Locinox integrates e-Commerce and PIM Locinox is an international market leader in gate and fencing hardware, headquartered in Belgium. The company manufactures an extensive range of products available in a wide array of choices. Colour, size and direction of swing can for instance be chosen by the customer. Compiling a product catalogue and keeping it up-to-date, as well as publishing information on the website were becoming highly labour-intensive tasks. Consequently, Locinox was looking for a new system offering increased information management efficiency. It furthermore wanted to set up a B2B e-Commerce platform offering customers a user- friendly way to place their orders. Ad Ultima has integrated Perfion Product Information Management (PIM) and Sana e-Commerce. This solution offers ample possibilities to efficiently manage large quantities of product information and subsequently put these products at the customers’ disposal in an integrated e-Commerce solution. During the ordering process, the e-Commerce solution offers comprehensive product choice support and provides extensive technical information as required by the customer. ADULTIMA IMPROVING BUSINESS PRODUCTIVITY
Transcript
Locinox integrates e-Commerce and PIM
Locinox is an international market leader in gate and fencing hardware, headquartered in Belgium. The company manufactures an extensive range of products available in a wide array of choices. Colour, size and direction of swing can for instance be chosen by the customer. Compiling a product catalogue and keeping it up-to-date, as well as publishing information on the website were becoming highly labour-intensive tasks. Consequently, Locinox was looking for a new system offering increased information management efficiency. It furthermore wanted to set up a B2B e-Commerce platform offering customers a user-friendly way to place their orders. Ad Ultima has integrated Perfion Product Information Management (PIM) and Sana e-Commerce. This solution offers ample possibilities to efficiently manage large quantities of product information and subsequently put these products at the customers’ disposal in an integrated e-Commerce solution. During the ordering process, the e-Commerce solution offers comprehensive product choice support and provides extensive technical information as required by the customer.
ADULTIMAIMPROVING BUSINESS PRODUCTIVITY
Profile
Locinox is a B2B company manufacturing and selling technical
products. Thanks to its advanced product and marketing
strategy Locinox succeeds in realizing impressive growth in its
international trade.
www.locinox.com
Challenge
Locinox’ range of product combinations and finishes is really
huge making product information management extremely
complex. Compiling a product catalogue and keeping it up-
to-date, as well as publishing information on the website were
was looking for a new system offering increased information
management efficiency.
It furthermore wanted to set up a B2B e-Commerce platform
offering customers a user-friendly way to place their orders.
Solution
By working together with Ad Ultima and using Microsoft
Dynamics AX as a basic platform Locinox can rest assured that
it will get long-term support. Ad Ultima has integrated Perfion
Product Information Management and Sana e-Commerce.
Benefits
• Shorter new product introduction times• Highly efficient data management, less manual work• Customer self-service: the customer has access to a wide
range of online information • Future-proof (highly configurable) e-Commerce platform • Interaction, immediate response for the customer• Reduced administrative workload• Advisory system
•
« We are absolutely pleased with the choice we have made. If we had to do it all over again, we would choose the same solution. Thanks to the PIM system and e-Commerce platform we can manage all our product information in a structured manner, without having to deploy more personnel. »Mik Emmerechts,
General Manager Locinox
TESTIMONIAL LOCINOX
Locinox is an international market leader in gate and fencing hardware, headquartered in Belgium. Its products and fittings are specifically designed for the gate and fencing business with the aim of optimizing its customers’ production processes.
The company manufactures an extensive range of products, which are available in a wide array of choices. Colour, size and direction of swing can for instance be chosen by the customer. Managing the extensive product information is really challenging, as the products are highly configurable and the information is available in six languages. The product range furthermore differs per target group and/or region. Locinox supplies thousands of articles to customers in 46 countries all over the world and realizes a 15% annual turnover growth.
Product information,
Using a PIM system (Product Information Management) allows to reach several objectives: Up-to-date informationIn product information management it is very important that the information is always up-to-date, also because the product range is constantly changing. Every change must be immediately visible in the various target group and sales channel catalogues. The web catalogues and e-Commerce catalogues must be identical at all times. Faster go-to-marketTurnaround times of new product introductions need to be short. Innovation and rapid response to market trends are of paramount importance to Locinox. Compiling a new catalogue may not take longer than one month and putting it online should be possible in a day. Low maintenance costsAlthough the product range and diversity are steadily growing, the product information management remains in the hands of two employees who can take care of it fully autonomously for the six languages.
Customer self-serviceBoth B2B customers (B2B buyers, such as wholesalers or manufacturers) and end customers (installers) have a need for technical product information, such as technical drawings with dimensions and configuration options. Since the implementation of the PIM system, customers have direct access to this information, thus considerably reducing the workload for the internal sales department. The information is available to customers/buyers in various formats, ranging from CAD drawings to high-resolution photographs for marketing purposes.
e-Commerce integration
The PIM system is an essential tool for the e-Commerce platform. Locinox has decided to implement a standard e-Commerce solution, which reaches the following targets: Configurable platformLocinox wanted to allow for a rapid evolution of e-Commerce; methods that are considered innovative today will soon become widely used or even obsolete. There is a constant need to bring in innovations, such as an integration of the website into social media. At present, Locinox with its B2B business model does not need to offer this possibility, but it expects the standard e-Commerce platform to support this type of integration without requiring a lot of extra effort. Immediate feedbackAn important objective is to give the customer correct feedback with regard to his order straightaway, including availability, delivery times, shipment details, order history, etc. This also reduces the pressure on the internal sales department. Reduction of the administrative workloadAn obvious benefit is the reduction of the administrative workload related to order processing. A necessary condition to achieve this is full automation of the entire work flow. Given the large variety of weights and dimensions of the parcels to be shipped, calculating the international transport costs is for instance a real challenge. If you do not have an automated tool to calculate these costs, the benefits of having a B2B web store are partially lost.
Another major condition is absolute data quality.Incorrect basic data will lead to incorrect processing and have an influence on the turnaround time (preparation time) of a project.
Advising customersThe final objective is to assist customers in choosing the right product and to avoid mistakes. To this end, a configuration wizard has been developed for the web store, which helps customers to choose the right product configuration using graphics.
The multiple product configuration options offered by Locinox give the company a competitive advantage over its rivals, but the real art is doing this without complicating the order process. This is achieved by using a graphical product configurator. It furthermore increases the order accuracy, thus reducing the number of errors, saving costs and avoiding customer frustration.
