Success Story Manufacturing
Industrial Supplier Boosts Revenues With New Ecommerce Approach
This industrial supplier serves small, medium and large manufacturers; federal, state and local municipalities; and commercial construction companies across the U.S.
It partners with its customers and suppliers to provide personalized solutions that help customers reduce costs and boost profits. But, the company’s eCommerce experience was lacking. Legacy capabilities and erratic ERP management led to an inconsistent customer experience, which clouded users’ perception of the company as a market leader.
Apexon engaged with the client to establish structure and synergies across all systems and enable on-demand order processing.
Privately held company with more than 1250 supplying partners
Serving small, medium and large organizations
ISO/AS9120-certified
The client’s existing ERP system and eCommerce platform could not communicate directly, causing major disruptions in the information flow for both customers and the organization. To mitigate the missing information, the client’s users had to manually sync the data between different channels at irregular intervals. The result was a disconnected customer journey that negatively impacted conversions.
Specific problems included:
Lengthy turnaround times for site modifications delayed all processes inline
Multiple customer part numbers with different product IDs created confusion for buyers
The lack of a standard user registration flow limited any ability for online customer segmentation
Brand segregation and product search were not optimized, further disrupting the user experience
An inability to make real-time changes due to a lack of customer tracking
No direct control for page management
Apexon started with a full implementation of the Optimizely B2B Commerce Cloud, redesigning the UX and CX of the client’s entire commerce site. The approach included intuitive movements between pages and elements on the commerce portal.
Specific aspects of the solution included:
Integration with the client’s Prophet 21 ERP system to standardize information relay
Improved product catalogue and display pages with imports from the Affiliated Distributor Group
Support for product recognition, customer information, user pricing, part numbers and shipping orders
Defined access controls for content, console and cloud applications
Configuration of Google Tag Manager and Google Analytics to make customer journeys completely trackable
Curated functions like brand highlight, weighted results and enhanced search, allowing boost and buy features
Added capabilities for customer segmentation per geography, field, properties and account
Installation of Avalara for tax management and inputs
With Apexon and Optimizely, the client reclaimed its market leadership position, and ramped up sales with:
Structured promotions on the home page and search results
Enhanced customer identification and targeting
Consistent dataflow backed by customer movement tracking
Superior online brand experience in line with the company’s market leadership
