Stimulus Australasia

WATERCO

Multi-website System Development

WATERCO Profile

Waterco is one of the leading Australian manufacturer and distributor in water treatment, aquaculture and pool & spa industries. Waterco exports its products to over 40 countries. With multiple regional websites, Waterco is targeting local markets and providing accurate and relevant and real time information to all of their customers.

Project Summary

Multiple regional websites in multiple languages for each region Waterco is presented in (English, French, Thai and Indonesian). All websites are managed with single Pimcore platform. Instantly by the internal marketing team and local offices. Product inventory data for B2B commerce functions are synchronised with the internal Epicor ERP system. Pimcore excellent PIM (Product Information Management) functionality manages all product marketing information which are then used by multiple websites and for multichannel publishing. 

Before

Waterco utilised multiple websites each with own product marketing information which was complex to manage and slow to populate with same data. Outdated data about products were presented to customers and distributors. New products took long to appear on all websites which undercut marketing team effort to present new products to the customers. Multiple CMS were difficult to maintain.

Negative Consequences (of the current situation)

  • Multiple websites with separate CMS and admins
  • Silos and scattered product information
  • No ERP integration
  • No PIM (Product Information System)

After (unmet needs are addressed)

All regional websites are now using same Pimcore instance with full PIM database which contains all the marketing data for all company products. Information about any product can be swiftly presented on any website Waterco owns which simplifies many internal marketing processes. New regional websites are created faster and information on them are up to date and managed by the company marketing team or regional office. Multiple web based applications were developed to simplify and unify relationships between Waterco and their customers or dealers. B2B portal has been integrated with Epicor ERP data. Web2Print technology is used to generate custom warranty certificates.

Positive Business Outcomes

  • Improved customer satisfaction, up to date product and services information are presented across multiple websites
  • Marketing team can concentrate on marketing itself rather than wasting the time on website management
  • B2B portal will soon lower the sales team utilization (once current testing phase is finished)

 

How We Do It (specific to this use case)

Websites use Foundation 5 framework which is managed by our Template Engine technology. Template Engine is Pimcore Plugin which extensively uses Areablocks Technology provided by pimcore. Thanks to Template Engine, editor can customise content and layout of each page without developer involvement. Product data and other information are indexed with Solr which provides search functionality. Stimulus has developed for this project a unique Epicor ecommerce connector plugin which synchronises inventory and other ecommerce data from Epicor ERP for B2B portal to present and back to Epicor for sales team to process as new orders. Stimulus also developed custom plugin converting VEND POS inventory orders to Epicor orders to simplify VEND orders management.
 

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waterco.com.au
waterco.com