Chr. Hansen
Complex B2B commerce

A cornerstone in the C25 company Chr. Hansen’s digital strategy was a replacement of their commerce solution based on SAP WCEM. As a global provider of bacteria cultures, enzymes and natural colourants to the food, health and agricultural industries, Chr. Hansen deals with complex customers and products.

The SAP WCEM solution was outdated both from a technical and user experience perspective, why customers and salespeople preferred to call the customer service instead of placing an order online. The new solution should take into account individual product lists, prices and strict documentation requirements, as well as the fact that products come in many different sizes and measuring. At the same time, Chr. Hansen has multiple sales organisations with different demands and needs that needed to be met.

After an initial analysis, it was clear that Chr. Hansen’s new commerce solution should be built on Salesforce B2B Commerce Cloud, previously known as CloudCraze, and at the time of project launch a brand-new member of the Salesforce family.

Salesforce B2B Commerce Cloud was chosen particularly because of the platform’s standard functionalities and the synergies that exist across Chr. Hansen’s other Salesforce clouds to provide a fully integrated CRM flow. In addition, it is a reliable and relatively maintenance-free solution which would mean lower cost for Chr. Hansen in the long run. Also, Chr. Hansen will continuously have access to the newest releases in the Salesforce development roadmap, while Salesforce hosts the solution and security. In addition, it was important that Chr. Hansen chose a platform that would support their long-term ambitions for further improving quality on other customer touchpoints.

The solution was the first live on Salesforce B2B Commerce Cloud in the Nordics.

A thorough customer analysis had given Chr. Hansen insight into the customers’ journey as well as their pains and needs. At the same time, the choice of Salesforce B2B Commerce Cloud meant a great advantage from widely utilising the out-of-the-box features offered by the platform. The trick was to strike the right balance between the two things so that the customers’ demands were considered, while it was also ensured that Chr. Hansen gained as much as possible from both the standard functionality and the functionality made available by Salesforce on a continuous basis.

In addition, there were three core challenges which the solution had to address. The first was to create an expanded customer data model in Salesforce Sales Cloud which covered both the accounts that Chr. Hansen’s sales reps work with and the users who order the products on a daily basis. This meant that the customer data model had to consider all aspects of the customer journey.

The next challenge was to develop an expanded product data model to ensure coherence between the commerce solution and the underlying systems while ensuring that the products and prices were shown to specifically match the individual customer’s needs.

The solution also had to be able to offer better self-service options for the customers – particularly in terms of product documentation which is subject to strict requirements as we are dealing with “living products”.

Finally, the right integration design had to be found between SAP ERP and the commerce solution so the correct data on e.g. prices and delivery times are forwarded and “translated” to a language understandable to Chr. Hansen’s customers.

Even though Chr. Hansen’s new commerce solution is complex, it has been successfully developed in around six months as estimated, and the solution has worked since day one.

Early in the collaboration, different workstreams were identified and planned with joint project management and a shared framework for the steering groups. This ensured a structure which supported smooth collaboration. During the process, everyone from business, IT and customer service as well as the customers, of course, were involved to ensure that all inputs and needs were considered. Thanks to the strong collaboration with both Chr. Hansen’s technical team and Salesforce, who reviewed both the architecture and the code, the solution was developed on time and even under budget. The solution went live in April 2019 as the first Nordic solution based on Salesforce B2B Commerce Cloud.

Chr. Hansen’s new commerce solution appears rather simple, but the underlying solution architecture is quite complex. The solution enables customers to order products from Chr. Hansen, track the delivery and secure the necessary documentation through self-service, whereas previously, they had to call the salesperson.

The underlying architecture has even made it possible for a purchasing agent to order products for the factory in Gothenburg and the factory in Götene in one go, add the products to one shopping basket and still have the products delivered at separate locations – even with different batch sizes, measuring units and currencies.

During the entire process, great attention has been paid to role assignment and account structures as the different users of the solution must have very different rights.

To Chr. Hansen, the solution has meant that they have access to all their customers in one place. This potentially gives their sales reps a 360-degree overview of the customers through Salesforce Sales Cloud where they can see potential sales and keep track of them.

At the same time, the company has a modern platform with unlimited access to the newest updates from Salesforce – which benefits Chr. Hansen as well as their customers.