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PARI Respiratory Equipment launches new
Magento site with real-time SAP integration
This was a really fun project,” said Ashley Weigand, PARI’s Director of Marketing for
US and Canada.
‘Fun’ might not be the most-used adjective to describe an SAP integration project—
especially one that involved a US-based division, German-based headquarters and
SAP IT resources, and a cloud-based hybrid SAP application.
But, ‘fun’ was the word that Weigand used. Why? Because, this is a story about
giving people what they want.
Everyone wanted something.
PARI’s dealers and distributors wanted a web-based B2B ordering
system.
PARI’s US marketing department wanted a user-friendly, attractive
interface for the product catalog. They also wanted a flexible,
easy-to-use content management tool so they could “control” the
language and images on the catalog site.
The IT department along with marketing wanted to build
the website using Magento, a popular eCommerce platform.
(Magento’s low entry cost and large community of developers
and partners made it the platform of choice.)
And everyone wanted real-time SAP integration.
PARI’s SAP team—located at the company’s international
headquarters in Germany—wanted to make sure that SAP
integration with a B2B eCommerce site didn’t do anything to
compromise SAP data integrity or business processes.
Why they wanted it.
In early 2012, more than 60% of orders placed with PARI-US were
received via fax, email and telephone. In an age where customers
have come to expect 24x7 online access, processing orders over
the telephone was losing its appeal.
“We had two major goals for this project,” said Dale Anderson,
PARI’s CFO. “First and foremost, we wanted to listen to our
customers and make the ordering process more convenient.
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Second, we wanted to free our Customer Service Group from
Rapid development.
manual data entry so they could focus on more pro-active
“Once we got started, the whole thing went rather quickly. Over
support activities.”
the course of the project, b2b2dot0 led six focus groups to test
and refine the interface—three were internal, and three were with
How they got it. our customers,” said Anderson.
“Our IT group and our marketing department had already
identified Magento as the best solution to build the front-end Weigand, PARI’s Director of Marketing added, “b2b2dot0’s agile
of our eCommerce site. Our designers were comfortable with and iterative process allowed us to build a great system—based
the platform and our marketing department liked the built-in on real user feedback—in a very short time. In fact, just a few
communication features,” said Anderson. “The big question was, weeks into the project, we held our first focus group with
‘How are we going to integrate Magento with SAP?’” production-ready site. The customers who participated were
surprised at how far we had come in such a short time.”
“A few years ago, we developed an order management website
for one of our large retail pharmacy customers. That site
Leave busy people alone.
was designed to give patients with nebulizer prescriptions a
“Our German SAP group is small and busy. They have to support
convenient way to order refills online,” Anderson said. “But, it was
PARI Global, not just the US. So, for this project to be successful,
not linked to SAP. Instead, orders were stored in a queue and had
we had to use their time sparingly,” said Anderson. “Over the
to be manually entered into our SAP system.”
course of this project, I think b2b2dot0 had fewer than five phone
“That site was our first attempt at online order management,” calls with our SAP team. Aside from those calls, we were able to
Anderson said. “It gave us a glimpse of what was possible. But leave them alone so they could focus on other priorities.”
we knew that before an order management site could really
be successful, it had to be more comprehensive, and it had to Win-Win-Win.
connect with SAP.” “We are extremely pleased with the outcome of this project,”
Anderson said. “This could have been a story about competing
“With this new site, we initially considered building our own SAP interests and agendas, but it wasn’t. Our customers got the online
integration interface. But, then Steven Ferrell, our IT Director, did ordering system they requested. Our marketing department got
some online research and found a company called b2b2dot0. the Magento-based site they wanted. Our customer service reps
are now shifting their focus away from manual order entry. And,
“b2b2dot0 specializes in real-time integration between Magento
the entire project was completed with minimal disruption to our
eCommerce and SAP. In the early planning phase, b2b2dot0
German SAP team.”
showed us how their cloud-based platform and agile project
management process could get us online quickly. They also
addressed our concerns about data security and business
rule enforcement in areas like: customized pricing, multi-plant
inventory checking, min/max order quantities, credit checking North America: Europe:
and shipping choices.” 7474 Creedmoor Road Chutzenstrasse 47
Suite 108 3007 Bern
“Based on my conversations with b2b2dot0, I created an internal Raleigh, NC 27613 Switzerland
project blueprint and worked with our German headquarters to United States
Tel: +41 (43) 540-42 -25
get approval to move forward.” Tel: (919) 676-7429
Fax: +41 (0)44 241 39 58
E-mail: info@b2b2dot0.com
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