Assertive digital expansion.
ASUS upgrades its e-store and launches in 13 European Union countries in time to capitalize on consumer electronics boom.
22.6%
Global market share achieved
Products:
Objectives
Reach and captivate a wider digital audience
Take advantage of new e-commerce features and improved architecture
Unify ASUS selling channels and fulfillment channels
Results
Launched in 13 European Union countries in an eight-month period
Contributed to increase of ASUS and Republic of Gaming laptops to 22.6 percent global market share
Synchronized the e-commerce site and WMS to make sure products reach their destination in a timely manner
Maximize the use of a single code base to accelerate time to market and reduce total cost of ownership
Soaring over the technological landscape
ASUS takes its name from “Pegasus”, Greek mythology’s winged horse that symbolizes wisdom and knowledge. Since ASUS was founded in 1989, their team has embodied the adventurous spirit of this mythical creature and has soared to new heights with each innovative product they make.
A driving force at the forefront of the Taiwanese IT industry’s growth, ASUS went from being an underestimated upstart to a leading technology giant with over 12,500 employees worldwide, boasting over 1,400 awards.
While ASUS is already well known the world over for products including PC components, peripherals, notebooks, tablets, and smartphones, they needed a partner that could help them reach a wider audience in a key target market: the European Union (EU).
Refining ASUS’ digital footprint
2020 presented a unique challenge to the global community: lockdowns and stay at home orders due to the pandemic. Working and playing from home, people needed access to computing, peripherals, and gaming. The figures from 2020 back this up: PC shipments grew to 274 million units, a 4.8 percent increase from 2019; PC gaming, driven by 1.3 billion players, grew an estimated 4.8 percent year-over-year to about $36.9 billion.
To take part in that growth, the ASUS team wanted to upgrade its e-store from Magento Commerce 1 to Magento Commerce 2, now Adobe Commerce, and take advantage of new features and improved architecture.
“We believe in the strength of our offering and the core principles of our business: Inspiring Innovation – Persistent Perfection,” says Para Liao, ASUS Director. “Our R&D team has done an amazing job across our product lines and it would be a disservice to our customers if we didn’t find a way to get these into their hands. We wanted to meet them where they were: online.”
“We essentially wanted to bring the offline experience right in front of our customers without them having to leave their homes. Adobe Commerce, together with our partner, Merkle, gave us the tools we needed to deliver that experience.”
Para Liao
Director, ASUS
Bridging the gap between online & offline experiences
Together with Merkle, an award-winning Magento Global Elite Partner, and Digital River acting as the turnkey payment provider, ASUS was able to set up its digital presence in the EU within eight months.
After a round of discovery, Liao and Gary Chen, ASUS Project Manager, had a clear vision for what they wanted to achieve. “We essentially wanted to bring the offline experience right in front of our customers without them having to leave their homes,” says Liao. “Adobe Commerce, together with our partner, Merkle, gave us the tools we needed to deliver that experience.”
ASUS starts with a clean home page that takes customers through its most recent products and various promotional activities. Then, the company allows users to navigate and search the platform by filtering across various attributes, such as processor brands, solid state drive configurations, screen sizes, processor models, and more.
Once the users have zeroed-in on a product, the website serves up as much information as possible so that they can make an informed decision about their purchase. This includes rich descriptions that guide potential buyers through a given product’s design aesthetics, functional features, performance, and user experience. ASUS also lets them read reviews from other buyers and see related products. Finally, ASUS makes sure that users can choose their desired product configuration, their software bundles, warranty, and set up an instalment payment plan on the website – all the options they would have access to in a brick-and-mortar store.
Merkle supported the ASUS Taiwan headquarters in analyzing the various EU teams’ local requirements, including providing the Adobe Commerce resource strings for local translations by ASUS’ local business units.
ASUS uses the order management capability in Adobe Commerce to synchronize the e-commerce site and WMS to send and receive orders, inventory, cancellations, returns, and refunds, and make sure that the products reached their destinations in a timely manner.
Liao says, “We chose Adobe Commerce because it’s a powerful and flexible e-commerce platform that integrates with our existing ecosystem, such as our brand site, membership system, OMS platforms, financial reconciliation system, and payment solution.”
“With Adobe Commerce and the Merkle team’s help, we could look further out into the future with confidence as we seek to expand our digital services to other regions.”
Gary Chen
Project Manager, ASUS
No resting on laurels
The first site was launched within five months, in time to capitalize in the consumer electronics boom of 2020. Sales of ASUS and Republic of Gaming laptops increased to a world-leading 22.6 percent global market share and ASUS’s brand monthly revenue itself increased by 20 percent from 2019.
Para recalls, “We were quite impressed with how the Merkle and Adobe teams came together to launch our site in a very short time so that we could offer our solutions to consumers digitally during the extended lockdown. The platform itself is quite dependable – performance has been stable regardless of traffic, the extensibility of Adobe Commerce improves our development efficiency, and the comprehensive OMS solution helps optimize our resources and mitigate oversell risks.”
ASUS definitely keeps its consumers first, and has quite a few more features it wants to add on to serve them better. Liao and Chen are proud of the team’s achievements in the EU but they are already looking to the future.
“We’ve seen quite a bit of success with this platform and we have made some strides in the past year,” says Chen. “With Adobe Commerce and the Merkle team’s help, we could look further out into the future with confidence as we seek to expand our digital services to other regions.”
Merkle is helping ASUS e-store launch in the North American and Asia Pacific markets next. This roadmap is simplified by applying the Global Reference Architecture (GRA) approach, which includes: sharing a master theme with unique elements developed on a per market basis; utilizing one master environment and one master deployment process; consolidating features by market, applying market-specific extensions as needed; and developing unique integrations only once.
ASUS and Merkle will utilize the GRA approach to fully maximize the use of a single code base, accelerate time to market, and reduce the total cost of ownership for a truly scalable, global platform.
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