Inter Cars SA, the second largest distributor of automotive parts in Europe, has launched a unified B2B e-commerce system to speed up its expansion in Europe.
In a short time Inter Cars evolved from a Poland-based family company into a major player in the international scene. At present it is the second largest distributor of automotive parts (for cars and lorries), selling 40% of all its products in international markets.
The new e-commerce platform makes use of SAP Hybris Commerce Cloud as its basis because of its flexibility, scalability and stability. In the course of the project e-point fully adjusted SAP Hybris Commerce to Inter Cars’ business needs (internationalization, methods of work at a repair shop, to its technology environment (integration with Inter Cars’ internal and external systems) and to the communication channels it uses in the sales process (such as a call center).
The project took altogether 17 months and was conducted using the Agile methodology. The works were divided into 12 four-week sprints, preceded by the creation of a prototype solution and the Foundation phase to ensure the complete understanding of Inter Cars’ goals and needs. On e-point’s side the project involved a 40-persons team consisting of developers, Customer Experience (CX) and Business Process Optimization specialists.
Inter Cars set itself the goal of creating the most intuitive and user-friendly product catalogue in the market. This was a huge challenge given the number of products in its offer (1.7 million!), the data model in the automotive market and the need to personalize its prices
said Marek Berkan, a technology expert at e-point.
The launch of the new e-commerce platform closes an important stage on the road to the digital transformation of our business. This tool really streamlines the work of repair shop workers and sales staff at Inter Cars’ branches, enabling them to look up the appropriate part quickly and to find out when it will be available. In this way we strengthen our partnerships with workshops and are able to optimize the ordering process. This provides us with a major competitive advantage that should translate into strengthening our position in the European market
said Maciej Oleksowicz, CEO at Inter Cars SA.
Scale of the project
- 100,000 automobile repair shops
- 1.7 million products
- 7,000 product categories
- 16 countries
- 170 billion individual prices (for each of the 100,000 repair shops and for each of the 1.7 million products the price is set individually, based on the conditions of the partnership with a given garage, current promotional actions etc.)
- 70 million product and vehicle configurations
- 30,000 vehicle configurations
- 2,400 filtering parameters
