Actors and success factors in digital sales processes: the Bonfiglioli case.
At this year’s Netcomm Forum there was much discussion of B2B e-commerce, no longer just as a trend but above all as a changing reality that is reshaping the relationship between brands and consumers.
Against this dynamic and challenging backdrop, Emmanuele Prudenzano, Partner at Ccelera, and Enrico Andrini, Chief Digital & Innovation Officer at Bonfiglioli, spoke about the successful Bonfiglioli case in a conversation moderated by Gianmarco Altieri, Business Developer at Alpenite: “B2B E-Commerce: Actors and success factors in digital sales processes: the Bonfiglioli case”.
In order to understand how the need for a B2B platform arose, it’s essential to take a few steps back in time, when Bonfiglioli, a company that focuses on innovation in the industrial sectors of automation, mobile machinery and renewable energy, decided to create a marketplace called Mosaico 1.0 that allows customers to place orders on their own.
“Twenty years ago, Bonfiglioli was already managing the entry of sales orders online”, explained Enrico Andrini, “but in 2015 we felt the need to create a true e-commerce portal with the intention of guaranteeing our customers a unique online experience: from the order to the configurator, all the way to the conclusion of the purchasing process”.
Shortly afterwards Mosaic 3.0 was born, and this is where Ccelera arrived to assist Bonfiglioli in an implementation process that required assiduous strategic planning to ensure seamless integration between the ERP configuration environment and the e-commerce portal.
“Following a lengthy software selection process, we not only chose the platform, but identified Ccelera as the indispensable gatekeeper for knowledge and enabling technology processes in general”, added Andrini.
The substance – not to mention the key success factor – of this project is the strategy that for Bonfiglioli branches into “defend” and “grow”, where the former applies to the maintenance of already active markets, while the latter enables growth – sometimes explosive – in others.
In Bonfiglioli’s digital transformation process, Ccelera stood out as a partner capable of satisfying all business needs, especially during the design of the technology stack, exploiting the advantages of SAP Commerce as the most suitable platform for integration with the ERP system. The Ccelera team also worked on the “buying guide” concept, one of the pillars of the Mosaico project. The ultimate goal has been largely fulfilled, that objective being to deliver an intuitive, engaging and efficient online shopping experience.
“Geographical expansion through the use of e-commerce is certainly on Bonfiglioli’s radar”, said Andrini. “The next stop is India, which has market characteristics that are quite similar to Italy. South Africa and Europe are likely to follow, due to the centralisation of the service supply chain requiring a greater design effort than the extension of models for the US and Italy”.
While each country presents different challenges and must adapt to logistical rules and relationships with local distributors, Bonfiglioli already has a roadmap for a state-of-the-art global platform.
Having started out as a collaboration, this synergy has become a success story that will leave its mark. A fascinating story that shows how digital transformation is an unmissable opportunity for today’s B2B companies. We expect to see exciting new digital developments in the future of e-commerce.
