ShopJacobsen.com Case Study

Jacobsen is a worldwide supplier of turf maintenance equipment and utility vehicles. More specifically, Jacobsen carries products such as aerators, sprayers, dethatchers, and various types of mowers for golf courses, sports fields and grounds of sorts. ShopJacobsen.com is a new B2B Web site offering genuine parts for Jacobsen vehicles and equipment. Before the Web site was launched, Jacobsen had been receiving catalog orders by phone. The new Web site was built with efficiency in mind to handle orders, as well as large amounts of data.

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Challenges

Some of the main opportunities for Precis E-business were as follows.

• Create an efficient B2B e-commerce ordering process for a well-established brand with no historical B2B e-commerce presence.
• Integrate over 100,000 parts in inventory from the legacy system to the new database while taking into account that most of these parts are obsolete and require rules regarding replacement parts.
• Synchronize the legacy system data including account information, pricing, order data, shipping data, replacements, inventory and more into the new database.

Strategies

The Precis E-business team developed a comprehensive B2B e-business strategy as B2B Web sites simply require different functionalities than B2C. The Precis Team had to ensure that many factors were taken into consideration such as parts lookup diagrams and schematics, account storage and look up, flexible pricing levels, contracts and minimum buying quantities.

The search for products needed to be simple and fast. Those who know what part they need can utilize the search box with the part number for the quickest find. Those who want to look at products by particular groupings can shop by category. The customer can also shop by model. There is a step-by-step process to determine what vehicle you are referring to and once chosen, the inner workings are displayed on a drawing with all the necessary parts and recommended quantities listed below. 

The Precis E-business Platform offers a fully-functional e-commerce platform capable of handling both B2C and B2B. An intelligent shopping cart and multiple price lists and levels to allow for discounted bulk pricing based on accounts setting and credit terms. Customers are able to store their account information so that when they log in, they see the products and the pricing set just for them.

The Platform also offers a simple-to-use content management system (CMS) so that employees at ShopJacobsen.com are able to edit information, add products and make changes.

Results

Jacobsen customers are now empowered to browse over 100,000 products and order on their own time. The burden of taking orders over the phone is now relieved as the Web offers an efficient way of ordering. When customers are logged in, they can take advantage of accurate pricing levels for their accounts.