Case studies

Challenge.

Gilson’s process automation strategy and plans for business growth required a comprehensive B2B ecommerce solution.

Our project’s priority was to reduce the volume of order enquiries which were using up to 40% of the Customer Support team’s time each day. Empowering customers with more interactive self-service experiences on a market leading website was the solution. Easy online ordering, status updates, account balances and payments were essential objectives. Gilson’s requirements included:

• B2B ecommerce consultancy
• Adobe Commerce replatforming
• User experience and User interface (UX/UI) audit
• Product Information Management (PIM)
• Electronic Data Interchange (EDI)
• Payment integration

Solution.

Gilson replatformed from Magento 2 4.4 to Adobe Commerce to harness the full benefits of the B2B module, a vital step towards fulfilling their growth plans. 

To ensure the portal and wider site remains accessible to all users, the Williams Commerce team conducted a full UX/UI audit.  

The project’s discovery phase highlighted that many Gilson customers were already implementing or considering electronic data interchange (EDI). As part of the portal’s development, Williams Commerce provided recommendations that would enable an omnichannel view for customers, including migrating the Product Information Management (PIM) and EDI implementation. This allows customers to view orders placed offline, obtain invoice status and online order updates, and check account balances and payments. 

To implement the new digital customer platform, Williams Commerce needed to automate Gilson’s internal processes. This meant streamlining and simplifying services previously delivered by customer support, finance and sales teams.  

This was successfully achieved by synchronising customer accounts with a cloud-based solution CloudSuite Industrial (CSI). Integration from WEB to CSI had not been previously done at this level. This manages end-to-end manufacturing operations and provides key visibility for all company processes and systems, as well as including last-mile functionality.  
 

Results.

The project's key objective was to increase the number of customers who complete purchases and to provide them with the ability to self-manage accounts online.  

With the new portal in place, customers now have access to an interactive, self-service-based experience. Ordering online is straightforward and, in most cases, the need to contact the customer support team has been removed. Users can access status updates, check account balances and complete payments all within the portal. 

Beyond a 245.6% higher average order value, the new portal also achieved a 30% higher number of views and 30 seconds more engagement time compared to other areas of the site. This aligns with Gilson’s core objective. 

As a higher proportion of customers now complete orders through the portal, Gilson’s customer support team has been significantly freed up. The conversion rate of these customers is far higher than the e-commerce benchmark of 2%.  

Since account sign-up has been simplified, the number of duplicate accounts has been reduced resulting in fewer customer queries of this nature for the support team. Greater control over data quality will not only support Gilson now, but also improve analysis and customer experience in the future. 

Throughout this major piece of work we conducted discovery sessions with all the key stakeholder groups to design the correct logic for the Gilson business, this process was thorough and ensured our build process was as efficient as possible. As a testament to the quality of resource onboard this project, we delivered on time and on budget, with minimal stabilisation required post launch. We are grateful to the entire team whom we worked with incredibly closely throughout this project, without them the journey would have been much harder!

Kathryn Fletcher, IS Digital Manager at Gilson