And the winner is…. Aspidistra client, Industrial Ancillaries.

Posted by Paul Dorey • Uncategorised • November 1st, 2017

Aspidistra Software is proud and delighted, to announce that their client, Industrial Ancillaries has won the B2B ecommerce Website of the Year award 2017.

Judges said: “Industrial Ancillaries have a website which is relevant and user friendly for B2B. This website (created by Aspidistra Software)  is very well executed and shows off the integrated work, moving a catalogue online is huge work and a real achievement in itself. Very well thought out!”

Paul Dorey (Aspidistra MD) and Jamie attended the prestigious awards evening in Manchester Cathedral and both were surprised when Industrial Ancillaries were announced as overall winner.

“It’s the first time Industrial Ancillaries have entered a website award, and frankly we were up against some tough competition” said Paul.  “And the Industrial Ancillaries website is huge. It’s highly functional and very complex, so whilst we were hopeful, we were certainly not complacent about winning.”

Jamie Dennis, MD Of Industrial Ancillaries,  said: “Aspidistra has been our ecommerce provider since 2010 years and we chose them because of their proven specialism in Sage-integrated ecommerce.  Our brief was to create a state-of-the-art ecommerce platform that tightly integrates with our Sage 200 system to deliver account-specific pricing and a highly personalised customer experience, as well as a real-time inventory position. The site is interoperable across all devices and provides a consistent browsing and ordering experience whether it’s viewed on a phone or a desktop screen.”

To achieve Industrial Ancillaries’ objectives, the ecommerce platform needed to meet the following key criteria:

• Seamless integration with Sage 200 accountancy system
• The ability to provide bespoke, customer-specific pricing
• The ability to deliver a robust, self-service user experience where customers are able to quickly find products and place orders
• Interoperability across all devices, from desktop and laptop, to tablet and smart phone

Paul said: “One of the main challenges we overcame in developing the site was the sheer number of products that needed to be incorporated, and ensuring that these could be efficiently searched – we started with well over 40,000 line items and this has since grown to more than 80,000.

“As well as these intelligent search capabilities, our developers added a number of smart, time-saving features that speed-up the research and purchasing processes, help customers make informed buying decisions, and at the same time encourage them to buy more products.”

Industrial Ancillaries are pioneers – “Our approach is helping to transform the way our entire market works”

Jamie is also proud of the way his site is working to help his customers.  He continues: “We work in a complex market where b2b ecommerce is still a relative newcomer.  Our aim is to help buyers by taking the hard work out of ordering the products they need.

“We are pioneers in this area and Aspidistra has worked closely with us to understand our market place and to incorporate relevant time-saving, efficiency enhancing bespoke capabilities that come with an end-to-end, fully automated ordering process.

“Customer feedback is very positive and we continue to build on our strengths, always working to streamline the customer experience. Our approach is helping to transform the way our entire market works”

Industrial Ancillaries eCommerce features

In addition to the standard shopfront design, Industrial Ancillaries’ customers also benefit from:

• The ability to easily search for any product by type, category, brand or stock code, and at the same and order other items products from an expansive table of similar or complementary products
• The ability to order by stock code or CSV file upload
• The ability to return to a saved basket from a previous site visit and add to a new basket
• The ability to quickly view all outstanding invoices and pay by credit card if desired
• The ability to view at a glance how much the order value needs to increase by to qualify for free delivery

Jamie Dennis said:  “At launch, our business operated out of the founder’s car.  Now we occupy a custom-built 40,000 sq. ft. office and warehouse facility. We have maintained steady growth by paying close attention to customer service and technology. Our eCommerce platform is an essential part of our current and future success, as we have evolved into one of the UK’s leading industrial distributors.