Building blocks for a One Mint vision

Vision and objectives

With a rich history dating back to 1908, the Royal Canadian Mint is recognized as one of the largest and most versatile mints in the world, offering a wide range of specialized, high-quality coinage products and related services on an international scale. They partnered with Thinkmax for their digital transformation initiative towards a unified One Mint vision to showcase all areas of the Mint and bring contemporary, convenient, and personalized digital experiences to mint.ca visitors, customers and stakeholders.

The mandate

• Conceive and create a modern, unified digital experience (UI and UX) that caters to multiple stakeholders with differing objectives.

• Build a simplified and functional site architecture that reflects users’ mindsets and elevates core components of the experience.

• Implement a highly secure and flexible solution to easily build on and better cater to their B2B and B2G customers.

• Integrate with Dynamics AX, loyalty program and various 3rd party systems including payment, taxes, and marketing automation.

• Deliver the project during the pandemic.

Business and technology challenges

The time to re-platform their legacy eCommerce platform was long overdue, and the need to define and deliver modern and visionary customer journeys for optimal and innovative experiences was imminent.

Development of the solution was guided by the One Mint holistic strategy to design a solution in support of all business areas. The objective was to deliver immediate customer value and improved business capabilities while laying the foundation for future B2B and B2G digital business transformation.

Several imperatives were in place, including leveraging the Mint’s rich and inspiring digital content and assets to build a highly esthetical UI, and leveraging the Microsoft Azure Cloud infrastructure to ensure a secure, reliable and scalable technology environment.

Methodology and collaboration

Working in tight collaboration with the Mint’s teams, Thinkmax designed and built a modern solution architecture and successful re-platforming to Optimizely DXP on Azure seamlessly integrated with Delivra Marketing Automation.

This solution met the expected functionality and requirements with an open, secure and evolutive, future-proof technology platform, serving as the foundational building block toward achieving the One Mint vision. An agile methodology was key to ensure evolving delivery engaging all stakeholders at each step to validate quality and provide added-value.

Outcomes and immediate benefits

A striking and performant final product meeting all key requirements including personalization, B2C ecommerce capabilities, integrated Loyalty program (Masters Club), and a highly secure, scalable and reliable infrastructure on Azure cloud.

The ability to evolve the entire technology stack while continuing regular operations ensured uninterrupted change management and business processes.

A compelling UX/UI based on best practices for both internal and external users.

After the first 9 months, the numbers tell the story of how the Mint’s customers are responding to their upscaled digital experiences

• Number of orders & conversion: increased by 1%
• Average order value: increased by 14%
• Units per order: increased by 13%
• Bounce rate: decreased by 7%