About The Client

The client is one of the largest distributors of electronic appliances in Kuwait. Starting with selling coconut oil and bicycle spares in a small shop, the client quickly expanded the business and diversified into different markets like air conditioning, plumbing, and fire protection. Today, the company offers a wide range of products and services, including consumer electronics, commercial and industrial equipment, IT solutions, and travel services.

The client was also ranked #1 in service excellence among all National Panasonic-Technics agents in the Middle East for two consecutive years and #1 in after-sales service among all its competitors in Kuwait.

Business Challenge

The client was using an outdated version of IBM web commerce and HCL Commerce for their e-commerce website. This was limiting their ability to provide a seamless customer experience across offline and online channels. They were facing challenges, such as:

• Fragmented operations and lack of flexibility: To begin with, the front-end and back-end were managed on separate platforms. The entire operation was siloed and fragmented. To add to the woes, end customers could not choose options like ordering products and collecting them from the client company’s retail stores or gift-wrapping certain products at additional costs. These restrictions impacted customer experience.
• Manual processes: The client was over-relying on manual processes to manage critical functions like product and price management, managing orders and promotions. Something as basic as resizing product images in various sizes or processing orders were done manually and took hours to complete. Given the client’s online presence, they could not afford to spend so much time on manual processes. It impacted overall productivity.
• Complex interface and back-end: The front-end interface of the online store was extremely complex. It did not allow the end customers to filter out-of-stock products from the Product Listing Page (PLP). It also did not provide any details about the product’s availability in its retail stores on the Product Details Page (PDP). The back-end system also had certain limitations. For example, the client could not implement an e-wallet system that could allow customers to manage their balances, refunds, and gift cards. This posed a challenge to enhancing customer experience.

The client decided to overcome these challenges and improve their operations by partnering with Sapours.

Impact

The client witnessed significant improvements in their processes and operations. Here are a few improvements they saw post-implementation:

• Streamlined processes: Since we aligned the processes with SAP Commerce best practices, the client saw an overall efficiency in processes and increase in productivity.
• Enhanced delivery: The client’s picking and packing teams got better visibility into the orders, which enabled them to plan and schedule delivery more efficiently. The improvement in efficiency has also contributed to better cart conversions and order fulfillment.
• Reduced manual intervention: The automation features such as automatic indexing and revised CRON job planning reduced the client’s over-reliance on manual processes. It reduced errors, improved productivity, and enabled the workforce to complete tasks more efficiently.
• Optimized order processing and delivery scheduling: The implementation of SAP’s Cloud Solution optimized the delivery types and slots and provided customers with the much-needed flexibility to receive their orders. The client witnessed an overall improvement in order processing and delivery scheduling. It made them more responsive and ensured faster order fulfillment.