With over 400 stores throughout six countries, Norway-based Elkjøp Nordic AS is the largest electronics retailer in Scandinavia.
In a drive to modernize and transform its entire IT infrastructure into a standardized SAP landscape, the company wanted primarily to set up and roll out a new B2B platform. The ultimate aim was to increase revenues from the company’s online B2B business, but the old, semi-automated solution was unable to support the necessary processes, resulting in significant manual effort on the part of the employees with every order. The decision was therefore taken to fully automate the registration and ordering processes. It was also important to the retailer that the final solution offered a low barrier to entry as well as high flexibility.
Particular implementation challenges were presented by the high level of internationalization required (given that the new solution would be implemented in four different countries, each with different languages and currencies), as well as the need to integrate the solution into the existing system landscape and accommodate the various interfaces to SAP ECC, SAP MDG, Microsoft Azure, and Informatica PIM, for example.
KPS rose to the challenge and implemented SAP Commerce, an effective cloud solution that includes more than 40 interfaces to the different peripheral systems. The expert in digital transformation took care of the entire B2B online shop development for both the front and back-end. With the aid of the SAP Hybris B2B Accelerator, the platform was quickly and easily branded with Elkjøp’s corporate design. The retailer’s new solution now supports fully automated B2B customer registration and order processing – for both new and existing customers.
Significant growth in online B2B revenue
As a direct result of implementing the cloud solution, Elkjøp has succeeded in increasing its revenue from the online B2B segment. The standards-based integration within the existing system landscape enabled KPS to implement the solution with minimal risk as well as a low time to market. Elkjøp is now benefiting from the wide range of features offered by SAP Cloud Commerce, such as synchronous, ERP-based stock checks, real-time customer-specific pricing as well as synchronous shopping cart calculation. The platform is also able to accommodate B2B-specific approval and budget processes, and supports multiple languages, meaning that it can be used in all the different countries served by the retailer.
Bjørn Dalen, Director of IT Systems & Operations at Elkjøp: “More than 1,300 companies, communities, and organizations in Norway alone now use our platform. KPS implemented the new system in line with our requirements and within an extremely short time frame, and delivered the requisite in-country professional user training for our employees.”
This does not mark the end of the cooperation: Additional customer-related features are to be integrated within the B2B portal in extensive follow-up projects. KPS is now currently also implementing SAP Commerce for the retailer’s B2C webshop; the biggest e-commerce website in Scandinavia.
