Scope
Heineken's B2B ordering was fragmented across operating companies. One country was running a customer-facing storefront with no real e-commerce engine behind it — orders arrived by fax and were keyed into the internal system by hand. Other countries had their own homegrown systems.
The market rules made consolidation harder than the technology suggested. France required competitor products to be presented equally alongside Heineken's own brands — a regulatory constraint that shaped the entire product architecture, not just copy. The UK had its own VAT and legal frame. Each operating company carried its own commercial logic, supplier relationships and downstream vendor constraints.
The mandate: a single SAP Hybris core platform serving the same functional spine across markets, with country-specific layers absorbing local rules. Architected so that a feature proven in one market could be evaluated for transfer to another. PAN-EU in scope, sequenced in rollout — UK first, France, Switzerland and other markets planned for subsequent phases.
Role
I came in for the pitch. The discovery work had been done by a colleague before I joined the project. I built a working prototype from that discovery, pitched the design, and the engagement went to IBM iX.
I owned product experience and stakeholder management across the engagement. The forum was a fortnightly cadence — three days each, rotating Amsterdam, Paris, London, eventually settling permanently in London. The room was wider than a typical agency-client setup.
Between workshops I worked the design solo — aligning with each operating company's preferences against the shared template, translating workshop outcomes into the next round of artifacts, and keeping the conceptual integrity of the platform consistent under continuous market-specific pressure.
In the final stretch of the engagement I was asked to participate in scaling the design discipline within the programme. I sat on the interview panel for new design hires and onboarded three designers as the engagement transitioned away from me.
"Hichem started on my programme as a visual designer and worked himself up to become the lead visual designer, and based on his work and personal development, I ranked him at the client as one of the core team members."
— Labinot Maloku, Head of Deployment & Delivery, IBM Nederland B.V.
The hardest call
A hard release window was set by an unrelated license expiring on Heineken's side. Some of the more elegant approaches we'd developed weren't feasible inside that window. The decision was to ship the smaller, cleaner version that met the constraint and defer the rest to phase two.
Judgement call, taken under pressure: "shipped on time" beats "shipped a better idea late" when the deadline carries hard commercial cost. The cost of running over wasn't a slipped milestone — it was an expiring license. We held the scope, deferred ambition, and UK launched on schedule.
Alignment
Working across three operating companies meant continuously holding the line on the shared platform against legitimate per-market pressure. One market's stakeholders had design preferences that ran counter to patterns we'd validated for the shared template. Holding the line required escalation through programme leadership and re-anchoring the conversation in the multi-market scope all parties had agreed.
The agreed scope held. The shared template stayed shared. The market launched on the platform we'd defined.
This work isn't visible in any artifact — there is no diagram for "we kept three markets aligned on a single template across the engagement" — but it's the work that made the rest of the work possible.
Impact
- UK launched on time under the license-driven deadline. The platform went live with the agreed scope.
- The team was awarded the IBM Benelux Excellence Award in Amsterdam for the largest Hybris-based PAN-EU B2B shop within IBM iX at the time.
- Three designers onboarded in the final stretch — handoff continuity, not abandonment, when the engagement transitioned away from me.
"Hervorzuheben ist, dass Herr Cherif als Lead Designer in Projekten und Pitches für große Kunden tätig war, wie auch beim bis dato größten Hybris-based PAN EU B2B Shop für Heineken. Dafür wurde das Team mit dem IBM Benelux Excellence Award in Amsterdam ausgezeichnet."
— ecx.io Arbeitszeugnis, Markus Dietrich (Geschäftsführung)
Reflection
Phased rollout is a feature, not a compromise. A PAN-EU platform doesn't ship to all markets at once — that's how multi-market programmes fail. UK first, France, Switzerland and others sequenced behind, was the discipline that let the platform actually launch.
Hard deadlines clarify scope better than discovery does. The license expiration forced choices the team had been deferring for months. Some of those choices weren't ones we'd have made under no-pressure conditions, but they were the right choices for shipping.
Stakeholder orchestration is invisible work that can't be skipped. Sustained cadence, three operating companies, programme leadership, regulatory variation — the work that doesn't show up in any artifact is the work that makes the artifact possible.
The shape of the work. Cross-functional team leadership across IBM iX delivery, Heineken's business stakeholders, and per-market vendors. Stakeholder orchestration as the daily practice, with sprint planning, retrospectives, and change request workflow taken seriously because the cost of misalignment was measured in months. Multi-market governance — three operating companies on a single template, defended through every iteration. I was also part of the hiring process for new designers on the engagement and onboarded them into the working pattern.