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More than 4,500 employees at the Witzenmann Group work to put the company motto “managing flexibility” into practice. The family-owned company based in Pforzheim was founded as early as 1854 and generates annual sales of 620 million euros. Witzenmann GmbH is known as the world market leader in flexible metallic elements. This makes them the global contact for the safe routing of media and energy. The company’s solutions are used in automotive engineering, industry, technical building equipment, and aerospace.
CUSTOMER: Witzenmann
INDUSTRY: Metal processing
PROJECT: Witzenmann webshop including configuration of metal hoses and expansion joints
SOLUTION: B2B e-commerce / Configuration
TECHNOLOGIES: Shopware 6 (webshop), easyKAT & React (configurator)
We are proud to count Witzenmann as one of Plan Software’s oldest customers. In fact, the development of the Flexperte configuration software (then still under a different name) in 1993 was one of Plan Software’s first projects. The configurator with calculation and design functionality is still considered one of the most comprehensive solutions in the industry and is still regarded as a benchmark by competitors. After a long partnership, Witzenmann approached us at the end of 2020 to jointly develop a forward-looking e-commerce solution. The initial aim was to start with a minimum viable product (MVP) that already covered the most important requirements of the target group. In an initial consultation phase, which marked the start of the joint project, further challenges of the project were identified.
The team integrated the Flexperte configuration tool with a reduced product range and a modernized user interface (UI) into the new webshop to offer the customer the most comprehensive product range right from the start and stand out from other competitor solutions. In this context, a price calculation for configurable products based on manufacturing costs also had to be implemented.
After a joint evaluation of various technical implementation options, a store implementation based on Shopware 6 was chosen in order to meet the requirement for a fast and cost-effective MVP solution. With our own development team specializing in Shopware, we were able to prevail over our competitors in the project acquisition process. In the UX concept, a user-friendly solution for integrating configuration and e-commerce was developed together with the customer and our UI/UX designers using a prototype. Users of the web store can initially decide whether they want to purchase a stock product or a freely configurable product. In order to promote the sale of standardized stock products and offer the customer the shortest possible delivery times, configurable and standardized products are also compared during configuration on the basis of the customer requirements already recorded, in the sense of “Here you can also see stock products that match your criteria”.
In the background, algorithms match customer requirements regarding nominal size, operating pressure, operating temperature, length, etc., with available stored products. The result is a state-of-the-art digital commerce solution with an integrated configuration of complex products. The Witzenmann online store can compete with many B2C online stores but keeps sight of its target group and their requirements. The web store portal, which impresses with its colorful design, will provide sales relief and digital growth for Witzenmann GmbH in the future. The expansion to further national and international locations, an extension of the product range, and the connection to the enterprise resource planning (ERP) system are planned in the future.
