The Tini group begins its digital transformation with OroCommerce
The Tini group conducts its packaging trading business through three distinct companies. Each of them is dedicated to a specific activity: BBA Emballages (industrial packaging), Attis (food packaging), and Cristal Distribution (professional hygiene). Together, the companies have a turnover of €173 million.
The digital strategy of a multi-brand group
In March 2020, in a context of strong growth, particularly supported by the acquisition of companies, the Tini group aims to strengthen its digital strategy.
This ambition is all the more relevant since several of its new subsidiaries do not have an online presence.
The challenge? Equip each company with an ecommerce platform and support a large-scale change management process for the teams to ensure adherence to the project.
To successfully carry out this project, the Tini group wants to partner with a reliable and efficient ecommerce expert. Therefore, it calls on Synolia to assist with the construction of a multi-brand ecommerce platform.
Three companies and seven websites are planned for the first version of the project: the public site and the three sites dedicated to key account clients of BBA Emballages; the official site of Attis; and the two sites of Cristal Distribution.
Well-defined stages
The major stages of the project are divided according to the needs of each stakeholder, as follows:
- Co-design: involve the business teams of the different companies in framing workshops to collectively think about a common tool.
- Create and strengthen synergies: harmonize operations between the companies.
- Optimize: pool developments and maximize the use of native features to ensure the scalability of the platform.
- Train: develop a project that allows the client to be autonomous in managing their digital activity.
The Tini group’s project is based, on one hand, on the development of a platform core (development of essential features for all the group’s businesses and companies) and, on the other hand, on the development of the specificities of the different entities within the group.
The choice of OroCommerce
With the needs defined and the project framework set, Synolia’s teams then propose a solution tailored to the group’s expectations. Since the project requires a platform designed for B2B, the choice naturally falls on OroCommerce.
From its inception, the publisher has been positioned 100% B2B, natively offering numerous features suited to the group’s platform core. The solution is also designed with multi-organization management, allowing for easy management of different stores within a single admin interface.
Implementing the platform core and BBA Emballages sites
At the start of the project, BBA Emballages already has an ecommerce platform created in 2013.
“The current site does not allow autonomous purchasing; human intervention is necessary. In other words, a prospect cannot place an order.” Valentin Pacoret, ecommerce manager at BBA Emballages.
This limitation is a real obstacle to the growth of online revenue. Therefore, it is urgent to build a new platform that can host the four BBA Emballages websites (a public site and three dedicated key account sites).
Designing personalized, seamless and innovative experiences
From the outset, the stance is clear: the brand wants to create personalized, seamless, and innovative experiences throughout the customer’s buying journey. BBA Emballages offers many references, so it was essential to work on the UX-UI design of the product page to ensure smooth searching on desktop, tablet, and mobile. For this, Synolia’s teams began by defining wireframes to validate the desktop and mobile display before starting the mockup creation.
In the desktop version, it was decided to set up a table to quickly present the different products and their features. The column display with a filter allows users to compare and optimize their search in a few clicks. On mobile, the user can filter the features to select the right product..
A relationship based on proximity
Another key aspect of this project is proximity with clients. Today, each company has a network of sales representatives and specific agencies to advise clients before, during, and after the purchase. On the platforms, it is therefore important to maintain this commitment by allowing the client or prospect to quickly find a contact at any time during their journey.
In this context, the teams ensure that a logged-in client can access their representative’s contact details from the header. Furthermore, a prospect without a representative can enter their billing postal code to obtain the contact details of one of the 26 BBA Emballages agencies.
Thus, every client or prospect can contact a company representative to get quick answers to their questions, improving customer satisfaction.
Multi-warehouse management
On the logistics side, special care is given to delivery management. At BBA Emballages, orders are shipped from the nearest warehouse to the delivery address. Similar to a store locator, Synolia has integrated its own “warehouse locator” to display product availability in real-time for the warehouse closest to the order’s destination. The client can thus know the shipping time of their order and make a quick, effortless choice.
A fair price for everyone
In B2B, there are as many projects as there are pricing rules. At BBA Emballages, the pricing system operates on a synchronization mechanism by price tier, along with a tiered pricing system.
On OroCommerce, the price list system applies in a cascade, from the system to the client, through the website and the client group. The solution thus natively meets BBA Emballages’ needs.
The development teams have been able to focus their efforts on optimizing the daily price loading to ensure price display with each update sent by the ERP.
Team inclusion
The users and collaborators of BBA Emballages are an extremely important target for the project. To this end, the implementation of training sessions and video support has facilitated the platform’s adoption and knowledge sharing.
With this approach, Synolia has enabled the teams to become more autonomous in managing the group’s digital activity and merchant sites.
The Tini technical system: a single ERP for all companies
The initial project around BBA Emballages has laid a solid foundation for the interfacing between the ecommerce platform and third-party applications of the Tini Group’s IT system. Additionally, the fact that the group uses a single ERP for the three companies has allowed for shared development work for other projects.
The interfacing between the ecommerce platform and the ERP to import products on the phase 1 sites will be reused “out of the box” for the phase 2 setup. Standardized data update processes between the platform and the ERP will save time in implementing a future platform.
A brand identity for each company
Still aiming for consolidation, Synolia’s teams have worked on a common framework for the ecommerce sites. An initial design was created for BBA Emballages by Axome and then adapted for the other sites with some aesthetic variations to respect each company’s identity.
The deployment of other group sites
After several months of activity on the four BBA Emballages brand sites, Synolia and the Tini Group teams continue to work hand in hand to maintain and improve the platform. The goal is to support the evolution of the group’s digital ecosystem and ensure it aligns with its challenges and ambitions in all circumstances.
The integration of other group sites is also underway. The fifth site on OroCommerce is currently being launched, with others to follow soon.
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