Werner Electric

The Challenge

Werner Electric Supply is a distributor of a wide range of electrical products for industrial, commercial, and residential customers. In 2019, the company was looking for both a new ecommerce platform and partner. The Werner team knew that they needed a partner that wouldn’t just act as a taskmaster but rather a creative, strategic B2B expert. They also wanted a partner that had experience in the electrical industry and implementing ecommerce operations with Epicor Eclipse, their ERP. Xngage fit the bill.

The company had a number of goals for their ecommerce operation:

• Spur Channel Growth: Werner Electric Supply’s primary goal for a refreshed ecommerce operation was to drive revenue and channel share both in B2B ecommerce and mobile commerce.
• Smooth the Path to Purchase: Werner’s legacy site had very little personalization, so it didn’t provide a great customer experience. The company wanted to eliminate friction from the buying experience, leading to better customer adoption and loyalty.
• Build to Scale: Werner was outgrowing its legacy ecommerce platform, causing outages and impacting its ability to scale. They also struggled with their current provider’s customer service, finding it took a long time to make any changes to their site. The company wanted to create an integrated digital commerce system that would be capable of scaling as both revenue and new business would grow.
• Streamline Internal Processes: Werner wanted their site and ecommerce environment to be more than just a digital marketplace for its products. The company wanted to engage employees with high-value training and leverage non-core business.

The Xngage Solution

• Ecommerce Strategy: When evaluating options for a new ecommerce platform, Xngage and Werner Electric ultimately chose the Optimizely Configured Commerce platform.
• Ecommerce Implementation: Xngage leveraged the Optimizely ecommerce platform to improve the Werner Electric Supply user experience. Utilizing out-of-the-box functionality for search, integration with the company’s Eclipse ERP, contracts, pricing, and ordering, Werner was able to develop quick-order (and reorder) capabilities and make the website a valuable tool for external and internal users. The new site allowed for real-time inventory management by warehouse to enable faster local pick-up times for customers. Werner Electric is also able to provide a robust offering of trainings and event schedules on their site, allowing them to maintain valuable relationships with their customers.
• User Experience Design: In addition to extensive user research and customer feedback, the UX team at Xngage used Werner’s customer personas to help craft customized experiences. The detailed personas included customers like contractors, purchasing agents, project managers, industrial contractors, engineers, and more to make sure everyone’s needs were being met on the new site.
• Digital Growth Services: Xngage’s Digital Growth Services team helped Werner Electric implement Google Analytics 4 to get insight into how its customers use the site. This powerful data can help their team provide even better customer service. For example, by tracking downloads of product resources, the company can inform its sales representatives when customers are searching for information about specific products. Also, if a certain product is getting a disproportionate number of downloads, it may be a sign that additional training or information is needed.
• PIM Implementation: Product information management (PIM) for B2B organizations requires an implementation partner like Xngage that understands the core business processes and product data requirements in order to improve them with the right PIM solution. Distributors like Werner Electric need to aggregate disparate data sources from disparate manufacturers, then intake, standardize, and unify that data.
• Punchout: With a punchout integration, or online store within a customer’s procurement system, Werner Electric’s customers have a more self-service, turnkey purchasing experience.

The Results

Eliminating that friction in the buying process led to an increase in adoption, orders, and sales, and Werner Electric Supply and Xngage are continuing to work together to refine its digital experiences well into the future.

“With a catalog of over one million products, it can be tough for customers to find the right product,” said Michael Stack, Xngage Team Lead and Architect. “And we’re always thinking of new ways to figure out their users' intent and minimize the clicks needed to get them to their destination.”