Customer Visit at Kramp:E-Commerce Strategy is exemplary

Tines, hand tools and hydraulic motors are the order of the day at Kramp. Spare parts for agricultural machines – that doesn’t sound very innovative... But Kramp, based in Holland, is Europe’s largest wholesaler of accessories and spare parts for motorized equipment, agricultural and construction machines.

Meeting Eddie Perdok, CEO at Kramp was inspiring on a personal level. But also the company’s business model and e-commerce strategy is exemplary. 340 million Euro in sales and 10,000 orders per day will raise strongly, this is for sure. Kramp is one of the hidden champions in my eyes.

„We believe in the future and the power of e-commerce”, said CEO Eddie Perdok. Kramp stocks over 400,000 items from 2,000 suppliers. The company wants to extend the deliverable virtual stock to 1 million items and is using the long tail strategy to implement this.

“We want to bring customer opinion and supplier knowledge together” (Quote: Eddie Perdok). Online customer evaluation combined with the knowledge of the manufacturer puts us in the position of being able to optimally control stock. In e-commerce, manufacturers, retailers and customers are getting closer in the product information supply chain. Kramp follows the idea of efficient consumer response driven by the search for perfect product data as the prerequisite.

The principle of cooperation and collaboration will also determine future business in the aftermarket. Potential exists wherever complementary products are sold online. Kramp uses the IBM WebSphere Commerce as its e-commerce system.

Perfect product information, based on supplier knowledge and customer feedback, has deep impact on their business model and the multichannel sales strategy.

Customer decisions in eCommercerequire perfect data

On the internet, the data is the product. Unlike in reality, where the customer can touch and examine products in order to compare them, in the online virtual world he must depend 100% on the product data (including images or videos). The basis of his decision is the product data available. No data - no comparison - no decision. No purchase. End of story. One more visit that adds to the unhappy balance of 97% non-purchasers. Preparing the data correctly and presenting it in the right structure is, then, a foundation for high conversion rates.

The ROI of good product information is probably much higher in reality than if we “just” take into account the savings made on the processing and handling of investment data. In online shops product data plays an important
role in the purchase decision – and the positive result of this decision is ultimately one which we can measure as
conversion rates. No figure correlates higher with the marginal income of an online shop – not to mention the
satisfaction of eliciting the simplest of decisions from the customer.

Learn more in chapter 5 of the best of breed whitepaper series PIM 360. I would especially like to thank Mr. André Morys, CEO of Web Arts.