capabilities, which will allow Wacom to better meet business needs. In addition to hardware, Wacom also sells software and subscriptions. Adobe Commerce can deliver licence keys directly to customers, making it unnecessary for Wacom to support and maintain separate licence key systems.

“While Wacom has always had strong digital channels, Adobe Commerce is part of a new digital strategy to become more directly involved with our end-users and customers,” says Ganesan. “With support from Adobe and Merkle, we plan to continue investing in e-commerce and drive better value for our customers.”

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