Kaiser + Kraft Europe

Client situation

KAISER + KRAFT is the leading B2B mail order specialist in Europe for office, workshop and warehouse equipment. The company offers its customers a remarkably diverse selection of approximately 28.000 products for the office, workshop, transport, warehouse and environment: from simple sack trucks and desks, to workshop cranes and complete prefab offices.

The KAISER + KRAFT Group is represented by companies in 15 European countries as well as in Japan and China, and is a subsidiary of the TAKKT Group.

Challenge

The previous E-Commerce solution implemented by KAISER + KRAFT was based on old technology and limited the business and marketing specialists in making the online channel more successful. Time-to-market for the new solution to be implemented was key, even more after the recession started in September 2008. Rolling out new online initiatives was not possible on the old platform.

Solution

The highlights of the implemented solution are:

• Implementation of various new B2B features and improvements to meet the specific needs of the customer
• 35 shops worldwide on one shared infrastructural platform
• Data transformation and migration from various sources
• Continuous integration and weekly go-lives of the new webshops
• Endeca integration for optimized navigation and search
• Omniture integration for visitor tracking and analysis
• SEO integration to support the marketing activities
• Rollout to 25 countries with 15 languages and 5 currencies
• Support of B2B customer specific prices, products and workflows
• Support of 4 independent designs on one shared platform for the different strategic business units

Results

Softlution implemented the complete solution for KAISER + KRAFT within 6 months after signing the requirements document. Besides a complete new hybris B2B E-Commerce platform, also the Search & Merchandising tool Endeca was completely renewed with a full integration with hybris.

Three months after the first country went live, the new webshop was already rolled-out to 12 other countries and two other brands. And six months after the first go-live KAISER + KRAFT was able to go-live with a complete new online initiative called Certeo. The functionality within the webshop has been greatly expanded by using the B2B module of the hybris eCommerce platform, e.g. lead-sub buyers, budget control, authorisation workflow, Ariba and OCI integrations and much more.