Case: Nissens

Customer portal with a turnover of DKK 500 million.

Nissens is a global supplier of products for engine cooling and air conditioning

The Danish cooling company Nissens A/S, which supplies products for engine cooling and air conditioning for the international automotive aftermarket, is today trading for DKK 500 million in more than 18 markets in the Europe, USA and Asia.

From the beginning, the ambition for Nissens has been absolutely evident: the new B2B customer portal has to provide the market’s best customer service, handle the global logistics, optimise the internal administration and not least increase the online sales. And these objectives are satisfied through the e-commerce solution’s possibilities of adjusting the customer portal to match the individual customer. Today, 50% of Nissens’s turnover and 49% of all of their orders come directly from the ambitious e-commerce solution.

Peter Thybo Andersen, Online Solutions Manager at Nissens A/S

”In Nissens, we greatly emphasise being involved in the things we outsource to external partners and it was no exception with our customer portal. Hesehus understood to keep a close contact and with it made sure that we quickly and punctually got started with the project and showed some results. The positive product of our work was quickly established – most importantly that our customers very quickly took the new portal to heart which gave them lots of new options”

Nissens optimises the customer experience with a value creating customer portal

Webshop

The first part of Nissens’s customer portal consists of its webshop – ‘the catalogue’ – in which the customers can easily and effortless search for and order products.

The search function in the webshop is very flexible and makes it possible for the customers to search for products in many different ways. For example, the customers can use a license plate search in which the webshop displays all products that are relevant for a specific vehicle identified by the license plate. Furthermore, the customers can search for specific item numbers, alternative item numbers or certain car brands and models.

In addition to the various search functions, Nissens has made a number of other initiatives to increase the quality of its customer service. An example is that the webshop always deducts the customers’ regular discount allowing them to quickly see their price. If the customers are used to ordering many products at a time, it is also possible for them to just upload a file with product numbers and quantity to avoid the comprehensive work of keying in.

Report generator

Nissens is in possession of a lot of knowledge and data about its products which can create great value internally as well as externally among its customers. Having this in mind, Nissens has created a report generator that comprises the other main part of its customer portal. The report generator, which is also available for the internal employees, creates huge value in the internal work procedures and as a result the employees in Nissens’s 18 subsidiaries can now provide a considerably better customer service. By having all information gathered in one system, where it is easy and unproblematic to extract product information and product drawings for all of Nissens’s products, the customer portal has simplified the work procedures for the employees considerably.

The report generator is, of course, also available for Nissens’s many customers in all markets where the customers create reports based on templates prepared by Nissens. When a customer makes inquiries about a report for a certain product, it is generated based on the data available in Nissens’s systems. In this way, Nissens makes data available in its systems and is hereby sharing its knowledge with the customers - a service which creates added value for the customers in addition to the products since they easily and simply gain access to important information.

Peter Thybo Andersen, Online Solutions Manager at Nissens A/S

”In the modern world, it is essential to be able to adjust these reports 100% to the customer’s needs. We have therefore focused on creating a flexible system which can be scaled according to the input Nissens receives from the customers. We cannot predict future needs and it is therefore crucial that we make a system which can be developed in different directions”

Nissens' download center developed by Hesehus

Download centre

The third main part in Nissens’s customer portal is the download centre which provides access to documents that may be relevant for the individual customer. The documents can be reports generated by the customer in the report generator, but it can also be documents uploaded to specific customers directly from Nissens’s employees.

For some customers it may be relevant to have a weekly overview of Nissens’s inventory of a certain product which the customer often orders. Other documents, where it may be essential for the customers to have constantly updated versions, can also be price lists, product lists and product drawings. Via the download centre the customers can continuously log in and get certain documents which are important to their business.

The purpose of the customer portal and everything it contains is, in short, to have a place which Nissens’s customers visit to find the information they need in the cooperation with Nissens. In this way, it becomes easy and fast for the customers to do business with Nissens.

24 hours guarantee in all of Europe

As part of the improved customer service, the webshop guarantees delivery within 24 hours in all of Europe of all 10,000 products. The webshop’s global logistics provide the customers with the unique possibility that they can decide from which country and area they want their products delivered. The choice will obviously influence the price and time of delivery.

In this way, Nissens’s customers are sure to receive the missing parts within 24 hours for a certain price in urgent cases. On the other hand, in connection with ordinary orders, they can obtain good discounts if they order from Nissens’s main warehouse where the time of delivery is a little longer but the prices are lower.

A flexible solution with countless options

Nissens’s customer portal is exclusively developed on the Bizzkit platform which is developed by Hesehus where a perfect collaboration between PIM, DAM, CMS and webshop makes it possible to customise the solution with exactly the functions and features Nissens needs. It was important to Nissens that its e-commerce solution is very flexible according to which customers should have the opportunity of having various functions, documents and data available in their customer portal. To be able to deliver an ultra flexible system for Nissens, the customer portal has been divided into hierarchies compared to regions (EU, CN, US), countries, customer groups and customers.

Besides, options for connecting and disconnecting various functions have been added allowing Nissens to control which options to give the individual customers in the customer portal. A flexibility which makes it possible to personalise the customer portal and at the same time give Nissens numerous opportunities as to what the company wishes to share with the customers. This has had a positive effect on Nissens’s marketing performance since this makes it possible to target campaigns to specifically selected target groups. In other words, Nissens can prepare a campaign with a specific offer which is only intended for a selected target group. An opportunity which certainly opens up to new initiatives in sales.

Go to Nissens' webshop