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Company
vmware_logo
Markets

Software and Services

The Customer

Global leader in cloud infrastructure and business mobility, known for their specialized IT architecture.

The Challenge

VMware needed an ecommerce partner to help them optimize their business units in order to build digital relationships with their customers and improve the consumer experience.

The Solution

Utilizing Digital River’s suite of solutions, VMware built a fast, intuitive and highly branded digital customer experience throughout all of VMware’s business segments.

“Before enabling online maintenance renewals, VMware didn’t have visibility into necessary statistics and success metrics. Streamlining these low-level maintenance renewals via Digital River’s hosted experience was a large opportunity to be gained and I’m happy to see a more optimized customer experience, leading to increased revenue.”

– Michael Butler, Director of Global eCommerce

The Story

VMware, a California-based member of the Dell Technologies business family, is a trusted platform provider for more than 500,000 customers around the world–including every Fortune 100 company listed. Founded in 1998, the company has been awarded over 200 honors and became the fourth largest software company in the world within their first 10 years of business. As a global leader in cloud infrastructure and business mobility, VMware’s software-focused approach is transforming the customer’s digital journey through their Cross-Cloud Architecture, fully integrated Software-Defined Data Center (SDDC) and customer-trusted approach to cybersecurity.

The partnership between Digital River and VMware began in 2007 with one US-based ecommerce store. Today, they have one U.S.-based site and 12 additional localized sites across Europe and Asia, and Digital River is helping VMware run their consumer and B2B segments.

The Consumer Story

Providing a fully localized and personalized ecommerce experience to all of their customers is one of VMware’s main priorities, and VMware has utilized the magnitude of Digital River’s service offering to do just that.

Through Digital River’s Global Commerce Platform, VMware has expanded from one U.S. store to 12 localized ecommerce sites across Europe and Asia. Today, Digital River is currently running their entire customer experience – including homepage, catalog pages, product detail pages, checkout pages, etc.

In addition to the commerce suite, VMware has enlisted the help of Digital River’s MarketForce agency to manage their affiliate marketing and run their customer chat functionality, with the goal of increasing customer satisfaction. With an ROI of 5:1, VMware is seeing significant success in implementing the online chat functionality, and is working with MarketForce to run behavioral targeting testing and launch voice of the customer site surveys across the U.S. and EMEA.

Digital River’s Account Management, Client Operations, and Professional Services teams continue to work with VMware on new and innovative ways to improve and optimize the overall commerce experience. Most recently, VMware revamped their desktop product line and worked with Digital River teams on facilitating a successful product launch.  With the help of Digital River, this product launch was the most successful for VMware thus far–with sales tripling during the first week.

B2B Segment

While enterprise business is largely the focus for VMware, they also serve a multitude of SMB companies. To run their online store for B2B products, VMware utilizes Digital River’s Global Commerce Platform.  B2B online maintenance contract renewals are a growing opportunity for VMware, but their previous solution allowed for minimal insight into conversions and put these contracts at risk of falling off. VMware was in need of a new, streamlined approach to handling these renewal customers.

Digital River proposed a revised solution to VMware’s current contract renewal strategy through their B2B and Channel Partner solution. Starting with small to medium clients, Digital River created an integration to pull all clients’ contract details over to the Digital River platform, displaying a landing page with their maintenance contract details and options to renew or upgrade their service packages. This integration feeds back to VMware, updating their maintenance contract records with the new contract values.

The online renewal solution provides a better client experience and has saved VMware both time and money. This massive optimization project not only improved the way they are communicating and marketing to their clients, but also streamlined their renewal process.