NDC Company utilizes Optimizely B2B Platform to give outstanding performance & speed to customers
Preferred Medical
Boca Raton, Florida
Medical Supplies
Introduction
NDC has been a leading global provider of both upstream and downstream healthcare supply chain products and support. Offering a wide range of solutions for distributors and manufacturers, all in an effort to deliver efficiency to healthcare. Preferred Medical, an NDC company is a national healthcare supply company that is service-oriented, and a customer-focused business. Offering a wide product selection and competitive price points to ensure customers get what they want, at a price they expect.
NDC came with a highly complex environment consisting of wanting to merge their different companies into one platform, those companies being Wolf Medical Supply and Preferred Medical. Each one with its own ERP, and legacy platforms that were difficult to change and customize.
A Speedy Road to a Unified Experience
NDC wanted to bring their companies, Preferred Medical and Wolf Medical, together into one easily manageable eCommerce platform—Optimizely B2B. Each separate company had their own way of doing things creating a very inefficient back-end architecture that led to multiple internal systems not talking to each other. The over-arching goal became not only launching a new eCommerce experience, but also a larger digital transformation initiative.
This solution required a lot of coordination, discussion, and planning to ensure that Luminos Labs was in a position to recommend a solution that fit both the needs of today and the scalable requirements of NDC in the future.
By choosing the Optimizely B2B platform, Wolf Medical was able to launch as the first phase of the NDC companies. This core solution gave a modernized B2B shopping experience for Wolf Medical customers that seamlessly integrates the back-end systems to the Optimizely B2B platform. With this being only phase one of the larger initiative, another core component of the total solution is to allow for more websites to be added under a unified architecture for a better business user management experience, minimizing the complexity of different business flows and functions in separate manual systems thus decreasing operational costs.
Practical Commerce Integrations Brought to Life
That is where the second phase of the project came in, turning Wolf Medical into Preferred Medical. The functionalities that were added during phase two were core features that were critical towards bringing both businesses together as one. A single identity provider integration, Azure Single Sign-On (SSO) for both businesses. inriver as a single PIM holding all product catalog data, flowing into the Optimizely platform, while still separately segmenting products by websites, customer segments, and units of measure; using a flat product structure to make the user experience and product search easier and logical. For a payment gateway, Preferred Medical switched to World Pay. Our team took a “best-of-both-worlds" approach with the Optimizely B2B platform by combining inriver to flow to Optimizely. Indexing by the item and customizing so there is customization by the product. Finally, distinct ERP integrations to Epicor P21 Cloud for each business.
Optimizely B2B holds a comprehensive admin dashboard that allows Preferred Medical to manage their data and sales in one space. Where we come in with the platform is then integrating system and data sources, so Preferred Medical can take full advantage of their self-service functionality, including Multi-Variant Product Catalogs, User Roles and Management, User Impersonation, and Cart and Order Summaries.
Setting the Foundation to Expand the Digital Experience
The new eCommerce website solution has entirely transformed how Preferred Medical does business with their customers. Their new scalable technology stack allows them to grow and stay relevant to their customers as the digital world continues to expand. This has created the start of a change management plan for Preferred Medical customers as they navigate their new site.
The Preferred Medical team also utilized the Luminos Labs team for a Strategic Staff Augmentation role to fill in as a temporary product owner for 3 months. During this engagement, the Luminos Labs team filled in as an eCommerce analyst helping to launch activities, manage eCommerce aspects of the service desk, and help with prioritization throughout the project.