Fnac Darty's online sales have exploded since 2019. In order to adapt to the influx of consumers on Black Friday and holiday season, Fnac Darty called on Kyndryl to reinforce and secure the existing front and back office IT infrastructure which allows Fnac Darty to absorb an unprecedented peak load (up to x4 vs baseline). In addition, migrating part of the fnac.com web front-end application to an Azure environment, carried out in partnership with Microsoft will maximize sales and optimize the customer experience to support all commercial operations.

Amy Salcido, President - USA, Kyndryl, an IT infrastructure services provider that manages the world's largest mission-critical systems for large companies, and is joined by her colleague Philippe Roncati President Kyndryl France and customer Fnac Darty to discuss the impact of digital transformation on Black Friday, which has evolved from a single day to an unpredictable period of promotions and sales that can last for months. Amy noted, the traditional way of preparing for Black Friday, which involved buying more capacity, hardware, and energy, is not sustainable. She added, "Cloud is part of the new way of getting ready for events like Black Friday, which is different from the traditional way of buying for peak."

FNaC Darty worked with Kyndryl to determine which applications need scalability or flexibility and put them in the cloud. To prepare for big events like Black Friday, they had to ensure scalability and prepare for unpredictability in traffic. They use data from previous events, conduct load testing, and work with their partners to ensure they can handle the anticipated traffic. They also have a contingency plan in place to handle any unexpected spikes in traffic.

Fnac Darty and Kyndryl are already planning for Black Friday 2023. Olivier Theulle, the Chief Digital Officer of FNaC Darty, discussed the importance of continuous improvement and innovation in their digital business strategy. He mentioned that they will be focusing on personalization and improving the overall customer experience, as well as leveraging AI and data analytics to drive insights and optimize their processes.

Olivier Theulle, the Chief Digital Officer of FNaC Darty & Philippe Roncati, the President of Kyndryl France

Olivier talked about his company's priorities, including sustainability, which has become important to consumers. Here are takeaways from his presentation:

1. Sustainability: Fnac Darty’s strategy has a clear focus on sustainability with three dimensions: products, behaviours, operations. With regard to our products, we introduced sustainability rankings and repairability scores in 2017. We wanted to make sure that we keep on promoting the most sustainable products based on reliability and reparability. With more than 3000 technicians, Fnac Darty is an undisputed leader in the device repair market. Darty Max, our subscription service that offers to maintain and repair devices in an unlimited way, promotes repairing rather than replacing products, in an effort to promote more sustainable consumer habits for the planet. Our aim is to reach 2mn subscribers by 2025. Fnac Darty is committed to sustainability in all areas of its operations : energy use in stores and DCs, supply chain, green IT, etc.
   
   
2. Preparation for Black Friday: Black Friday is the most important commercial period for Fnac Darty with special offers released everyday for 2 weeks both online and in stores. It generates up to 4 or 5 times more traffic and orders than other times of the year. To improve our operations, 5 years ago we designed and implemented a comprehensive plan with Kyndril, based on detailed capacity planning, a hybrid architecture and a joint operational team.
   
   
3. Hybrid architecture: As a retailer we have a significant amount of IT legacy which means both old and robust applications.

Since we didn't have enough resources to move all of our applications to the cloud at once, we made a trade-off and decided to start by moving the consumer-facing components of our Fnac web platform to the cloud. That strategy requires new skills and know-how. That is why we are happy to have the support of Kyndryl on this journey.

Philippe Roncati, the President of Kyndryl France, emphasized his company's dedication to helping clients transition to a low-carbon economy. He stated that Kyndryl is committed to achieving real decarbonization goals and supporting customers on their sustainability journey. To reduce energy consumption, Kyndryl has moved clients to the cloud using renewable energy, digitized the workplace, and improved data center efficiency. He announced the development of Kindred Bridge, an integration platform that provides real-time insight on IT complexity and enables customization of mission-critical operations, changing the relationship with clients. With FNaC Darty, they manage hardware observations by replacing old servers with less energy-consuming equipment and have a joint roadmap to support their digital transformation. Kyndryl brings new resources to support sustainability and scalability through hybrid and scalable services. Additionally, they are involved in the application landscape to reduce resource needs based on client needs. He highlighted that Kyndryl aims to achieve net-zero carbon emissions by 2040.