McNaughton-McKay

The Challenge

McNaughton-McKay and The Reynolds Company, two leading electrical distribution organizations, had a high-volume ecommerce operation, but they knew that they needed to continue to innovate to stay ahead of the competition – and customer expectations.

The pandemic changed the way they viewed the market and how they wanted to serve their customers. In their initial consultation with the Xngage team, the company’s leadership made it clear that they weren’t looking for a standard B2B ecommerce website – they needed a digital experience platform. This innovative mindset made the company a perfect fit for Xngage’s digital commerce services.

The company had a clear, three-year roadmap with several key priorities:

• Integrate With Its Complex Enterprise Environments: This new digital experience platform would need to integrate two large, complex customer portals with the company’s ERP (Infor SXe) and other mission-critical internal systems. Xngage’s deep expertise with Infor SXe and multi-site architecture made us a perfect fit.
• Improved Customer Experience & Functionality: McNaughton-McKay wanted to accelerate their ecommerce operation by empowering their ecommerce customers to do more with new functionality and personalization. Their website traffic was already very robust, but even with that high volume, they wanted to ensure a best-in-class experience their customers. The company also wanted to leverage both sales and customer data to better understand the customer journey and enhance that experience.
• Strength & Flexibility to Scale Quickly: The company was looking to diversify its business by adding new product lines and growing through acquisitions, so the new ecommerce environment needed to scale efficiently.

The Xngage Solution

User Experience Design: During the discovery process, Xngage’s experts conducted user interviews with various internal stakeholders – from sales to leadership – to ensure the new environment would meet everyone’s needs. This step is vital to encouraging both internal and external adoption. Our team of UX/UI experts also completed extensive usability testing, ensuring the path to purchase would be as smooth as possible for McNaughton-McKay’s customers.

Ecommerce Implementation: Xngage helped McNaughton-McKay and The Reynolds Company to optimize digital strategies and strengthen their tech stacks to support customer-first digital experiences while giving business users powerful tools for merchandizing, marketing, and B2B selling.

Xngage created a self-service customer dashboard. Buyers can review stock locally or regionally, request quotes, and check orders, orders in transit, and delivery. This helps customers more efficiently procure throughout the entire order management process. We created new personalized order history capabilities, enabling e-signatures for proof of delivery and system-generated return requests.

Xngage also developed custom software for a robust training system.

“Part of empowering customers to do more is allowing them to sharpen their own skills,” says Cecilia Madden, McNaughton-McKay Vice President of Marketing and Digital Technology. “When the customer can know more and can do more within digital commerce, everyone benefits.”

PIM Implementation: Because the company wanted to be able to quickly and easily add new product lines into its offerings, a powerful PIM solution and thoughtful, strategic implementation were key to their success.

Punchout: With TradeCentric, Xngage and McNaughton-McKay implemented a punchout solution that integrates directly into their most valuable customers' procurement systems, allowing them to comply with their organizations' purchasing regulations. Their customers still have visibility into any real-time specials or sales as well as inventory availability.

The Results

McNaughton-McKay has achieved its goal of providing a digital experience platform for its customers. The company has increased user adoption and streamlined many of its internal processes.

More than five years into our partnership, McNaughton-McKay and Xngage continue to innovate and improve.

The company has added several new sites to its digital program following brand acquisitions, thanks to its scalable ecommerce environment. Xngage also helped the company migrate from Infor SX.e on-premise to cloud-based ERP Infor Cloud Suite Distribution (CSD).

“McNaughton-McKay leadership has mentioned during many discussions with Xngage how they appreciate working with us and how they trust the Xngage team as we are part of their own team,” says Xngage Project Manager Anthony Daurelio. “We have gone live with several new websites and backend system migrations, and in every instance, it really feels like everyone is rowing in the same direction and trying to do everything possible to make sure these go-lives and transitions are successful and as painless as possible.”