Initially, Midland Scientific was operating with a B2B e-commerce platform- B2B seller by ECC. It consisted of around 20 percent of the user base online. With 400K products in its inventory, created in P21 and PIM, and all of them published on their B2B eCommerce platform. They have done many customizations on B2B Seller functionalities over the years, yet they did not get the desired results with their Search function – since users found it difficult to find the required product with specific attributes in it. Additionally, the speed and accuracy of the site were not up to the mark either.

And when it comes to Data Integration, there were not many code customization options in their earlier site that acted as a barricade to business growth and prevented from implementing certain growth strategies. Also, Manual Data Entry – When entering information manually, it took up a lot of time, no matter how fast one can type or process information, it never was as fast as it needs to be, leading to data errors and inaccuracy.

Today’s buyer journey isn’t linear, which pushes brands to extend their eCommerce possibilities and adjust their strategies so they are always ready to not just cater to customers’ needs, but exceed them. After DCKAP built a robust eCommerce store for Midland Scientific, they wanted to integrate ERP and eCommerce for creating a smooth data flow of key business use cases. By doing so, the organization can create satisfying customer experiences and also worry less about data redundancy.

DCKAP’s certified Magento developers and designers initiated the design and development stage. We formulated a brand new optimized website with an enhanced user experience to fulfill the expectations of the customers. The design stage also involved an intricate process to provide a fully customizable Magento site to meet the ever-evolving necessities of the end-users.

Midland Scientific chose Magento 2 which supports their B2B features like Company Structure, Quick Order Placing, Multiple Checkout Processes, Account Management, Promotion.
From the technical perspective, our developers assured improvements such as valid codes that comply with current web standards, improved functionality, and wider accessibility for the customers.

Search: With the help of ElasticSearch and ElasticSuite extension, DCKAP implemented a customized search based on Product Name, Category, Keywords, Product Attributes, Customer Part Number, and more.

Customer Registration: Customer Registration is classified into various categories on this website. On a high level, it is classified as Existing Customer for MSI and New Customer.

Company Structure and Company Switcher: An entry for a company is created by a Company Administrator through a new or existing Customer creation process, by which the company is provided with a P21 Customer ID (Company ID).

Invoices: Invoices raised for a particular company will be displayed under the My Invoices module in My Account Portal. This feature helps the customer to keep track of invoices that need to be paid (open) and closed.

Request Quote: This feature helps the registered customer to negotiate pricing by submitting a ‘Request Quote’ by adding a list of required products.

Suspended and Approve Suspended Orders: The orders placed by the customers above their purchase limit were coined as Suspended Orders. The users are now structured based on their roles in a hierarchical manner (i.e.) Administrators, Managers, Default Users.

Item Restrictions: Midland Scientific has some hazardous products which need to be restricted for certain customers. So, the feature of Enabling Request to Buy button instead of Add to cart was quite helpful as this feature notifies the Administrator/CSR, thereby he can decide whether to release the product to the respective user.

Scheduled Orders: This feature is used to place an order at the prescribed release date mentioned by the customer. It also helps the user to select the required Ship-to address while placing a scheduled order.

Tax Exemption: A customer-friendly solution was introduced to enable customers the ability to upload tax documents and avail tax exemption based on their eligibility.

Quick Order and Shopping List: This feature helps the user to quickly dial in all the products one by one in the product field and add products to the cart instantly. Customers can use their own product number to add the product to the cart. With Shopping List, multiple shopping lists can be handled through this feature. Customers are able to add/delete products on the list.

Sales Reps and Customer Support Reps: Sales Reps and CSRs will have logins on the website where they can select particular customers/companies and place orders for their customers.

Check out the business use cases DCKAP Integrator integrated to combat Midland Scientific’s business problems through advanced integrations to offer hyper-personal shopping experiences that make their customers highly satisfied and more prone to making purchase decisions. And creating a space to work faster and more intelligently, with all the latest data available.

• Customers Sync: Magento <> P21
• Products Sync: P21 to Magento
• Inventory Sync: P21 to Magento
• Order Sync: Magento to P21
• Offline Order Sync: P21 to Magento
• Pricing Sync: P21 to Magento
• Back Orders Sync: P21 to Magento
• Restricted Items Sync: P21 to Magento
• Call To Pricing Sync: P21 to Magento
• Ship To IDs Sync: P21 <> Magento
• Standing Orders Sync: P21 to Magento
• Invoices Sync: P21 <> Magento
• Sales Rep Sync: P21 to Magento
• Request Quote Sync: P21 to Magento
• MSI Van Route (Shipping) Sync: P21 to Magento
• Dynamic Fetch Customer Sync: P21 to Magento

The Products Information that is stored in Akeneo was imported to Magento using the PIMgento extension. Products are classified into two product types; namely Parent Product & Child Product. Child products are managed as normal products in Akeneo and Parent products are created as separate entities. Additionally, the Child products are mapped to the Parent product to ensure efficient categorization.

The Parent products were termed as grouped products in Magento and Child products were listed as ‘Simple products’. Simple products can be mapped to grouped products and imported to Magento 2 through PIMgento. DCKAP also set up Cron Jobs to synchronize all the products from Akeneo to Magento 2 on a daily basis.

DCKAP also added brands and created them as entities in Akeneo which are imported to Magento through a separate API. It involves transferring brands and brand images through it. A Cron Job is set up to synchronize all the brands from Akeneo to Magento 2 on a daily basis.

The website is now integrated with an advantage in creating and managing the categories for all available products. This solution enables the store owner to import or export the product data from the local storage files with just a single click.

The Midland Scientific website is now equipped with a completely transitioned Magento 2 store with power-packed integrations & customizable features to delight their customers. The challenges DCKAP faced during this project, including enabling the integration between Magento 2x with Epicor P21, were extensive. Yet, DCKAP’s strong technical team was keenly able to hurdle through with their expertise.

For P21 Integration with DCKAP Integrator, syncing business data creates many opportunities for business growth. And our integration has been effective in tackling many real-time problems and can be implemented across the organization to power more superior growth and intelligent business functioning. Now that all the data is automatically synced across integral business use cases, Midland Scientific can add new API faster and quickly make customization.

Also, they can see the log via DCKAP Integrator and resync in case of any error, leaving no space for data mismanagement. Improved workflow to boost productivity and grow the business – now and ever made possible with DCKAP Integrator.