A multi-specialist in the professional distribution of electrical equipment and forward-looking solutions
As the world leader in the distribution of electrical equipment, Sonepar has been supporting its partner customers—installers, engineering firms, developers, and major accounts—for 50 years, distributing top brands, negotiating the best prices, and delivering to customers’ job sites throughout France.
By unifying the 22 brands in its regional generalist network under the Sonepar Connect brand, Sonepar France sought to migrate each brand’s website to a common B2B e-commerce platform.
Improving the Customer Experience in B2B Distribution
With this redesign, Sonepar wanted to provide access to all 300 branches in its network through a single customer account and offer new features to its customers to improve their user experience.
A Recognized Platform
Already in use at Sonepar, the Intershop platform was selected as the foundation for the new digital platform because it met all the requirements:
- Robustness and scalability
- Native B2B Applications
- High-performance search engine
- Built-in responsive theme
The project team was organized around a “squad” of 5 people at DATASOLUTION and 4 people at Sonepar.
Innovation at the Heart of the Customer Experience
Improving the user experience has consistently been a top priority in the selection of new features: product comparison tool, invoice availability, product equivalence search (products with similar characteristics), multi-cart functionality (shopping carts corresponding to different quotes and ongoing projects), and more… In addition, internal processes have been standardized across the 22 participating brands. A unified catalog has been developed and implemented at Sonepar.
In addition to the technical aspects, special attention was paid to communication with customers to ensure they would not experience any order or delivery issues that might have disrupted the smooth progress of their projects.
Some statistics about this project
Visible Results
All 22 sites in the Sonepar Connect network migrated to the new e-commerce platform in just two months, between July and October 2019.
An improvement in customer satisfaction (as measured by the “Net Promoter Score” survey) was observed.
An increase in the online sales rate and the number of users of the e-commerce platform was recorded.
A 50% increase in website traffic was observed, largely due to the online catalog’s search engine optimization.
The e-commerce platform also serves as a product repository for our internal teams and enhances the employee experience thanks to product pages that are more comprehensive and illustrated than previous versions.
Finally, greater brand visibility, combined with improved customer service, helps establish the Sonepar brand’s reputation among the general public and makes it easier to recruit new talent.
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