In this Acceleration Case Study, learn how an equestrian product company founded by Carla Perri, overcame eCommerce challenges by implementing an innovative web platform. As many retail locations began closing down, Perri noticed many customers were turning to online shopping. Recognizing this shift, Perri decided to make internal business adjustments to better reach B2C and B2B customers. Read how Perri’s Leather optimized its sales platform to improve the eCommerce customer experience.
Business Challenge – Finding an Online Sales Platform Optimized for B2B and B2C
Carla Perri is a lifelong horse lover that founded her own company in a barn over 21 years ago. She recognized a gap in the marketplace for high-value leather products. One main goal was to create a company supplying high-quality equestrian products for both retailers and consumers. Perri also wanted to support the American economy by only selling American-made goods.
While her company provided business to consumer channels, B2B rapidly became the backbone of her business. While many brick-and-mortar retailers began shutting down over time, the company realized that their shoppers hadn’t disappeared, but they were spending more time shopping online.
Perri’s Leather was already making sales online, but they had different programs to handle their B2C and B2B channels. For example, the company used a third-party platform for receiving B2C orders. This process required Perri’s Leather to download orders and enter them manually into Dynamics GP.
Performing this manual process was time-consuming. It also increased the chance of costly mistakes. A high volume of orders could hold back the company’s growth. This is due to all of the time required for entering these orders manually.
The existing platform was also tricky for making updates. Using agile marketing tools is necessary for online businesses. For instance, it’s essential to highlight web promotions, publish updates, change themes, offer gift cards, and much more. Using SEO tools is especially critical for retail companies. Most consumers use search engines to find deals on specific products. Perri’s Leather’s B2C solution didn’t have access to any of these features or capabilities.
Compounding matters even further was that the order process was challenging to navigate for B2C customers. This often resulted in a significant number of abandoned carts. If Perri’s Leather had any plans to grow its business in the B2C sector, it needed to revamp its eCommerce strategy.
On the other hand, their B2B platform was integrated within Microsoft Dynamics GP. Integrating with their ERP made it possible to automate the flow of orders, invoices, and data management between the B2B web sales platform and Dynamics GP.
Software Solution: k-eCommerce
Perri’s Leather decided to partner with k-eCommerce to develop an innovative platform to meet their needs best. The team at k-eCommerce created a web sales platform for Perri’s Leather. It was optimized for B2C and B2B while also being natively integrated with Microsoft Dynamics GP.
Dynamics GP integration enables all the orders and invoices to automatically transfer between the ERP and the web store. Meanwhile, it also copies data management tasks, such as pricing updates and inventory.
The design team at k-eCommerce created a custom theme. This was to improve the appearance and feel of the shopping experience at Perri’s Leather. They developed this to meet the company’s specific design requirements.
Built-in SEO tools also enabled the team to configure their product pages to optimize search engine performance easily. Using integrated marketing tools makes it possible to quickly create web promotions, offer coupons, and provide other types of engagement for B2C clients.
The Results
Integrating into Microsoft Dynamics GP eliminated the need for manual order entry and data management for employees. Automating the flow of information between the ERP and web store enables the team to save time and money. Additionally, it prevents many mistakes.
The automation process also expedites order fulfillment for customers. Now, orders are packed and shipped out much quicker than ever before. This is due to fewer touchpoints during the fulfillment process. This results in more satisfied customers.
Perri’s Leather has fully utilized k-eCommerce’s integrated marketing and SEO tools. The company has done so by fine-tuning the customer experience with customized promotions. Meanwhile, it also provides upsell and cross-sell recommendations, highlighting best-selling products, and much more. The website is simple for the marketing team to update, as it doesn’t require any in-depth technical knowledge.
The newly redesigned navigation and checkout page optimized for their B2C clients has allowed more users to shop on their website. The simplified one-page checkout significantly decreased the number of abandoned carts, which played a crucial role in boosting online sales. Ultimately, choosing to work with k-eCommerce to redesign their website was well worth the investment for Perri’s Leather.
