The Exit Store, the online sales arm of a US manufacturing group which produces emergency exit signs and emergency lighting, has selected On Demand Solutions (ODS) to deliver a new, straight-through B2B e-commerce experience for its smaller business customers, connected to its SAP Business One ERP system.
Live since January this year, the new fully integrated web site provides a single source of current product truth, running from its catalogues and online pages through to its accounting records. It supports accurate purchasing and records look-up 24/7, with the scope to present customised pricing and discounts to loyalty scheme members.
The Exit Store sells emergency exit signs as well as emergency lighting, produced by two eponymous manufacturers. While regional agents supply those companies’ products for major construction projects, The Exit Store fulfils incidental sales to small businesses such as single-store retailers and their electricians/fitters.
The small team at The Exit Store had found it a challenge maintaining its web site, which initially was ‘home grown’, and then more recently based on a mainstream ecommerce platform.
“There were so many things the previous web sites didn’t support. Making simple changes to pages could take up to eight days, because we just didn’t have the resources to manage that kind of thing,” says Bill Rowan, President of The Exit Store. “Once we were using an external e-commerce platform, we had to ask them to make any changes which cost us dearly. We were still far from where we needed to be: it certainly wasn’t Amazon-like.”
Operating under these limitations, The Exit Store experienced daily inconsistencies between the information appearing on its web site, and that in its catalogue or accounting documentation. It was difficult to manage combinations of different product variations and options, and to set parameters guiding customer selections. Meanwhile, inputting orders into back-office systems was all done manually – limited by office hours. If the team needed to check an order with a customer, this could lead to a protracted case of telephone tag because clients were less available during trading hours.
When the parent company decided to upgrade its enterprise resource planning capabilities to SAP Business One ™ – to streamline its processes and consolidate its accounting across the three businesses – an opportunity presented itself to The Exit Store to refresh its e-commerce platform and address all of its logistical issues in one go.
ODSNet™ from ODS quickly emerged as the obvious solution. “We started our own research straight away and On Demand Solutions came up immediately as the optimum solution to work with SAP Business One,” Bill says. “When we asked our SAP provider – the largest SAP reseller in the US – they confirmed what we’d found, that ODS was the way to go and that lots of their customers had made the same choice.”
Operating from a single source of truth – with one place to make changes that cascade across the web site and back-office systems – The Exit Store can rest easy that customers are always seeing consistent and correct information, which matches right the way through the purchase experience and in historic records. “If an item is out of stock in a particular variation, we can simply switch that option off in one place,” Bill explains. “Clients can no longer mistakenly order add-on options that aren’t appropriate, which reduces the need for follow-up, and if a product is being custom-made it’s immediately apparent that delivery won’t be next day.”
As well as improved customer confidence and satisfaction, The Exit Store will be able to update its product information quickly and easily and engage inbound marketing and search engine optimisation services to drive new business to its pages. These facilities weren’t available when its previous e-commerce provider exercised control over the platform.
“We’re currently streamlining the user journey through the web site, with ODS’s help, after which the plan is to relaunch the site and re-engage customers, to show them the big improvements we’ve made,” Bill says. “ODS was exactly the partner we needed for this, and we’re hugely excited about the potential to grow our business with a fully functional and integrated web site up and running.”