Online Shops in Multiple Countries with Deep Integration into SAP

Experience Report on the Online Shop Project: Live Recording of the ANTEROS Forum Presentation

Banner Mitutoyo

User Report by Mitutoyo - Manufacture of Measuring Instruments

Mitutoyo is a leading supplier of metrology technology with over 60,000 products and more than 80 subsidiaries in over 40 different countries. Their product range includes handheld measuring devices, optical measuring devices, image processing measuring devices, handheld inspection devices and sensor systems.

Mitutoyo has been using the ANTEROS PIM and cross-media software since 2009. ANTEROS.pim is used to maintain product data, images and translations centrally and efficiently. Interfaces and flexible imports and exports are used both to integrate other IT systems and to export data for resellers and customers in various formats. ANTEROS.print is used to automatically create the complex print catalog on the fly, and now, the eCommerce module ANTEROS.web has been used to implement the online stores for many Mitutoyo countries - with deep integration into SAP.

ANTEROS at Mitutoyo

Product Data as the Basis of OnlineShops

Product data maintenance in ANTEROS is quite extensive at Mitutoyo, due to the large number of products offered and their properties. For example, almost 1,000 product families were created to group over 60,000 products according to common attributes, and almost 1,500 parameter definitions were created to maintain the many very technical parameters of the products in a comprehensible and clear manner. Mitutoyo also places great emphasis on the cross-selling aspect of their online stores. For this purpose, many different product relationships were defined to create links, such as accessories or spare parts, between individual products. In addition, all this information is also translated into 14 languages within ANTEROS.

Online Shops for Mitutoyo Europe

In principle, each Mitutoyo national subsidiary has its own online store.

B2B Online Shops for Mitutoyo Europe

The online shops created with ANTEROS replaced the old ERP web stores, thus the new online stores were immediately used by a large number of customers at the time it went live. The customers can log in with user name and password and see their customer-specific prices, all orders and can even specifically download images and product data in various formats for their own sales. The corresponding customer data is used directly in the online store with an interface to Mitutoyo‘s SAP application. Any visitors to the Mitutoyo stores who are not logged in cannot place orders and special functions are hidden.

B2C Online Store for Great Britain

A special feature of the British online store is that even visitors who are not logged in to the store can see prices and start orders. In contrast, users in other countries can only see products and the list price and cannot create orders.

“Our ANTEROS online stores are extremely fast. They are deeply integrated with SAP to display customer prices, availabilities, delivery times or order overviews directly from SAP and to automatically reduce order options depending on payment practices. The ANTEROS software offers excellent quality and flexibility, and the customer service and responsiveness from the INCONY team are great.”

Mitutoyo
Markus Bauer,
Deputy Division Manager at Mitutoyo Europe

Keeping an Overview in the Online Store

Online Store Navigation

Mitutoyo's online store is fully integrated into their websites. There, you can find the " Products" menu item, which lists all product categories that were integrated with ANTEROS using a content management system (CMS) as submenus. The resulting category tree has a great depth in order to adequately cover the wide product range. As a result, some of the categories are four levels deep. Navigating through the categories can be done in different ways, so that everyone can find their way to the products. On the one hand, one can click through the category tree or the subcategories. On the other hand, there is a listing of all categories with an associated image that links to the following subcategories or products once clicked.

Navigation and product display

Online Shop Product Display

Mitutoyo wants to provide their online store customers with a good overview of the most important information about each product. For this purpose, these are listed right at the beginning of the product display and visualized with a variable number of images that can be enlarged by clicking on them. Since the more detailed technical data may not be relevant to each user, Mitutoyo has chosen to write them in different blocks that can be expanded and collapsed as needed. In addition, the product-specific parameters are divided into „Specifications“ and „Dimensions“, with appropriate drawings illustrating the dimensions right next to them. Besides drawings, an ANTEROS-controlled online store offers the possibility to download brochures, instructions or software related to the product.

Features of B2B Online Store

Login

ANTEROS imports the relevant customer data, such as customer number, invoice and delivery address, from Mitutoyo's SAP system via an interface for each registered user. In addition, each customer is assigned a master user with which they can create additional online store users for the company in order to manage who is allowed to place orders for the company via the Mitutoyo online store.

Order History

The ANTEROS order history lists all orders placed by all customers of the company, even orders that were not placed via the online store but via other order channels are shown.

 
  • You can filter by an order period (from / to).
  • If you are looking for orders with a specific product, you can filter by this product.
 		  
  • If several users have been created in one company, it is possible to only show their own orders.
  • It is possible to give the order its own order name and search for this name in the order history.
 
A selection of possible functions

Shopping Cart

The shopping cart shows all selected products with a list price, customer price and company discount (in %). Likewise, the availability and the resulting expected delivery date are displayed. The shopping cart retrieves the customer price, the availability and the delivery date via ANTEROS web service from SAP.

Types of Orders

 
  • Order via shopping cart
    The conventional way of ordering is implemented here. The customer sees a personal customer price, which is determined using the customer and corresponding article number from SAP.
  • Partial orders
    The store shows the availability of the products from the shopping cart. If products have different delivery times, then, for example, the Italian online store has an integrated function for partial orders and allows an order to be split up.
 		  
  • Order by Quickorder
    If a customer already knows the item number for his order, the Quickorder is the best way to create an order list very quickly.
  • Order by Excel upload
    If a customer enters his order in his ERP system and this does not have a connection to Mitutoyo‘s SAP system, an order export via Excel can be started in the ERP system and the resulting file can then be uploaded to the online store. A combination of Excel order and order via shopping cart is also possible.
 

B2C UK Online Shop

Mitutoyo UK previously had an online shop implemented with the Magento store software, in which anyone could order without logging in. This store was also converted to an ANTEROS online store. It quickly became clear that the ANTEROS online store was much faster than the Magento online store. This was already an important point and increased the acceptance by the users. In addition, Mitutoyo‘s PIM data can now also be used for this store, which leads to significant time savings in data maintenance.

In addition, UK-specific assortments can still be entered in PIM and managed by publication assignment. Here, too, only UK list prices are displayed for non-registered users, and additional B2C functions, such as live chat, are also made available.

Mitutoyo is Extremely Satisfied with the Conversion to ANTEROS Online Shops

The new ANTEROS online store was very well received not only by Mitutoyo, but also by their customers. This can mainly be attributed to the efficient search through the many products and the very structured and technically high-quality display of product data. Even users who are not logged in are impressed by the efficient product search and product overview.
At this stage, all fully integrated online stores are running smoothly and the support from the INCONY team for new adjustments or interfaces has been outstanding throughout.

Planning to Renew your Online Shop or to Build a New Online Shop?

Are you planning to renew your online store or build a new online store in multiple countries and are looking for a good store software? Should the store allow your customers to search comfortably, respond quickly and integrate deeply with your ERP system? Then click the button below to get the free demo of the store software of the future.

Free Software DemoTips for online shops