What if your e-commerce platform works fine, but you see the necessity to migrate to remain relevant in the future? Heutink shares its experience with migrating its e-commerce solution. Note: during peak season!
Heutink has developed from a supplier of school supplies into an international distribution and manufacturing company of educational supplies for elementary and high school and childcare facilities – including interior design, furnishing, IT services, and various services. Heutink wants to help, inform, and inspire everyone who contributes to children’s development and education.
Complex and specific needs
The customer needs of educational organizations are vastly different from those of other organizations. For example, many umbrella foundations manage several schools and shelters. Facility employees of those foundations need to be able to make purchases for various schools. In the web portal, they must be able to log into the right organization and switch between accounts, depending on the school they buy supplies for. This makes authority management quite complex.
A second example is a growing number of online teaching methods that ask for a license-purchasing solution. A third customer-specific need is the required performance during the annual peak season, right before the summer holidays, when all customers order their materials simultaneously. For Heutink, this means 5,000 order lines per hour.
Thinking about change
Until this year, Heutink worked with an online store they built and developed themselves. The platform was mainly an order entry tool. But when Heutink added new product groups and services and developed new target groups, the need for change could not be neglected. Their wish was a new e-commerce platform that made it possible to inform, inspire and advise customers to show the full potential of what Heutink has to offer. Because of the extensive features and high e-commerce performance, Heutink selected the Intershop Commerce Platform, which the Intershop business partner De Nieuwe Zaak implemented.
E-commerce platform migration challenges
Right before the peak season, the online store went live. Failure was not an option. The big bang was in February 2022, and they overcame difficulties in time. The result is a e-commerce platform that marks the beginning of Heutink’s digital transformation, focusing on relevant customer experience and excellent customer satisfaction.
