Background:
Based in Hunzenschwil (AG), Switzerland, Agro AG was founded 50 years ago and employs some 60 people. Agro markets innovative, high-quality electrical products all over the world. In Switzerland Agro occupies a leading market position . Recently Agro became a subsidiary company of the German company KAISER GmbH & Co. KG, Schalksmühle, which plays a leading role on the German market as manufacturer of electrical installations.
Agro supplies some 2,500 customers. Its products are positioned in the premium quality segments, although maximum availability of products remains of particular importance. Most of the production is outsourced. In a few cases products are sold ready-assembled, a quick and easy activity to perform.
The corporate goal is in achieving total customer satisfaction by way of specialist expertise and innovative drive. Agro’s employees identify with an obligation to provide customers at all times with outstanding service. Environmental protection is also firmly anchored in its guiding principles.
Industry sector, product and target group:
Agro manufactures mainly standardised, self-explanatory products. Discount structures with regard to pricing are relatively simple. The products and their areas of application are generally industry-typical, frequently with strandard characteristics. Thus Agro’s products lend themselves well to distribution via an e-shop.
Agro’s product range is organised in two core segments, distinguished by the target sector to which they are directed, although they overlap to a certain degree. Some products are sold in both target sectors.
Machine, Apparatus and Plant Construction
The core range for machine, apparatus and plant construction comprises cable connections and insertions; the solution range is completed by protective cable conduits, energy-conducting chains and accessories. These products are used in laying, inserting and protecting cables in machines, plants and apparatus. The entire range of industrial products is distributed via a well developed network of agencies in other countries and distributors throughout the world.
Electrical installations
Agro develops products which enable fitters to fit products efficiently and expertly in electrical building shells and extend electrical systems. The heart of the Agro range is its concealed installation materials; the range is completed by its surface-mounted installation materials, installation pipes and conduits, earthing materials, as well as cable glands and insertions. With these installation products Agro occupies the leading position in the upper price segment of the Swiss electrical installation market. Sales are made via the electrical wholesale trade.
In both markets, Agro’s competition strategy is based on two central factors: firstly the product quality should fully meet customer requirements; secondly, outstandingly high ability to supply should ensure that customer orders are always fulfilled quickly.
Corporate vision:
The company’s vision is orientated to customer needs. Based of their queries and problems, customers are provided added value for their own products and services, if need be in consultation with their own development department. The company vision culminated at the end of 2001 in the decision to launch Agro’s own E-Shop solution.
The corporate vision encompasses the following aspects:
- Decisive customer orientation as a basic approach.
- The Agro “Quality Connection” stands in equal measure for high-quality products (electrical connection components) and for high-quality customer relationships.
- Organisation is simple and thrives on teamwork and open communication.
- Agro employees think and act on their own initiative.
In this chapter the integrated Agro E-Shop will be described from the perspectives of business, process and application, with the integration aspects in the forefront. Fig. 3.1 shows a general outline of integration of the shop solution and the ERP system.
Fig. 3.1: A general outline of the integration solution
Business perspective:
Prior to the introduction of the integrated E-Shop, Agro customers made their orders in writing or by telephone. Ordering by e-mail had also been possible for several years but this facility was hardly used. Agro sought to provide an additional ordering facility by introducing an E-Shop.
The prime motivation behind the establishment of the E-Shop was image enhancement for the company. Introduction of the E-Shop was also promoted by the staff of Agro. From the start, the largely youthful workforce was convinced by the project as they had received frequent enquiries from customers asking about an E-Shop. Thus it could be assumed that there was indeed a real customer demand.
The advantage for customers lies in the permanently available information and ordering facility, even outside Agro’s business hours. Electrical wholesalers also have the opportunity to incorporate a hyperlink in their own E-Shop directly to Agro products in the Agro shop. An HTML page is generated that contains neither frames nor Agro logos but shows instead the logo of the electrical wholesaler.
The E-Shop mainly contains standard products, accounting for one third of the entire Agro range. Products are sorted by product family (e.g. cable glands, installation materials) and by product group.
From its inception, it had been planned to integrate the shop solution into the existing Abacus order capture system in order to optimise the processing workflow for incoming online orders and to keep the data upkeep workload to a minimum. The shop lends itself especially to smaller customers because processing costs preponderate in the case of orders of small transaction value. In addition, experience was to be gathered through the shop’s integration for future use in realising company-wide process integration with important customers. It is planned to link important customers directly to the electronic ordering system.
The Abacus shop solution offers further advantages. Firstly, integration into the Abacus ERP system eliminates the need for manual input of incoming ordering data. Thus sources of error and batch transfer runs are eliminated. Secondly, the catalogue is generated and updated from the master product data in the ERP database. As a result data need only be updated in the ERP database. Thirdly, the Abacus shop is hosted by Abacus. This means no additional investments in hardware are required for the solution as Abacus handles operation and maintenance of the shop server. Abacus also runs a server farm with modern security technologies so that breakdown times are kept to a minimum.
Process view:
For customers the ordering process proceeds as in almost any E-Shop. Prior to their first visit, however, customers must apply by telephone for access to the shop as a customer; normally an E-Shop allows customers to register directly and change their personal data there, too. This functionality however is not used by Agro.
Registered customers have access to the full functionality of the E-Shop. Anonymous visitors can only see information about the company and product lines and can order or download print-version catalogues.
Having logged in, customers and customer groups are presented with the variegated price and discount structures definable in the Abacus order processing system. Thus customers are certain to find the purchase prices in the Agro shop consistent with what they are accustomed to.
Various search criteria are possible when searching for a product. Besides full text search, the user can enter an Agro number or the electrical material number (Swiss standard) as the search term. The search criteria take into account the varying search habits of electrical wholesalers on the one hand and those of machine-engineering companies on the other.
Current stock levels are not displayed in the E-Shop. Tracing and tracking is not possible either. These functions are superfluous at Agro, because customers normally receive their goods one day after they place their order.
Internal order processing workflows at Agro remained almost unchanged after introduction of the E-Shop, which merely affects order capture. As they are transferred electronically, orders taken in the shop need not be input manually into the ERP system.
Application view:
As shown in Fig. 3.1., the Abacus ERP system forms the basis for the Agro E-Shop solution. The system is supplemented by an E-Shop server, AbacusCity, hosted at Abacus. Communication between the actual ERP system and the shop server occurs via the Java client AbaShop. AbaShop is a fully integrated E-Business software module which complements the basic ERP system module. The E-Shop module is run on the same fat clients (PCs) as the basic module, meaning that additional hardware is no longer necessary
The central element of any E-Shop is its product catalogue. Agro’s is generated from the master product data saved in the ERP database (cf. Fig. 12.2). The E-Shop module generates the catalogue by reading the product data units intended for the product catalogue from the master product data. The data sets are gathered into files, which in turn are converted into XML data and compressed. The E-Shop module sends the XML files – preferably encrypted – to the E-Shop server via the internet where they are reconverted into a proprietary data format and saved in a database. Customer data is transferred to the E-Shop server in the same way.
The E-Shop server uses the same data format as the basic ERP system. Basically, the solution consists of two identical business software solutions. The data necessary for the Agro shop are mirrored on the Abacus server.
Fig. 3.2.: A diagram of functions and data flows
The ERP system logs every change in master data relevant to the shop. At preset intervals or on manual request the E-Shop module reads off the mutation protocol and transfers the mutated data units as described above to the shop server. In this way, the data mirrored on the shop server is constantly updated. This procedure is called replication, because in the opposite direction, customer data changed on the server can be copied to the ERP database. At Agro, no customer data from the shop is transferred to the ERP system because customers in the Agro shop are not permitted to make changes to their data.
The E-Shop server carries out the tasks of publishing catalogue data in the web and collecting orders. It saves the incoming order data in its database. As soon as an electronic order is received, the E-Shop server reports it by sending an e-mail to an Agro employee (cf. Fig.3.2).
Agro employees call up electronically-received orders periodically or as the need arises. All orders in the server database are then converted into a proprietary XML data format, sent from the shop server to the E-Shop module and saved temporarily by the latter in the ERP database. These temporary orders in the ERP database are inspected one by one and sorted. They are then converted into another table form and input by the E-Shop module as orders into the basic ERP module. Manual intervention is also required here. Order confirmations are generated in the course of order processing by the ERP system and forwarded by post to the customer. The ERP system also takes over further processing of the order up to dispatch and invoicing.