Henry Schein

Building a multi-region eCommerce System with Advanced B2B Features

Category
Language
Region
B2BDevelopmentHostingLocalization Strategy
Mandarin (Chinese)
ChinaThailand
Category:
B2BDevelopmentHostingLocalization Strategy
Language:
Mandarin (Chinese)
Region:
ChinaThailand

Background

Henry Schein (NASDAQ: HSIC) was founded in 1932 in New York. Today it is one of the largest dental and animal care providers in the United States and the world’s largest distributor of dental equipment and supplies.

In the era when more and more companies move their operations online, how can a B2B company like Henry Schein not only embrace the digitalization change, but also use it to its own advantage? How to use digital transformation as a jumpboard and upgrade various aspects of the enterprise: from procurement and manufacturing to design and marketing — potentially ending up with an absolutely new business model?

Challenge

TMO’s role was to be the main driver of Henry Schein’s digital transformation – finding and developing the company’s new eCommerce platform.

Henry Schein has presence in a number of countries in Asia, and each regional branch can benefit from a country-specific eCommerce solution. Therefore, the platform needs to be centralized in terms of development, deployment, IT support, and core architecture, but at the same time implementation and operation details should follow local requirements.

Service & Solution

The final decision for Henry Schein was to choose Adobe Commerce (Magento): a multi-language, milti-locale system, full to the brim with B2B-focused functions and features.

Strategic Consulting

Extensively communicating with regional offices, we carried out a detailed analysis of internal processes, estimated digital maturity of different branches, scrutinized existing operational and organizational structures. This allowed us to clearly define problems and challenges, bring to light pain points, and locate opportunities that digital technology can create on every level of the organization’s structure. Finally, we closely worked with Henry Schein’s managing team to develop achievable and sustainable B2B eCommerce models and strategies.

Framework for eCommerce in Asia

Resulting system comprises two major themes: one for China and one for other Southeast Asian countries. Each theme encompasses core functionality, UI, and workflow and can be customized further on a country/region level. Such customizations include different payment methods, different rules for legal compliance, and different social media integration.

250.000 SKUs in catalog

The digital catalog is expected to contain over 250.000 SKUs (unique products) – such a big number is not unusual for a company that serves a wide range of B2B and B2b customers. It also presents a challenge for product catalog design that should offer easy navigation and excellent user experience. By implementing a system of intuitive filters and searches we made all 250.000 items easily accessible, helping users to effortlessly find required products.

Shaping the B2B digital experience

New digital experience, we created for Henry Schein, is geared towards increasing conversion and optimizing eCommerce operations overall. Here are some of the features that we developed: - Multi-dimensional approach to pricing, known in Chinese eCommerce as “1000 people, 1000 prices” - Multi-person purchase decision process - Negotiation process - Full range of payment methods, applicable for China and South East Asia, covering all major scenarios: online and offline transfers, company’s credit etc. - Consistent user journey across all platforms (website and mini-program) and login methods (email, mobile number, WeChat/Line login) - Features to streamline B2B workflow: purchase lists, one-click repurchase, product list upload and so on.

Automation of Business Processes

To implement automatic order fulfillment, inventory management, billing and financial monitoring, we integrated the eCommerce platform into relevant company’s systems. This integration can also be used to monitor closely each link of the business process chain, immediately addressing any bottlenecks.

Building data assets

The eCommerce platform is a focal point for a number of data generating processes: browsing, communication with the company, order placement, payment processing, logistics and a few others. Collected data is processed and stored for future analysis. It will give Henry Schein insights into user’s behavior on the new platform, and serve as an impartial feedback on the introduction of the new features. It can also be an invaluable tool in examining the efficiency of internal operations.

Design Showcase Section
Desktop Showcase
Mobile Showcase

Our B2B e-commerce project digitized merchandise, sales, inventory, and supply chain at the business unit level. This connected all aspects of the process, achieving overall digitization. Next, we plan to incorporate planning, design, channels, and external data to establish network-level and ecological-level digitization.

Gary He, Henry Schein

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