Embracing the future of marketing.

Alshaya builds a scalable foundation to tailor customer experiences across brands and markets

64%

reduction in creative design process

10%

uplift in customer satisfaction with Edge Delivery Services

1.5x

faster campaign launches worldwide

Featured products:

Adobe Real-Time Customer Data Platform

Adobe Experience Manager Sites

Adobe Experience Manager Assets

Adobe Ultimate Success

Saimah Junaid
Director, Product Delivery and CX, Alshaya

A transformation based on growth, personalisation and AI.

Alshaya is one of the world’s largest brand franchise operators, offering an unparalleled choice of well-loved international brands to customers across the Middle East, North Africa and Europe. From H&M and Starbucks to Shake Shack and The Cheesecake Factory, Alshaya operates more than 70 international brands with a simple mission: deliver the experiences customers want, with the brands they love, in the ways they choose.

Five years ago, Alshaya’s digital operations were as complex as its brand portfolio. Each brand had its own direction and the investment required to keep up with this was huge. At one point, the company was co-ordinating eight separate technology providers just to keep things moving. This fragmentation slowed production, created redundant workflows and made it difficult to deliver consistent experiences across channels.

“We felt stuck in the complexity,” says Saimah Junaid, Director, Product Delivery and CX at Alshaya. “We needed to stop managing technology and start creating real impact.”

Alshaya had already adopted Adobe Commerce, but the company needed more than a commerce engine. It needed a unified platform for content, data and personalisation. Adobe Experience Cloud offered the scalability, flexibility and AI-powered capabilities Alshaya was looking for.

“We wanted to give a consistent, personalised experience to customers across commerce and content,” says Saimah. “We chose Adobe as the partner to get us there.”

From early ecommerce wins to a Centre of Excellence.

The rise of social media in the Middle East, combined with COVID-19 pushing almost all retail purchases online, accelerated Alshaya’s ecommerce plans. In a single year, Alshaya worked with Adobe Professional Services to launch more than 80 sites — some newly built on Adobe Commerce, some migrated from an older version of the application. As a result, the company saw a significant jump in online conversions across its ecommerce sites and an increase in online transactions year-over-year.

But that was just the beginning. As digital commerce accelerated, Alshaya saw the need for a complete digital transformation. Rather than bringing in piecemeal solutions, the company decided to build upon its existing Adobe ecosystem to create a more integrated experience.

The transformation was managed centrally through a Centre of Excellence (CoE). This cross functional framework standardises technology, workflows and best practices, so individual brands can adopt Adobe applications in a reliable, repeatable way and Alshaya can scale quickly without sacrificing quality or flexibility.

Unifying online and off-line data for more personalised experiences.

The next piece of the puzzle for Alshaya was integrating online and off-line data using Adobe Real-Time Customer Data Platform and building unified customer profiles with data from both online and off-line activities. The company’s Aura loyalty programme helped make this a reality, with its wealth of data from over nine million members.

Now, when a customer visits a website, the history of where they’ve shopped and what they’ve bought help the brand serve up related products, such as a blouse that styles perfectly with a recently purchased skirt at H&M. Experiences are further curated using Adobe Target and its AI capabilities that learn what customers respond to and make changes to maximise value for Alshaya. As a result, conversion rates are higher and online shopping feels more intuitive, tailored and timely.

“Before Real-Time CDP, the off-line customer was different from the online one, even if it was the same person,” Saimah explains. “Now, data is the foundation of every customer interaction, helping us to connect in more meaningful ways. This translates to more loyal customers who come back and shop, not just with one brand, but the many brands that Alshaya has to offer.”

Content and commerce — a winning combination.

Next up, Alshaya reimagined its content operations with the addition of Adobe Experience Manager Sites with Edge Delivery Services and Adobe Experience Manager Assets for digital asset management (DAM). The ability to link content and commerce was a key win for the team. However, with 19 brands online in different languages, implementing a new content management system demanded a scalable approach.

The transformation began with H&M as a pilot. Once the model proved successful, it was extended to other brands like Bath&Body Works and American Eagle, allowing teams to quickly adopt the application, tap into shared capabilities and accelerate campaign delivery. With Edge Delivery Services, website performance increased by nearly 250% and CSAT scores rose by 10%.

Crucially, Alshaya didn’t walk this path alone. The company again teamed with Adobe Professional Services and Adobe Ultimate Success to guide change management, accelerate adoption and ensure teams had the confidence to embrace new ways of working.

Adopting a central DAM for its more than 2.1 million images and using AI to automatically tag, resize or remix made assets easier to find and use. It also gave teams the ability to serve assets quickly from a single DAM to websites, mobile sites and in-store displays — something they couldn’t do previously.

“Our partnership with Adobe helped us unlock use cases we hadn’t imagined,” says Junaid. “They guided us through change management and gave our teams the confidence to embrace a new way of working.”

Connecting the content supply chain from design to delivery.

The CoE also recognised the pressure teams faced to keep pace with growing content demands without compromising quality. To orchestrate workflows across creative, marketing and digital teams so that the right people, processes and approvals come together at the right time, Alshaya added Adobe Workfront.

This frictionless workflow between Workfront and Experience Manager would elevate Alshaya’s ability to deliver campaigns quickly and efficiently. Campaigns that previously took three months to design and develop can now be completed in two, reflecting faster customer-journey orchestration and more efficient marketing workflows. Design creation cycles dropped from two weeks to just five days, a 64% reduction, giving teams the agility to respond to market trends in real time and publish updates online faster than ever before.

At the heart of this connected content supply chain is the intersection of creativity, marketing and AI. To deliver on-brand, creative with unprecedented speed, Alshaya teams now use Adobe Firefly. For example, during Saudi National Day, marketers used Firefly to produce original, influencer-inspired graphics for gift boxes, transforming what was once a painstaking, multi-day process into a fast and fluid creative flow. With more content that reflects the unique identity of each brand, generative AI also deepens customer loyalty.

“Adobe Workfront will bring structure and visibility to our creative operations,” says Saimah. “Combined with Experience Manager Assets and Firefly, we are looking to have an integrated system that links creativity to execution.”

Firefly also helps Alshaya tailor visuals for different languages, tones and cultural contexts, which is essential for a retailer operating in diverse markets. “Adobe Firefly completely transformed the way we create,” says Junaid. “We’re always looking at how we can scale in our different markets. Localisation that would have taken us weeks now takes us days using Firefly.”

Shaping the next era of global retail.

Today, Alshaya continues to innovate. The company is exploring the generative expand-and-animation capabilities in Firefly to take localisation even further. Adobe Document Cloud allows the company to digitise documents and reduce paperwork, further deepening the Adobe partnership. By connecting its content, teams and tools in one system, Alshaya can create faster and personalise more effectively, supporting growth across its retail portfolio.

By replacing a fragmented vendor landscape with a CoE that enables a unified customer experience and content supply chain, Alshaya transformed the way it works and connects with customers, proving that the right platform can nurture creativity, deepen loyalty and deliver measurable results.

“With a strong foundation in place, we’re setting a new standard for creativity and operational excellence in retail,” says Junaid. “What excites us now are the endless possibilities ahead.”