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Henkel

Adding Value with Henkel's Shoppable Knowledge Hub

From supertanker to speedboat: Valtech supports Henkel Adhesives in the digital transformation process

Industry

  • Manufacturing & Distribution

Offering

  • Experience Elevation
  • Enterprise Transformation

Technology

  • SAP CX

Get to know Henkel Adhesives Technologies

About

Henkel Adhesive Technologies is one of the three business units of Henkel AG & Co. KGaA and is a global leader in tailor-made solutions for adhesives, sealants and functional coatings.

In addition to the Pritt, Loctite, Ceresit and Pattex brands for end consumers, the portfolio of industrial products consists of the five Technology Cluster Brands - Loctite, Bonderite, Technomelt, Teroson and Aquence.

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Leveraging Lean Principles for a B2B Regeneration

With ambitions to "excel in serving their customers," Henkel Adhesive Technologies set out to deliver a completely transformed B2B experience for their B2B consumers. They approached Valtech with the challenge of transforming their existing B2B ordering platform into a "Shoppable Knowledge Hub" in just six months.

 

This new platform would provide customers with a seamless e-Shop experience as well as becoming the central hub of communication with Henkel Adhesive Technologies. By centralizing the customer experience, Henkel would be able to offer their customers a single point of access to all information, commerce functionality and communication with the company. It would be a value-added, frictionless and intuitive service that would help to increase revenue and reduce admin costs.

Meeting a Contemporary B2B Need

To solve the challenge of completely renewing their existing order and transaction platform in a rapid time frame of just six months, we embarked on an agile project approach to ensure the necessary discipline, flexibility and defined processes to enable quick feature development and rapid feedback from the customer.

 

Through the adoption of Lean start-up principles, we were able to take an interactive project approach and focus on solving the specific needs of Henkel’s B2B customers. As part of that process, and to fully embrace the start-up accelerator mindset, we moved the team to an entirely new physical location to work together on achieving our objectives.

Holding a tablet with B2B platform

A Shoppable Knowledge Hub for a Frictionless B2B Experience

Henkel

Together we set out to develop a B2B e-commerce platform that would help to increase online revenue as well as reduce overall administration costs. Henkel’s vision was to create a platform that constantly ran in the background of B2B buyers’ desktops, offering a transformed customer experience by providing a consistent source of data, updates and adhesive purchase opportunities.

From a technical perspective the platform and e-Shop were built with the Enterprise Shop Solution SAP CX and an Angular Frontend. But in addition to the backend and frontend development, we worked with Henkel to introduce design thinking methods to identify and validate customer requirements and direct customer feedback.

We introduced UX and visual design to the platform, as well as the overall operation, maintenance and support, and through training the stakeholders in the countries in the agile way of working, we were able to help Henkel create a platform that both increased their e-commerce revenue while also delivering a top notch and easy to use experience for their customers.

By imparting our years of knowledge in creating platforms across both the B2B and the B2C sectors we were able to provide the tools and expertise Henkel needed to make smart changes to the platform in the future and to adapt to changing customer expectations and requirements as the market develops.

B2B Manufacturing Image

Accelerating Global Impact

Henkel

In addition to the USA, Henkel Adhesive Technologies’ industrial customers from the APAC European regions (and soon to be South American region too) now have access to the platform.

Working with this international Scrum team, we were able to roll out the platform in the required six months and have also guided Henkel in the creation of a PIM system to support their different Adhesives offerings.

B2B customer expectations are changing. As buyers become increasingly used to the seamless B2C experiences they see in their personal lives, the expectation falls more heavily on B2B firms to offer something similar. With the proliferation of marketplaces and B2B competition, offering your customers an exceptional, value-added service, is the key to increasing consumer loyalty and to remaining competitive in this, and future, markets.

Together we have shown that by embracing agile processes and a design thinking approach, we were able to deliver a hugely valuable commerce offering to support and improve the overall experience of Henkel’s B2B consumers.

Being new to agile when we began this process, this delivery became one of the lighthouse projects within the scope of Henkel’s Digital Strategy 2020+ and has supported the ultimate transformation of the company's organization "from a super tanker to a speedboat".

With Valtech, we have a Partner that has worked with dedication with us on this project and that’s what made it successful – that was a great experience for us and moreover, it was very enjoyable too.

Dr. Salima Douven,
former Head of Digital
Henkel Adhesives Technologies

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