M.K. Electronic implements multi-shop solution with Dynamics AX integration
Overview
As part of upgrading the ERP system Microsoft Dynamics AX to the latest version, M.K. commissioned silver.solutions GmbH with the design and implementation of several new online shops. The special challenge was to implement both a direct link of the shop to AX for the German and Austrian head office and the development of a shop-in-shop solution for the distribution partners in other European countries.
The solution in detail
The project uses the tried-and-tested shop system by silver.solutions. The connection to the customer ERP is made via the B2B-Connector for Microsoft Dynamics AX which was developed together with Oboe Software GmbH. The German and the Austrian shop will be directly connected with the relevant clients of AX. The Italian and the Greek shop pass on the orders of the end customers on behalf of the different distribution partners.
The shop is targeted at specialist retailers as well as companies and end customers. Various registration rights and workflows have therefore been set up for the different customer groups. The display of prices and shop discounts also depends on the target group, which means that retailers have their own terms when making purchases.
The M.K. shop is available in four languages, and new languages can be added at any time. Given the flexibility of the shop software and interfaces, more clients or countries can also be connected at any time.
The M.K. shops offer approx. 800,000 products of 12 brand manufacturers. This large number of products is not displayed using a classic catalogue system, but rather a multi-step product finder was developed. By selecting manufacturer, type of system, series etc., customers are able to specifically filter according to spare parts for their device. Multiple allocations of articles to product areas are the rule. A special import routine was implemented to do this, which is not only used by the product finder, but vice versa, also displays all other product groups for the individual articles and thus provides information about compatibility with other devices.
The information pages are maintained via the integrated CMS, which is integrated in the shop. An external parts catalogue was integrated separately.
In order to represent a comprehensive shop-in-shop system, silver.solutions expanded the shop modules order history and customer centre. This way, a number of administrative functions were created for shop operators. Retailers are able to customise everything from website texts and payment and delivery methods all the way to tax rates and specific discount groups. What’s more, retailers are able to specify which manufacturers/brands they wish to offer in their M.K. shop. Orders from the distributions partners are always passed on to the ERP system of head office on behalf of the retailer. This saves having to create extensive customer data sets in the ERP system. Retailers now manage their own customers in the shop interface. The Smart Client integrated by silver.solutions provides an easy overview of all previous orders, backorders and deliveries on the shop interface. Smart Client allows the creation of individual search fields, lists, filters and groups to display a large amount of data.
The more than 100,000 existing customers from the previous shops were exported into the new system using special processes and workflows. This ensures a smooth transition without losing valuable customer data.
The result
With its new website, M.K. Electronic now has a mature and expandable multi-shop system for the different countries. In the retailer shops, distribution partners now have complete control over their orders and customers. Some of the burden is taken off the ERP system in head office and only truly important information related to retailer orders is passed on. Overall, for the introduction of the new online shop, all processes were checked and improved one by one.
