Findel Education Business System Integration Case Study

Customer Background

Based in Manchester with a turnover of £162million, Findel Education manufactures and sells educational products, from blackboards to lab equipment, for students of all ages and grade levels. Now the largest supplier of educational products in Europe, Findel Education also offers healthcare equipment to providers for distribution to patients.

“We not only needed a scalable and flexible commerce solution capable of running multiple web sites, we also needed to be able to integrate our ordering functionality with our back end management information system. We could see the benefits of WebSphere Commerce immediately.”

Kim Etheridge, e-Business Project Manager, Findel

Challenge

Traditionally a catalogue-based business supported by call centre, fax and phone ordering facilities, Findel Education decided that the internet offered opportunities for market expansion and cost reduction, as well as regulatory compliance. Growing through acquisition, Findel had a portfolio of 13 brands to market and wanted individual e-commerce sites to support each brand.

“We not only needed a scalable and flexible commerce solution for developing and running multiple web sites” says Kim Etheridge, e-business project manager for Findel. “The new regulations also mandate that we be able to integrate our ordering functionality with the customers’ Schools Information Management System (SIMS) – a widely used back-end management information system in the UK. And for the sake of efficiency in our own operations, we wanted to integrate the e-commerce solution with our SAP enterprise.

Project Benefits

A compliant and fully integrated eCommercesolution:-

Prevention of lost orders and simplified ordertracking
Ability to create efficiencies of scale, whilstaddressing business-critical complianceconcerns
Fast time to market to roll-out new websites–only 4 weeks
Up to 20% increase in revenue growth
Increase in first-time and repeat visitors
50% reduction in call centre costs due toavailability of detailed fulfilment information onthe website.
Significant cost reductions in servicingcontracts
Automated delivery of XML exports tocustomers
Ability to edit and publish product informationeasily