Sparex

Market Sector: OEM Replacement Parts, Distribution

Technologies: Website, CD-ROM, Catalogue Page Viewer, Data Processing

Sparex is a world leader in the supply of Replacement Parts and Accessories for tractors and agricultural machinery with 20 subsidiaries across the world. It has a product line of over 40,000 SKUs across more than 20 different catalogues in multiple language versions.

Sparex needed a solution that could cope with its large product line in multiple languages and currencies along with the ability to have customer-specific contract pricing, make/model cross-reference as well as displaying stock levels

Curvica took the same database Sparex used to create its paper catalogue and transformed it into a complete e-Commerce solution with multiple sales channels including the website and a web enabled CD-ROM.

By making the purchase process so much easier and making the customer aware of its full product range, the new web-site reduced the cost-of-sale and online sales doubled year-on-year in each of the first 3 years.

Seton

Market Sector: Personal Protection Equipment, Facilities Management

Technologies: Catalogue Page Viewer

Seton are a supplier of products to the Health and Safety and Facilities Management sectors. They published a 1500 page paper catalogue twice a year which they use together with their website and telesales operation as their main sales channels.

However, often when Seton's telesales representatives were talking to customers they would refer them to the paper catalogue, but the customer would either not have the catalogue or else they would have the wrong version. The sales representative would then have to photocopy the relevant page and fax it before calling back, wasting time and money for Seton and possibly frustrating the customer.

Curvica designed an online catalogue viewer, which replicates the paper catalogue online, complete with hotlinks in the index to make the navigation easier and with each part number also hot-linked so that the customer can immediately get more details about it, and see the pricing and ordering information.

Now the sales representative and customer can click through the on-line catalogue together, knowing that the version is correct and data is the same. The delays, costs and frustrations of the old way of selling are now minimised, as both parties have all the required information in front of them.

Arco

Market Sector: Personal Protection Equipment, Facilities Management, Factory Equipment

Technologies: Data Processing, UNSPSC, e-Class

Arco is the UK s leading supplier of Personal Protective Equipment, Workwear and Workplace Safety Products.

They have a wide range of corporate and government clients who have implemented e-Procurement systems that work with e-Marketplaces such as Ariba, with each of these systems requiring Arco to supply catalogue data in a specific e-Catalogue format. In addition, assignment of commodity codes such as UNSPSC and e-Class are often required.

The production of these e-Catalogues was managed by Arco's e-Business team and proved to be an enormous drain on resources.

Curvica was brought in and a process was put in place whereby Arco only needs to supply its existing catalogue and pricing data in a standard format and Curvica manages the process of formatting the data into over 100 different e-Catalogues, each containing the exact product line and contract prices required by the customer.

By streamlining the process, the management overhead for Arco was reduced, turnaround time for the customer was faster, making it easier for the customer to select the right product, at the right price and at the right time.

Whittlebury Hall

Market Sector: Hospitality, Training Venue, Spa

Technologies: Content Managed Website, Online Shop, e-Marketing

Whittlebury Hall is the largest hotel, training centre and spa run by the Macepark Group. The property had a large number of ever changing special offers and packages. They wished to have a web site that not only promoted the various product lines, but could also take advantage of the power of the internet to maximise the potential of their gift shop and voucher sales, and minimise cost of sale through the use of an online reservation system.

Curvica provided a content management system to allow Whittlebury Hall to manage the content on a daily basis to reflect the rapidly changing offerings of each property.

At the same time an e-commerce facility was added for customers to purchase gift vouchers and other gifts from the hotel's gift shop, as well as integration with an online booking system.

Curvica also offers the client an e-marketing service that sends out e-mails twice a week to 86,000 possible customers, advertising special offers and other information of interest to guests.

As well as being in full control of their own web site, ensuring that the content is up-to-date, Whittlebury Hall now have a lucrative on-line gift-shop and also an effective and efficient way of keeping in touch with and promoting offers to their customers

Grainger

Market Sector: MRO (Maintenance, Repair and Operations)

Technologies: CD-ROM, Catalogue Page Viewer, Data Processing

Grainger is a US based supplier of Personal Protection Equipment, workwear and Industrial Equipment, with a product line of over 200,000 SKUs. Though successful, with an e-Commerce website that was achieving over $450m per annum, its customers - notably government agencies - were still demanding the ability to compile orders offline using a CD-ROM based catalogue.

Grainger approached Curvica, who developed a CD-ROM that allowed the customer to view and compare Grainger's entire product range, and using their own contract pricing, select and order the required items either via fax, email or online. Grainger was also given the facility to manage the catalogue data for future editions of the CD-ROM, enabling its content to be kept current without changes to the software.

Another unique feature of the CD-ROM was the ability to view a version of the printed catalogue page on screen with each item crossed-referenced from the page to CD-ROM data via clickable hotspots. This concept was so successful it was also adopted for Grainger.com

Grainger distributed over 800,000 copies of this CD-ROM in its first year, with it costing less than $1per copy to produce and send (compared with $24 per copy of their 5000 page paper catalogue) it represented a huge saving in catalogue distribution as well as increases in sales.