CASE STUDY | CONSUMER PACKAGED GOODS
Low Margins, High Growth
How a Fortune 1000 CPG manufacturer reinvested SAP maintenance savings in B2B eCommerce and grew eCommerce revenue 199%.
Results powered by Corevist Commerce:
+199%
B2B eCommerce Revenue
+145%
Growth in Transactions
+475%
Growth In Order Status Lookups
CLIENT: Fortune 1000 CPG manufacturer
- Industry: Consumer packaged goods
- Annual revenue: >$4 billion
- Employees: 5,001 – 10,000
Needed: B2B eCommerce for better margins and a competitive customer experience
Our client is a Fortune 1000 manufacturer of consumer packaged goods that produces household and specialty products under numerous well-known brands. The company faces formidable competition, and they have to keep margins low. Their competitive strategy revolves around increasing margins and investing those savings in marketing and innovation.
It’s a brilliant strategy. As we’ll see, it’s producing stunning results through the company’s global eCommerce presence.
Solution implemented:
Corevist Commerce
- Amazon-style browsing with rich content, intelligent search, mobile readiness, & more
- All relevant SAP business rules & personalization enforced in eCommerce
- Full order tracking & history from all ordering channels
- Self-service invoice payment & account management
Part 1: Using Reclaimed Margins to Innovate with Corevist Commerce
Several years ago, our client took a monumental step toward improving their margins. They chose to end their expensive SAP maintenance cycle and stabilize their SAP ERP system. They engaged our trusted partners, Rimini Street, to handle the ongoing maintenance of their stabilized SAP instance.
Before they launched Corevist Commerce, our client was processing roughly 7500 orders per year, all through phone, fax, email and manual entry into SAP. The company thrives on intelligent cost reduction, and they knew they needed to innovate with B2B eCommerce to reduce their order processing overhead.
With their SAP system stabilized and placed in the capable hands of Rimini Street, our client was ready to launch B2B eCommerce. But the solution had to be lean, efficient and scalable. It had to reflect SAP data and logic automatically, in real time, without a human touch.
That’s why the company chose Corevist Commerce.
Our client’s requirements:
- Cloud-based B2B commmerce platform
- SAP ERP integration included to facilitate hands-free order posting to SAP
- Lean, efficient and scalable
- Complex pricing rules honored from SAP
- Easy, intuitive mobile experience
First B2B eCommerce Project: Specialty Products Division
Requirements
As a first foray into SAP-integrated B2B eCommerce, our client chose to implement Corevist Commerce for their Specialty Products Division, which serves the farming industry with animal health products. This market presented unique challenges for Corevist and the manufacturer.
- The B2B eCommerce store needed to suggest recently ordered items in a way that made them easy to order again.
- The payments solution needed to book international orders instantly even though those shipments would have long lead times.
- Customers needed the ability to pick up orders themselves from the nearest distribution center.
- Customers needed accurate weight, size and shipping information before placing an order so they could avoid paying too much or too little for shipping.
A solution to each problem would help increase efficiency. Since cutting overhead is one of the prime reasons that manufacturers come to Corevist, we understood the business drivers behind these requirements — and we knew how to formulate a solution to each one.
What We Did
To help our client achieve greater efficiency in the end-to-end ordering process, we configured Corevist Commerce to solve these problems.
- To assist with reordering (and maximize account value), the Corevist Commerce search window proposes recently ordered items that are tied to the customer’s account history.
- To facilitate overseas shipments with long lead times, Corevist Commerce accepts credit card payments at the time of delivery creation.
- To help farmers get product faster, Corevist Commerce allows them to place will-call orders and pick them up later at the nearest distribution center.
- To help farmers avoid paying too much or too little for shipping, Corevist Commerce lets customers manage pallet size and container size during order placement. That way, customers get an accurate, real-time view of shipping charges before they place the order.
Second B2B eCommerce Project: EMEA Export Business
Our client’s Corevist Commerce initiative was such a success that the company chose to expand eCommerce. The new target was the company’s EMEA export business.
Requirements
Specialty Products, the first division to go live with Corevist Commerce, sells animal health products to farmers. The export business, on the other hand, is part of the Consumer Products division. It sells name-brand household products to countries outside the US. Margins are tight and competition from other big brands is tough.
For the EMEA export business, our client had specific requirements.
- A lean, powerful B2B eCommerce solution integrated to SAP in real time.
- Built-in support for the languages of the export territories.
- An easy-to-use solution for smaller export customers who couldn’t justify investing in EDI.
What We Did
From our perspective, expanding Corevist Commerce to the EMEA export business was incredibly easy. Because our solution is built on a fully scalable architecture, we leveraged the B2B eCommerce integration to SAP that we’d already provided for the Specialty Products division. This saved our client from investing in a redundant integration. The integration is one half of the Corevist Commerce picture, and there was no need to rebuild it.
The other half of Corevist Commerce is the customer experience that we present on the web. Since the EMEA export business and the Specialty Products division sell different product lines to different markets, we created a separate EMEA website to meet the needs of the export business.
- Integrated to SAP in real time for 100% accurate personalization.
- Supports the languages of the export territories.
- Easy to use for smaller export customers who can’t justify EDI.
Prioritizing value through
Corevist’s Agile rollout methodology
Corevist’s Agile rollout methodology:
- Oriented around the voice of your customers
- Iterative approach prioritizes critical functionality for go-live
- Gains essential early buy-in from internal users like Sales, Customer Service, etc.
Across a series of focus groups, we asked our client’s real customers a provocative question: “Why can’t we put this software into production today?” This question helps us uncover the things your dealers & distributors actually want in an eCommerce solution. It’s how we ensure that Corevist delivers the things your users need, no bloat included.
For our client, this focus group methodology was critical for defining priorities in the B2B eCommerce project. It ensured that we delivered exactly what customers needed.
RESULTS:
+199%
B2B eCommerce Revenue
+145%
Growth in Transactions
+475%
Growth In Order Status Lookups
Solution implemented:
Corevist Commerce
- Comprehensive SAP integration included for cost savings and personalized customer experience
- All relevant SAP business rules & personalization enforced in B2B eCommerce
- Full order tracking & history from all ordering channels
- Self-service invoice payment & account management
Remember how our client was taking orders strictly through phone, fax and email? Now, seven years later, Corevist Commerce handles 100% of orders. That represents an incredible cost savings. By automating the order entry and tracking processes with B2B eCommerce, our client achieved remarkable cost reduction in their customer service department.
Let’s look at the numbers:
Lifetime (June 2016 – May 2021)
- 64% conversion rate
- 43,453 transactions
- 637,400,247 units sold
Growth
First full month compared to most recent full month:
- 145% growth in transactions
- 199% growth in eCommerce revenue
- 21% growth in average order value
- 50% increase in self-service order placement
- 43% increase in self-service invoice checking
- 475% increase in self-service order status lookups
