Jenne E-commerce Success Story

The client:  Jenne^SM Distributors, Inc., headquartered in Avon, Ohio, is a leading value-added distributor of business telephony, data, audio and video conferencing, and security technology products, including equipment and software for the SMB and Enterprise markets.

The challenge: Jenne had lots of terrific ideas about how to serve customers better using the Web, but needed an up to date, robust e-commerce platform that would enable the company to realize these ideas.   The existing Web infrastructure, a third party e-commerce platform, was dated, expensive, and difficult to maintain or expand. In addition to connecting seamlessly to Jenne’s Epicor ERP and CRM systems, the new platform would need to allow Jenne staff to maintain information about the company’s services, and it would need to allow for online registration for classes through Jenne’s extensive customer training program, Jenne University.

The solution: iData replaced the existing Jenne.com e-commerce site with a new site running on our Synapse Publisher® CMS platform.  The new site includes  advanced e-commerce functionality  and allows customers to order online, view order history, view images of past invoices, re-order, prepare quotes, add and use order templates, view “also bought” products, maintain multiple shipping addresses, and maintain customer account information. Direct integration with the ERP provides real-time price, availability and freight information and online order entry, replacing a bridge process that formerly updated storefront data from the ERP and entered orders to the ERP periodically in a batch process. Integration with the CRM provides new functionality like:

• Enabling customers to see a history of their support calls
• Allowing products to be purchaseable, viewable only or neither on a by-customer basis based on customer parameters set in the CRM
• Allows sections of the site to be available on a by-customer basis, also based on permissions originating in the CRM
• Providing complete integration of the quote process on the Web and within the CRM. Quotes entered in either system are viewable and editable in the other. Custom quotes prepared by inside sales reps can be directly entered as an order by the customer on the Website without reentering any data

Other features of the site allow customers to register online for classes through Jenne University, and  allow Jenne users to update all content of the Web site without writing HTML code. 

The result: Since the redesign, the Web channel has become a major driver of overall sales growth at Jenne.  New capabilities made possible by the new platform, like Web services integration to third party purchasing systems, have further expanded the role of e-commerce in Jenne’s business.