From Homegrown to Home Run: How One Manufacturer Reinvented their B2B Customer Portal using SAP, Salesforce Commerce and enosix

When it comes to IoT–the internet of things–one manufacturing company is leading the way with cutting-edge products and solutions. But their homegrown B2B eCommerce solution and customer portal wasn’t living up to their mission of enabling an intelligent planet.

Noting a need to improve the customer experience and low adoption on their legacy portal, they looked to not just improve the UI (user interface) but to enable a true modern B2B eCommerce platform. This wasn’t just about improving the customer experience–though it was important for customers to see invoices, open orders, pricing, and place orders. It was about making that experience personalized, and accurate, for each and every customer which meant SAP-based pricing, invoices, and history had to be accessible, and always right, inside the portal. It also meant enabling customers to place orders without the sales teams fielding calls as nothing more than order-takers.

Putting Together the Right Team and the Right Players

The manufacturer rightfully researched all available options–including SAP Hybris with SAP BTP/CPI–before deciding on Salesforce Commerce Cloud for their portal. Critical to that decision was how enosix could virtualize data directly from SAP into Salesforce–no middleware, no batches, no time delays–making Salesforce Commerce Cloud a clear winner.

They realized their SAP implementation wasn’t just run-of-the-mill complex, it was really complex. They also realized the impact their custom-built portal was having on IT resources and how that was negatively impacting business priorities.

The solution they needed had to be seamless and result in a solution that didn’t require dedicated IT resources to maintain. 

A Grand Slam Success with Raving Fans

“This manufacturer has now created a world-class self-service experience, giving their customers the ability to not only see current and past transactions–but to place orders with 100% accuracy,” said enosix CTO and founder, Gerald Schlechter. “The enosix purpose-built framework enables SAP pricing, discounts, inventory availability, and tracking to flow seamlessly into Salesforce for always-on, always-accurate eCommerce. This saves time for sales and service representatives and improves the customer experience–driving increased adoption and sales.”

It’s easy to focus on the success of the project when it improves order and pricing accuracy by 66% and 40+% of all orders now flow through the portal. But it’s also critical to include the improved employee productivity in the success metrics – as sales and customer service employees can now focus on higher-value, revenue-generating tasks without having to manually price and enter orders, track shipments, etc. IT resources are now free to address critical business needs without having to maintain or update the eCommerce portal.

This omnichannel experience across Salesforce Sales, Service, and Commerce clouds has driven Salesforce adoption internally and ensured a single source of truth–where business logic and rules built out in SAP are always in control of quotes, discounts, and orders.

Customers are voting with their dollars by choosing to use the eCommerce solution more and more. User adoption of the portal has increased dramatically thanks to accurate, timely information inside an easy-to-access self-service system.