Dear reader,

Successful B2B E-Commerce strategies are interdisciplinary ventures: It requires participants from the entire company in order to make profitable use of the advantages of digitization - and an E-Commerce platform that also takes this overarching character into account. E-Commerce is as multifaceted as your company. This applies both online and offline: The key to success lies in differentiation from the competition. For this reason, we develop a tailor-made solution for you that makes the individual strengths of your company tangible and tangible - on the desktop as well as on tablets and smartphones.

B2B & B2C E-Commerce solutions from ICONPARC are sustainable and successful! Using the example of Karl Gröner GmbH from Ulm, I will show you exactly what E-Commerce means in a B2B context.

I chose this example because we advised Mr Gröner from the very beginning on the development of the B2B E-Commerce solution. ICONPARC designed and built the Gröner B2B E-Commerce Platform: It has been in operation since 2002 and - like all our platforms - is technologically up-to-date at all times. The sustained success of the medium-sized family business Gröner shows that it pays to invest in digitization, and that is already the case for companies with annual sales of around EUR 25 million or more.

My special thanks go to Bernd Gröner and Dr. Eberhard Gröner for the trust they have placed in us for 20 years, as well as to Mrs. Lienhart for her outstanding commitment to the maintenance of the Gröner B2B E-Commerce platform.

I hope you enjoy reading all about our B2B E-Commerce Solution Digital sales channels for new markets & leads. I am pleased about your interest and any form of feedback: Please call me at +49 89 15900643 or write to me at consulting@iconparc.de.

Until then I remain with warm greetings from Munich

Antoine Levy
Dipl.-Ing. // CEO & Owner

Since the distinction between e-business and e-commerce often seems unclear, we will start with the definitions:

Products and many services are now so interchangeable that, in practice, it is often the price that decides whether a contract is awarded or not. But offering at the lowest price is not a winning strategy in the long run - at least not for the majority of suppliers. There is a promising strategic way out: In order to gain substantial new customers - and also to optimize the loyalty of existing customers - a broad field of activity is opening up in the area of digital services & B2B E-Commerce plattforms to differentiate competitors. In the 21st century, it is primarily digitization competence that determines the competitiveness of companies!
All the more surprising, then, is a widespread attitude that can be summed up in this way:

Why digitalize?

I can see that my competitors are not any further along either!

Not at all!

What is visible on the Internet is only the FRONTEND, the tip of the iceberg. In addition, B2B e-Commerceportals are usually closed off and therefore not accessible without login and password. This means that the type, scope and level of automation and processes running in FRONTEND or in the background - so-called BACKEND - cannot be assessed. B2B APPs are also located in a protected area, so that you are not aware of the progress of your competitors in digitisation. And this is how markets are distributed, quietly and quietly.

Without you noticing it.

And if ... then it is often too late.

Where companies used to dominate the market and customers put products in front of their noses, digitalisation has turned the tide in a disruptive way: The digital natives, who are increasingly pushing their way into business life, are almost all online and expect ...
Me, everything and now!

If you don't adjust to them, you will lose the connection - and these customers.
We are of the opinion that in the long term, customers can be bound not by digital presence, but by digital processes.

Up to now we have mainly dealt with the specific FRONTEND of the Gröner B2B e-Commerce platform, but now we are going to focus on the BACKEND: This has a standardized look&feel as well as a comprehensive operating and authorization system, which is used by all ICONPARC customers. Functionally, many components are already integrated and "thought through" with practical functionality - for example about 300 assistants for different maintenance processes. On this basis, the customization is carried out with regard to the individual requirements of each ICONPARC customer.

On the following pages we introduce the BACKEND, which is the largest part of an B2B E-Commerce platform. All modules are seamlessly integrated, which also applies to the FRONTEND. This has the advantage that all solution components interact efficiently, effectively and free of media breaks.

In order to use the Internet as a profitable sales channel, it is necessary to address interested parties and customers in a targeted manner, to make the selection of products as easy as possible for them, to present catalogue contents in a clear (and up-to-date!) manner, and finally to make the shopping process pleasant.

With the help of the versatile and individually supplementable comfort functionalities of the ICONPARC E-Commerce Module, you can turn occasional visitors into regular customers. Buyers are automatically kept up to date by e-mail on progress in order processing. Articles already purchased can be conveniently reordered from the order history of the respective customer. Via newsletter you draw the attention of customers and interested parties to special offers, services and promotions. These and other performance features contribute to the fact that your B2B E-Business platform meets with a high response.
So that you always have a full overview of your customers and their orders, extensive possibilities for the evaluation of all processes are integrated into the backend.

In order to sell successfully on the Internet, attractiveness, clarity and correctness of the product data are just as important as with printed catalogues.

In contrast to the print sector, which sometimes has long catalogue runtimes, Internet customers expect product information and price quotations to always be up to date online. The provision of catalogue content as part of a website is usually associated with numerous additional challenges. Catalogue content is rarely available in a complete and structured form and cannot therefore be used directly for the Internet without additional preparation. In practice, a versatile and flexible tool is needed to provide high-quality product data for online catalogues: The Catalog & PIM module ensures that catalog content can be easily composed from various data sources. For example, basic article master data, performance characteristics and descriptions as well as price lists and illustrations can be imported step by step via different interfaces. The completely browser-based BACKEND offers all possibilities to subsequently edit, enrich or refine imported data. The image data is automatically optimized for web conformity, whether during import or direct maintenance. Product master data, descriptive features, price information, product group structures and much more can be conveniently and efficiently entered and edited. Use the easy-to-use import and administration options to ensure that your catalogue content is always up to date.

The largest product range is of no use if customers do not find the desired products quickly. The Search & Filter module makes it easy for your clients:

With a combination of structured and full-text search across all product data as well as feature-based filtering and hit sorting, for example according to relevance.

With the Search & Filter module, searching becomes finding!

Direct search via the quick search field - or expert search with individual attributes such as designation, manufacturer, dimensions, features, etc.

Auto Suggest / Suggested hits

Already during the search input into the quick search field suitable articles, search terms, categories or manufacturers are suggested.

Filtering / After Search Navigation

Based on relevant product characteristics or article categories or merchandise categories

Support of synonyms and correction of typos (error-tolerant search), so that your customers will find articles even if they have mistyped, or use terms that do not appear in the article description.

So that your customers do not lose track of many hits, search results are sorted so that the most relevant hits are displayed first (relevance ranking). When determining relevance, the solution takes factors such as sales figures, call frequency, product groups, keywords, characteristics, etc. into account.

High-performance: Even with extensive product ranges, the search function determines suitable results in less than 200 ms. Even if the number of articles goes into the millions, the ICONPARC search system convinces with best performance: In a real ICONPARC project there are more than 50 million articles in the catalogue consolidated from many sources. However, search results are usually calculated in less than half a second.

The technical basis for the Search & Filter module is a so-called search index. This is a kind of table of contents for your product data, broken down by all relevant attributes. With the help of this data structure, products with desired properties can be determined within milliseconds. To generate the search index and to access it, we use the Apache Lucene search engine, which is seamlessly integrated into the ICONPARC E-Business Suite with numerous extensions.

With this solution architecture we relieve your SQL database (which can therefore process other queries faster) and deliver relevant search results largely without delay. Speed is a trump card in two respects: your customers love fast page access, and Google rewards you with a significantly better ranking.

The most successful way to keep visitors enthusiastic about your E-Business presence is to continuously revise and update the frontend content. While Google initially mainly evaluated page metadata such as keywords, the search engine now checks content for meaningfulness or topic-specific relevance based on context. On this basis, the classification in the ranking then also takes place.

That's why good content in the acquisition of new customers is now more sustainable than expensive SEM measures.

Content is King!

With the ICONPARC CMS module there are theoretically no limits. In practice, on the other hand, it is indispensable to design structures and the Look&Feel or operating systems uniformly throughout: This challenge is all the greater the more editors work on the content simultaneously, nationally or internationally. It is important that individual editors do not express their own design ideas. Rather, design and all general design aspects should be implemented in such a way that they are structurally and visually determined by your company's brand management, taking into account your corporate identity. Otherwise you run the risk that your customers will find a colourful patchwork carpet in the external image - here in the E-Business frontend - which will not do justice to your brand under any circumstances.

The ICONPARC CMS system automatically and conceptually ensures the uniform visualization of all frontend content. Permissible degrees of freedom can be finely granularly defined. Below we present some elements of the CMS module.

Snippets

All editorial content consists of individual content snippets. Simple snippets can represent a heading, an image, a video or a text block. More complex snippets, for example, allow for a "text-image-link" block. In addition to the numerous snippet types included in the standard scope, any other snippet types can be defined within the scope of customization.

Templates

By combining desired snippet types, templates for the actual editorial content are created by configuration, which can be conveniently managed in the backend of the solution with the help of the CMS template assistant. For example, it can be specified that certain snippet types must always be present in content that is derived from a certain template. The order of the applicable snippet types can also be specified, as can the permissibility of multiple occurrences of individual snippet types within the template.

Contributions

In the CMS Content Assistant, editorial contributions can be recorded and updated: These page components can be - if required personalized - placed in any number of places within a website. If a contribution is modified, this automatically affects all places where this contribution occurs. Within the scope of personalization, visibility can be limited, for example, by time or by assignment to specific visitor or customer groups.

Documents

Using the CMS Content Assistant, complete editorial pages can also be created: These documents can be used as link targets, for example for elements of a navigation menu, landing pages or newsletters. Editorial contributions can be placed on suitable page areas.

Example: Definition and design of a simple article template

The following example is intended to give an impression of how a coherent template definition - which can be combined with other elements - is created from many degrees of freedom. First, the order of the assigned (and thus allowed) snippet types has been set. Each selected snippet can be a mandatory field and must not remain empty. Headings must be written in capitals, in petrol and with bold 32-point font in the house font, left-justified. Only 2:1 or 1:3 size ratios are permitted for images. In order for the resolution to be sufficient for all end devices, images must be at least 2,000 pixels wide. After saving, images are automatically calculated in all required sizes and optimized for display on desktop PCs, tablets and smartphones. Buttons always receive a caption in the house font in capitals and with 20 point size. The frame is 1 pixel strong in black. With MouseOver the button colors itself in dark blue with white writing.

The highlight: no editor can avoid the template definition, i.e. it is not possible to change or overwrite the design. Your brand manager will take this up with relief, because in this way the promising combination of

If you use a standard product as part of a B2B e-Business digital strategy, this usually leads to an isolated solution. This stands alone or is not sufficiently integrated into the existing, mostly complex IT system landscape of your company. Cross-process process control is not possible in this way. Here is a simple example: Your ERP system contains many basic master data on customers, their employees, invoice and delivery addresses as well as individual prices and conditions. Without an automated, bi-directional link to your E-Business solution, the master data is maintained in several places, so that deviations and contradictions in reality are the unavoidable consequence.

Catalogues, product groups, features and articles

This data is also already available, mostly in the ERP or PIM system. Here it is also of decisive importance that the data is automatically transferred to the E-Business platform and processed there. Your products can be placed most effectively on the market via the digital sales channel!

Customer-specific assortments, prices, discounts, delivery times and availabilities

The added value of an E-Business business solution for your customers results in particular from the provision of this information in real time.

What about orders, delivery notes and invoices?

You can only count on a high level of acceptance for your solution if all the data already mentioned is kept up-to-date on the E-Business platform. In this sense, it is consistent to automatically transfer the online orders of your customers to the ERP system. This in turn provides delivery notes and invoices, which can be downloaded by the customers in the E-Business frontend. Compared to manual activities or process steps, Digital Customer Services scale excellently - with the lowest error rate at the same time.

Solutions implemented by ICONPARC

for example, retrieve customer-specific prices from the ERP system in real time, or calculate them "on-the-fly" at all points where the frontend requires prices.

A small calculation example illustrates the requirements on your system landscape: In practice, hundreds (sometimes even thousands) of customers will be online simultaneously and carry out search and filter actions on the E-Business platform. If only 200 customers retrieve hit lists with 40 products at a time, then 8,000 prices must already be determined - with as little delay as possible. ERP systems often find it difficult to cope with such quantity structures and the associated burden. However, because these customer-specific data are absolutely critical to success, we have developed numerous procedures, caching systems and algorithms over the past 24 years to provide high-performance assortments, products, availability, prices and conditions in the E-Business solution.

A "side effect" of successful digitization: the more you sell online, the more time your sales force gains to win new customers and open up new markets.

New application processes are created in an ongoing dialogue with our customers. Development initially takes place on the Development System. It happens again and again that (also) the data model has to be changed or extended. Each of our databases has a metamodel and is therefore self-describing. Using the tools for the metamodel, we create new tables, relations (foreign keys) and indices. Existing elements can be modified. The data model elements created or modified in this way are to be transferred to the staging system - and later to the live system - without interrupting operations.

For this purpose, exactly the same steps that were initially performed on the development system are now reproduced in the same sequence on the staging system (and later on the live system) during ongoing operation - automated, and thus highly efficient and error-free.

Using our self-describing databases and development tools operating at metamodel level, migrations are fast and error-free. We can also easily synchronize content across systems, as we know and distinguish between identity and compatibility attributes. Of course, larger migrations can also be bundled - for example at night, so that performance is not impaired during the day.

What do our customers get out of it?

Maximum security, agility and flexibility for rapid growth

Solutions from ICONPARC are durable and always stay young.