中文(中华人民共和国)
Headlines
Embracing E-Commerce to Scale a Business
01 October 2018
Challenges
Reagecon has been growing steadily, but has up until now, not embraced ecommerce. The company has been employing traditional sales and marketing techniques. These include the use of a well motivated sales force, catalogues, exhibitions, advertising in trade journals, technical white papers and other marketing collateral. We had a very poor website and virtually no SEO capability. “We were inundated with technical enquiries, stock availability, supply chain, delivery and transport enquiries” says Tom Neylon, Sales Manager at Reagecon. There was significant scope also for order handling improvement, every order was entered manually into our ERP system.
Reagecon has been growing steadily, but has up until now, not embraced ecommerce. The company has been employing traditional sales and marketing techniques. These include the use of a well motivated sales force, catalogues, exhibitions, advertising in trade journals, technical white papers and other marketing collateral. We had a very poor website and virtually no SEO capability. “We were inundated with technical enquiries, stock availability, supply chain, delivery and transport enquiries” says Tom Neylon, Sales Manager at Reagecon. There was significant scope also for order handling improvement, every order was entered manually into our ERP system.
“There was no way we could scale our business to the next level” added Neylon, “and we needed a system that fully integrated into our ERP system in order to avoid the double handling and maintenance associated with running two separate systems.”
Solution
The Reagecon leadership team carried out a major scoping and benchmarking exercise, to ascertain what represents best practice and to develop a wish list of features and benefits that would enable our company to scale to a totally new level. Our wish list included the following features:
Within days of presenting our wish list to our e-commerce provider, we established a dedicated project execution team, which worked tirelessly with the provider to deliver the project. The two combined teams worked on all of the styling, customer interfacing, SAP Business One integration and all of the technical facets of the products, including uploading an enormous amount of technical data and information on a product by product basis. The system was then beta tested with a small but representative number of customer types.
Our ecommerce is now a totally integrated part of Reagecon’s customer value proposition. Ecommerce is now a key business driver of our scaling strategy. Customers can easily search for products, ascertain stock availability, build baskets and generate their own quotations. They can include their own purchase order details and complete orders seamlessly. Freight and associated cost are calculated automatically where possible. Customers can view their account details at the click of a button including Order History and Order Status, Invoices, Quotes and Deliveries. Every product shows a detailed set of specifications, features, benefits, level of accreditation and metrological traceability where appropriate. Shipping weights and dimensions, tariff codes and hazardous classifications are also displayed. Product pricing and discounts are displayed in their agreed currency and the customer can control the login and level of access of its own employees if required. Payments can be transacted on account or online. Export Manager, Bernard Gleeson, commented “we now get fewer questions about inventory. Questions can be answered online, which saves the customer a lot of email and conversation time.”
The Company Perspective
From Reagecon’s perspective, we have a live shop window open to our customers 24/7, 365 days a year. Irrespective of geographical location or time zone difference, our products can always be viewed and purchased. This includes both our own manufactured and distributed products. This window to the world ensures that for the first time in our history, we have a truly global presence.
Our SEO analytics have shown immediate and dramatic improvement and our level of enquiries has spiralled upwards. The e-commerce system is device sensitive and lends itself very easily to being presented in other languages.
New and Existing Customers
This new ecommerce capability has dramatically enhanced our service offering to existing customers. It has opened up a massive new opportunity to acquire new customers and offer them the service they deserve. The system forms the foundation of a huge scaling opportunity and we are delighted by the fact that it will be easier for our customers to do business with us.
Request a login and password to Reagecon's Ecommerce Facility
Solution
The Reagecon leadership team carried out a major scoping and benchmarking exercise, to ascertain what represents best practice and to develop a wish list of features and benefits that would enable our company to scale to a totally new level. Our wish list included the following features:
- Simplicity of “look and feel”, and “clarity without clutter”, through a root and branch product search facility.
- We will migrate away from the traditional information based website, towards a full blown ecommerce capability. John Barron, Managing Director of Reagecon commented “We wanted the website to be subsumed into the webshop, so that the customer can shop and buy in a seamless and simple fashion, without having to encounter a load of information, not necessary for the buying experience.”
- Be capable of dealing with complex tables and abundant rich technical content.
- Have the capability to offer in excess of 100,000 live products, at any one time.
- Have the ability to seamlessly computate for the customer, total cost of ownership of the product to include freight, customs, currency conversion and bulk discounts.
- Integrate with SAP Business One, so as to eliminate the necessity to upkeep and manage two systems.
- Provide us with an efficient state of the art tool to offer promotions, special offers, stock clearances and new product launches.
- Optimise search engine capability.
Within days of presenting our wish list to our e-commerce provider, we established a dedicated project execution team, which worked tirelessly with the provider to deliver the project. The two combined teams worked on all of the styling, customer interfacing, SAP Business One integration and all of the technical facets of the products, including uploading an enormous amount of technical data and information on a product by product basis. The system was then beta tested with a small but representative number of customer types.
Results
The Customers PerspectiveOur ecommerce is now a totally integrated part of Reagecon’s customer value proposition. Ecommerce is now a key business driver of our scaling strategy. Customers can easily search for products, ascertain stock availability, build baskets and generate their own quotations. They can include their own purchase order details and complete orders seamlessly. Freight and associated cost are calculated automatically where possible. Customers can view their account details at the click of a button including Order History and Order Status, Invoices, Quotes and Deliveries. Every product shows a detailed set of specifications, features, benefits, level of accreditation and metrological traceability where appropriate. Shipping weights and dimensions, tariff codes and hazardous classifications are also displayed. Product pricing and discounts are displayed in their agreed currency and the customer can control the login and level of access of its own employees if required. Payments can be transacted on account or online. Export Manager, Bernard Gleeson, commented “we now get fewer questions about inventory. Questions can be answered online, which saves the customer a lot of email and conversation time.”
The Company PerspectiveFrom Reagecon’s perspective, we have a live shop window open to our customers 24/7, 365 days a year. Irrespective of geographical location or time zone difference, our products can always be viewed and purchased. This includes both our own manufactured and distributed products. This window to the world ensures that for the first time in our history, we have a truly global presence.
Our SEO analytics have shown immediate and dramatic improvement and our level of enquiries has spiralled upwards. The e-commerce system is device sensitive and lends itself very easily to being presented in other languages.
New and Existing CustomersThis new ecommerce capability has dramatically enhanced our service offering to existing customers. It has opened up a massive new opportunity to acquire new customers and offer them the service they deserve. The system forms the foundation of a huge scaling opportunity and we are delighted by the fact that it will be easier for our customers to do business with us.
Request a login and password to Reagecon's Ecommerce Facility
