Adidas is a leading global maker of athletic shoes, clothing, and accessories, selling 1.2 million pairs of shoes each day. The company is headquartered in Herzogenaurach, Germany, has over 57,000 employees worldwide, and produced net sales of 23.6 billion Euros (U.S. $27 billion) in 2019. It is the second largest sportswear manufacturer in the world after Nike.

Adidas is also a leader in digital and online marketing. The companys most important store is no longer a physical storeits a website. The Adidas website is a key channel for offering connected and personalized customer experiences that help differentiate Adidas from competitors and lead to increased sales. E-commerce is Adidass most profitable point-of-sale channel, with online sales reaching 5.509 billion Euros (U.S. $6.180 billion) in 2019.

Adidas does not compete on price but on the quality of its brand and the customer experience. The transition from brick-and-mortar to digital as the preferred shopping medium has shaped the way the company keeps up with changing customer preferences. Customers are clearly at the center of Adidass business, and their experience with other online retailers such as Amazon has made them want a relationship with Adidas that is more personal.

To serve customers better and manage all of its relationships with them, Adidas turned to Salesforce. com, which features cloud-based tools for customer relationship management (CRM) and application development. Salesforce.com helps Adidas identify key customer segments, develop closer ties to customers, and design differentiated experiences tailored to each customers needs. Salesforce CRM tools make it possible for Adidas to have a single view of each customer across all the various channels through which that person interacts with the company.

Salesforce Marketing Cloud is a CRM platform that allows marketers to create and manage marketing relationships and campaigns with customers. The Marketing Cloud incorporates integrated solutions for customer journey management, email, mobile, social media, web personalization, advertising, content creation, content management, and data analysis. Every imaginable customer interaction and engagement is covered. The software includes predictive analytics to help make decisions such as, for example, what channel would be preferable for a given message. A component called Journey Builder helps marketers tailor campaigns to customers behavior and needs, demographics, and communication channel preferences.

The Marketing Cloud is connected to Salesforce. coms Sales Cloud and Service Cloud to provide a unified experience and prevent customers from being contacted separately by representatives from sales, marketing, and service groups. Service Cloud is a platform for customer service and support. Companies using Service Cloud can automate service processes, streamline workflows, and locate key articles, topics, and experts with information to help the companys 1,100 customer service agents. Service Cloud can listen and respond to customers across a variety of social platforms and automatically route cases to the appropriate agent. Service for Apps makes it possible to embed customer support software into mobile applications, including features for live agent video chat, screen sharing, and on-screen guided assistance. Service Cloud makes it possible to deliver service that is more personalized and convenient in whatever form each customer prefersemail, web, social media, or telephoneall from a single application.

Adidas is able to deploy its centralized ecommerce site globally by using the Salesforce Commerce Cloud. Commerce Cloud supports every language and currency required for the companys business throughout the globe. Adidas uses the knowledge of individual customers and their preferences obtained through Commerce Cloud to create better products, which can be manufactured and delivered to the customer very rapidly. Adidas is also using the Salesforce DMP data management platform to capture online and web behavior from digital actions across all channels and devices.

To move even closer to the customer, Adidas developed a mobile app that customizes content, interactions, and products based on the customers personal preferences and behavior that have been identified via various digital points of engagement. The app features customized product recommendations, color preference and location, order tracking, blog posts, personalized articles, videos, real-time updates concerning an individuals sport and sports star preferences, and an intelligent online chat tool called Einstein to help answer customer questions and make more customized product recommendations. The app works with Apple Pay and Android Pay mobile payment systems.

Jacqueline Smith-Dubendorfer, Adidas Vice President of Digital Experience Design, believes that using Salesforce for customer relationship management has enhanced the companys ability to treat each customer as an individual. Who is this person? How much do we know about that individual? Where did that person come from? What is that person interested in? With Salesforce CRM tools, Adidas can now answer these questions much more easily. CRM provides the information for Adidas to adapt what it presents to the customer to deliver as close as it can to what the customer is actually looking for. Adidas can now connect one-to-one with every customer, across multiple channels and on any device.

1. Write down 3-5 examples of operational CRM and analytical CRM, respectively, in this case.
2. Is there any privacy and/or ethical concerns in Adidas use of analytical CRM? If you are a Chief Analytics Officer and are requested to report to the board, write down your speech regarding what you plan to do and justify your action plan.