One of the UK’s leading manufacturers of aftermarket exhausts has seen a steep rise in sales, thanks to a new ordering system and integrated B2B website.
From its headquarters in Derbyshire, Scorpion Exhausts supplies its dealer network across the country with handcrafted parts. Its staff are well known for their knowledge and experience, and the company itself has become synonymous with quality.
But, up until a couple of years ago, its ordering processes for dealers wasn’t working as well as it could have been doing. The old process was for dealers to ring in orders, or email them in. Staff at Scorpion would then manually input the orders into the internal Orderwise system.
Labour intensive, the system was open to human error, and, as Scorpion prides itself on its customer service, the company decided to do something about it.
Scorpion chose a cloud-based business-to-business ordering site as the way forward. Not only could dealers place their orders through the site, system integration meant that Scorpion’s own stock could be managed better because it was all an automated process.
It would be better for Scorpion’s customers, and better for the business, which could truly focus on getting orders out of the door, rather than the processing of the orders.
Tom Brentnall, Scorpion’s IT Manager, had already designed how he wanted the new website to look and engaged business growth specialists dijitul automotive to create the new site.
Tom said: We were looking for a responsive business-to-business website to allow our network of dealers to order online. We wanted orders to automatically be placed into Orderwise, and stock levels, due dates and prices to come from our internal Orderwise system. We designed a layout which represented how we wanted the Products section of the site to look.
dijitul automotive’s developers worked with Tom to integrate the Orderwise system with Opencart, the eCommerce solution, and with Scorpion’s internal software and procedures.
dijitul automotive developer Olly Beaumont said: “This was the main body of work. Creating multiple customer groups, pre-processing relevant prices, grouping multiple product components and making sure every aspect was synchronised. The Opencart invoice system was rewritten to ensure that invoices remained in the same style that existing customers were accustomed to and that telephone orders could be displayed on the website.” After launching the initial system, a selection of dealers were able to use the site before it was fully rolled out. A number of new features were suggested and implemented, and dijitul automotive is working with Scorpion to add new functionality and to refine features.
Additional product information has now been added to each product, and certain dealers now have the ability to order on behalf of sub-users so that they can manage orders coming in themselves from their own dealer networks.
Tom said: dijitul automotive are very good to work with, and have been really helpful. They are very willing to work with the customer and their requirements, which is a breath of fresh air. I needed someone who could work on the ecommerce side of things, not the visual element, and that’s exactly what dijitul automotive have done. I would certainly recommend dijitul automotive.
Going forward, Scorpion is working with dijitul automotive to increase its automotive SEO to improve its web presence and profile and has launched a website as a showroom for members of the public.
dijitul automotive’s Olly Hartshorne, an ecommerce and digital consultant, said: Working with Tom, we have been able to improve how Scorpion as a business works. Tom had a set requirement and, as we made our name in the automotive sector, we were able to deliver.