Over the past four years, diva-e has developed a new B2B shop with innovative and extensive functionalities for a leading German wholesaler in the sanitary and building technology sector. In this shop, customers can access comprehensive self-service options, enabling them to submit inquiries, review and approve quotes, manage quantity contracts and reservations, handle delivery notes and returns, process invoices, and manage offline and non-shop-related orders and documents.
Automation: The key to efficiency
With automated reminders and detailed overviews, customers no longer need to rely on sales staff to check the status of deliveries or invoices. Sales agents can guide customers to self-service features, ensuring they are always informed and up-to-date.
Since every step in the transaction process generates a new document, customers often accumulate hundreds or even thousands of documents, with total volumes reaching into the millions. Advanced search and filtering capabilities are crucial to navigating such vast data efficiently.
The challenge: managing and presenting data
How can vast amounts of data be made accessible to customers with limited time and varying levels of digital expertise? These users typically prefer modern, intuitive interfaces and apps or systems that are easy to use. The solution must strike a balance between simplicity and functionality—being user-friendly yet robust.
The standard SAP approach, which relies on ERP database searches, does not meet these demands. A new and innovative solution for the customer’s shop was required.
Implementing user-friendly document management
How are document data imported into the shop?
With more than 12 million documents, the volume is significant. Many of these documents include hundreds of line items, making them too large to load entirely into the shop.
To address this, only the data necessary for displaying summaries and enabling fast search and filter functions is imported and stored. This subset of data, referred to as the "document header," includes some line item information, such as product numbers.
When customers need detailed information on a specific document—such as extensive line-item details or attachments—this data is retrieved directly from the ERP system in real time, ensuring that it is always up-to-date. Document headers, however, are updated regularly—either during nightly processes, upon customer login, or via a refresh button in the shop.
How can customers search and retrieve documents?
To meet this need, the shop leverages the SAP Commerce search engine "Apache Solr." Originally designed for product searches, Solr provides fast, reliable, and highly customizable search capabilities. Extending this tool to document searches was a logical choice.
All imported document headers are indexed to create a secondary search index within the shop. Specific configurations, such as defining searchable fields and implementing filters, ensure that sensitive or restricted documents (e.g., those belonging to other customers or archived files) remain inaccessible to unauthorized users.
Discussion of the current implementation
Storing document data directly in the shop offers significant advantages. Most importantly, the search functionality is independent of the ERP system. This ensures that any ERP downtime does not impact the customer’s ability to use the shop or place orders. Once the ERP system is back online, data is seamlessly synchronized without affecting the customer experience.
The shop-based search provides several benefits compared to ERP-based searches: it is highly configurable, extremely fast, and reliable, with advanced features such as relevance optimization and complex faceting options.
Challenges and improvements
Long Initial Data Loads: Importing data for the first time takes several weeks. A mechanism to clean up old and archived documents is essential to manage this data efficiently.
Time-Sensitive Updates: Background systems may struggle to deliver timely updates. Regular background jobs and a manual refresh button in the shop mitigate this issue.
Real-Time Status Updates: Future updates should be event-driven. Modern systems like SAP S/4Hana are equipped to handle such updates efficiently.
Typical self-service workflow
Submit an Inquiry: Customers add products to their cart and request a quote.
Quote Review: Sales personnel create the quote in the ERP system, which is then displayed in the shop.
Place an Order: Customers approve the quote, add items to their cart, and complete the order.
Track Delivery and Invoices: Delivery and invoice documents are made available in the shop.
Summary and future deployments
Over the past four years, diva-e has developed a comprehensive document self-service workflow that empowers customers to manage their documents independently within the shop. The use of the Apache Solr search engine ensures fast and customizable search functions, while the shop operates independently of the ERP system, minimizing potential disruptions.
With the planned transition to SAP S/4Hana, many current challenges—such as delays in document imports—will be resolved. Additionally, new features like automated reminders for outstanding invoices and seamless handling of quantity contracts could further enhance the self-service experience.
This innovative approach ensures that customers enjoy efficient, intuitive, and modern document management capabilities in their B2B shop.
Hendrik Rohn
