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Brief
In November 2010, the international eCommerce specialist Crimsonwing completed the new basket-based eCommerce solution for Macfarlane Packaging Ltd (www.macfarlanepackaging.com). The Crimsonwing eBusiness team has replaced Macfarlane Packaging’s previous online eCommerce store, which was a custom built and maintained solution, with the new Magento Enterprise Edition. The Magento solution provides new features, enhanced user experience and seamless integration with Macfarlane’s other systems. The new Magento Enterprise platform cares for Macfarlane’s business needs with a function-rich solution and allows them to react faster to their customers’ needs, a key driver for Macfarlane’s platform choice.
Macfarlane Packaging Ltd, part of the Macfarlane Group, is the leading UK distributor of packaging, providing the most comprehensive range of packaging products of any UK based supplier. Macfarlane Group is listed on the UK Stock Exchange and services the UK and European market places. The company provides a full packaging solution to their customers including consulting on client needs, right through to design, producing and distributing packaging and labels to customers across a wide range of industry sectors.
Strategy
Prior to the rollout of the Magento Enterprise Edition, Macfarlane had a successful, but very static, basket-based eCommerce website, via which end consumers could process orders. The system was built as a custom application by Macfarlane, in order to establish an online presence for the first time. This website effectively targeted the end consumer, as well as servicing a proportion of Macfarlane’s business to business customers.
Following the successful establishment of their online presence, Macfarlane wished to rapidly increase the functionality offered to their customers online, refresh the design and be in a position to react much faster to their customers’ needs. The enhanced merchandising, customer segmentation and multi-site capabilities, which the Magento Enterprise Edition provides, made Magento a compelling choice for Macfarlane, providing ample tools for increasing their online sales.
Macfarlane needed a solutions provider that could not only implement and customise Magento as they required, but also a reliable partner to integrate the system with their other back-end platforms. Crimsonwing had to carefully consider the integration of Magento Enterprise solution to a number of custom built systems at Macfarlane, in order to achieve their overall solution and objectives. These integrations include real-time integration to the Macfarlane ERP system (ASW) for accurate order and fulfilment management, and to a custom built CRM, for customer information, such as addresses and pricing data.
Macfarlane view their Magento implementation as a strategic decision and a general direction for their overall business. The functionality provided by Magento Enterprise and the data enrichment and business process re-engineering that needed to be carried out by Macfarlane to support this strategic move, can now be used across their business.
The Macfarlane Packaging Director of eCommerce, Mark Selby, was integral to the design and delivery of this solution, having day to day input both into the requirements, but also the build and test of the solution. He explained that "Coming from a custom built static site, we were eager to partner with a flexible and progressive solution. Having benchmarked a number of products and service providers, we were excited to introduce and integrate both Crimsonwing and Magento Enterprise as our strategic solution for our eBusiness going forward."
Execution
The Magento platform offers Macfarlane the opportunity not just to increase their merchandising and thus sales online, but offline as well. With this in mind, Crimsonwing carried out a series of workshops to ascertain Macfarlane’s overall business goals, so that the design of Macfarlane’s platform can support the business for many years to come. The initial release of the Macfarlane Packaging web store is the first phase within Macfarlane’s overall business strategy for online. Further improvements will follow over the coming months, including increased up-sells, enhanced usability for CSR’s and increased functionality between ASW and Magento.
Besides all the general features that the Macfarlane site uses extensively, Crimsonwing provided a number of functional enhancements to Macfarlane.
The new solution offers a fresh design and enhanced Web 2.0 features, such as layered navigation, single page checkout and rich customer facing functionality. Using Magento Enterprise Edition enables Macfarlane to react faster to their customers and market’s needs due to its constant updates and new features.
The solution includes a tightly coupled integration to Macfarlane’s line of business systems, and has been designed to support both the end-consumer and dedicated account customers that Macfarlane services.
The solution includes customer specific pricing, real-time order injection, and advanced customer service via live chat and call back functions.
David Simonds, Crimsonwing’s Project Manager, said: “By using a combination of Magento Enterprise Edition and Crimsonwing, Macfarlane gains access to an extremely cost-effective business solution. Magento Enterprise and its partner network offer a vast array of standard functionality, meaning Macfarlane can react quickly to their customers’ needs. Crimsonwing, with over 10 years of eBusiness experience, provide a wealth of expertise in eCommerce solutions, specialising in projects requiring complex integrations. The new Magento based Macfarlane store will offer an extremely flexible online solution to Macfarlane for years to come.”
Results
Specific benefits that the new Magento Enterprise site brought about are enhanced usability, particularly in navigation within the site with an improved taxonomy supporting layered navigation, so that customers can find their products faster. The site offers a refreshed look and feel, supporting the strong Macfarlane brand, together with increased merchandising and up-selling opportunities throughout the whole site. The web shop supports a single page checkout, cutting down the order processing time for customers, and enhancing the customer shopping experience.
The site also offers enhanced promotions and content management capabilities to Macfarlane, handing day to day control of website management from IT staff to Macfarlane’s business users, as well as encouraging customer loyalty. The site has also streamlined business processes for Macfarlane and their customers, with online applications for business credit, which are now being handled online for example.
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