Thanks to successful digital transformation Inter Cars wants to be stronger in Europe.

The biggest Polish automotive spare parts distributor, Inter Cars SA., has finished a project of unified B2B e-commerce system which is to be the pillar for further expansion of the company in Europe.  Finally the platform will be available for the employees of over 100k garages in 16 countries. Realization of the project, which was the biggest implementation of SAP Hybris Cloud in Europe in 2017, was responsible a technological-advisory company e-point SA.

In a short time, Inter Cars turned from being a family company into an important international market player.  The Company is currently second in Europe in the automotive aftermarket (selling parts for passenger cars and trucks), with its foreign distribution on the level of 40% of total turnover.

The base of the new e-commerce platform has been prepared on SAP Hybris Commerce Cloud, because of its flexibility, scalability and stability. In the course of the project, SAP Hybris Commerce has been fully adapted by e-point to the business needs of Inter Cars (internationalization, the system of work in a car garage), technological environment of the company (integration with internal systems of Inter Cars and external ones) and the use of different channels in the sales process (among others - call centre).

The project has lasted for 17 months in total and was realized in agile methodology. The work was organized in 12 sprints of four weeks each, preceded by preparation of a prototype of the solution and a foundation phase, which was aimed at gaining full understanding of aims and needs of Inter Cars. On the side of e-Point there was a team of 40 people taking part in the project, composed of software developers, Customer Experience (CX) experts and business process optimization specialists.

– Inter Cars aimed at creating the most intuitive and user friendly catalogue of products on the market. It has been a great challenge, taking into consideration the product range in their database (1.7 million!), automotive market data model and the need of price personalization. - said Marek Berkan, technological expert at  e-point.

Because of the aims of the project, CX experts were an integral part of the project team, delivering concepts and mock-ups, in order to simplify the interface and make the system as simple as possible in use – on any device and using any communication channel. A separate challenge has been integration with ERP systems, SSO logging system and integration with Inter Cars databases.

– Launching the new e-commerce platform is closing one important stage in digital transformation of our business. The tool really improves activities of garage employees and sales operators at Inter Cars branches, enabling them fast search for the right part and providing information when such part shall be available. Thanks to this we are strengthening partnership with garages and we can optimize the process of placing orders. This gives us a real competitive advantage, which should be reflected in gaining a stronger position on the European market. – said Maciej Oleksowicz, President of the Management Board at Inter Cars SA.

According to the President of Inter Cars, the new, unified e-commerce platform will additionally make it possible to optimize the cost of sales, and also will speed up implementing innovations on the markets, such as new sales models (B2C and B2B2C).

We are pleased to announce that we have finished a project of unified B2B e-commerce system, platform which is to be the base of our expansion in Europe.  Finally the platform will be available for the employees of over 100k garages in 16 countries, the tool shall really improve the work of garages, provide them possibility of efficient search for parts and obtain information when the part will be available and delivered.  The unified e-commerce platform will make it possible to optimize sales costs, speed up implementing innovation on another markets.