CASE STUDY | BELL AND HOWELL

Recovering market share in spare parts with Corevist

How Bell and Howell launched Corevist Commerce, reclaimed their spare parts business, and grew digital revenue 156%.

CASE STUDY | BELL AND HOWELL

Recovering market share in spare parts with Corevist

How Bell and Howell launched Corevist Commerce, reclaimed their spare parts business, and grew digital revenue 156%.

Results powered by Corevist Commerce:

+156%

Monthly eCommerce Revenue

+118%

Monthly Transactions

+140%

Monthly Users

CLIENT: Bell and Howell

  • Industry: Technology & manufacturing
  • Annual revenue: >$500 million
  • Employees: 501-1000

Required: A Spare Parts Portal Which Buyers Would Actually Use

Bell and Howell services advanced technologies in high-growth markets, including comprehensive solutions in retail click-and-collect, pharmaceutical factory intelligence, consumer packaging automation, and production mail.

When its parent company became insolvent, Bell and Howell’s leadership filed for bankruptcy and moved fast to reinvent the company. A major priority was to reclaim a spare parts business that had gone into decline. But the company’s existing parts website, built on SAP ISA, was difficult to use, and customers had abandoned it.

Corevist solution implemented:

  • Corevist Commerce suite with 1 microsite
  • Built-in integration creates no extra work for IT
  • B2C/Amazon-style experience with all B2B business rules enforced
  • Full order history from all channels (EDI, eCommerce, phone/fax/email, etc.)
  • Functionality built for spare parts catalogs

Wanted: Lean, agile, SAP-integrated eCommerce

Anubhav Gupta, Dir. SAP Solutions, IT Group, explained the company’s search for a solution: “SAP acquired hybris and started encouraging customers to use it for ecommerce. But hybris didn’t align with our budget… these factors forced us to look outside SAP for a solution. And we found a lot of vendors that could design an ecommerce site, but very few that could integrate back to SAP.”

That integration was a make-or-break feature for Bell and Howell. Gupta put it this way: “Our IT team is small and busy. We couldn’t afford to dedicate huge blocks of our time to this project. That’s one of the reasons we selected Corevist as our partner… in terms of SAP integration, implementation time, and overall cost, we didn’t find any other vendor that could match Corevist.”

Bell and Howell’s requirements:

  • Cloud-based B2B commmerce platform
  • SAP ERP integration included to eliminate data duplication and minimize involvement from the IT team
  • Complex pricing rules honored from SAP
  • An experience built for spare parts
  • Easy online order placement
  • Full order history available online

“We were losing our parts business to other companies. So, fixing that website became one of my first priorities and I quickly started working with our IT group to make that happen.”

–James Feely, VP and GM of Service Solutions

Why Bell and Howell chose Corevist

Corevist Commerce: Built On SAP ERP

Corevist Commerce honors all relevant SAP business rules in the web channel.

For Bell and Howell, that meant no additional data maintenance beyond what the IT team was already doing. If the team made a change to relevant business rules in SAP, those changes would appear instantly in Corevist Commerce.

That’s because Corevist acts as a window into your SAP ERP system. Your dealers, distributors, and internal users can process orders instantly, interacting with SAP in a safe, secure environment.

“When it comes to online shopping, people have come to expect an Amazon-like experience. But because B2B rules and contract-negotiated terms are so complex, creating a B2C experience can be difficult, if not impossible, without real-time SAP integration. Corevist has helped us create that great B2C user experience, and improve our operational efficiency at the same time.”

–James Feely, VP and GM of Service Solutions

A Powerful eCommerce Portal, No Extra Work For IT

Corevist’s built-in, configurable SAP integration was an ideal fit for Bell and Howell. Since Corevist Commerce automatically enforces the relevant SAP business rules (including personalization for each user, like pricing and inventory availability), Bell and Howell could launch a powerful, B2C-style experience—all without heavy lifting from their IT department.

Anubhav Gupta put it this way:

“Based on the demos we saw and our due diligence, we believed that this project could be completed in a very short time, with minimal impact on my IT department. It turned out we were right.”

Corevist Features Essential to Bell and Howell:

  • Cloud-based B2B commerce platform, full SAP integration included
  • All relevant SAP business rules honored in eCommerce, no additional work required from IT
  • Intuitive, B2C-style user experience to aid customer adoption and help reclaim market share
  • Full order history from all channels displayed in the B2B portal

Prioritizing value through
Corevist’s Agile rollout methodology

Corevist’s Agile rollout methodology:

  • Oriented around the voice of your customers
  • Iterative approach prioritizes critical functionality for go-live
  • Project gains essential early buy-in from internal users like Sales, Customer Service, etc.

Across a series of focus groups, Corevist asked Bell and Howell’s real customers a provocative question: “Why can’t we put this software into production today?”

This question helps us uncover the things your dealers & distributors actually want in an eCommerce solution. It’s how we ensure that Corevist delivers the things your users need, no bloat included.

Anubhav Gupta put it this way:

“We consider Corevist to be more than just implementors. We consider them partners. We didn’t just dictate our requirements. Instead, we explored design options together and evaluated the different implications of each option.”

Within 48 hours of gaining VPN access, we have a working demo connected to our clients’ real-time SAP data. Then, we schedule a 2-Day Project Initiation Workshop, where we review the site together with clients to gather a list of modifications that need to be made prior to the first Focus Group.

Between the workshop and the first Focus Group, we make configuration changes and customizations that were documented at the kickoff. The time between project start and the first Focus Group is often as short as two weeks.

At every Focus Group we ask, “Why can’t this go live today?” Every time we ask, we uncover a list of reasons. Those reasons become the Change Request Log in our online collaboration portal. We repeat this process, with additional Focus Groups as needed.

Client Testing, occurs concurrently with later rounds of customizations and typically takes 3-5 weeks.

RESULTS:

+156%

Monthly eCommerce Revenue

+118%

Monthly Transactions

+140%

Monthly Users

Corevist solution implemented:

  • Corevist Commerce suite with 1 microsite
  • Built-in integration creates no extra work for IT
  • B2C/Amazon-style experience with all B2B business rules enforced
  • Full order history from all channels
  • Functionality built for spare parts catalogs

Since the project launched, Bell and Howell’s market footprint has exploded. Customer adoption has soared, and revenue shows a strong trendline in the right direction. The company emerged from difficult times with a strong spare parts business, a powerful web channel to support it, and the revenue growth to sustain future investment in a fast-changing market.

“We launched a multi-faceted marketing campaign to encourage customers to come try us again. We wanted them to know that we’ve made the order process much easier… customers have literally been applauding our changes. I think one of our customers said it best when he summed it up in one word, ‘Hallelujah.’”

–James Feely, VP and GM of Service Solutions

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