MEET THE DEMANDS OF THE

ALWAYS CONNECTED CUSTOMER

WITH ERP2WEB FOR SAP® SYSTEMS

CDI Technology 400 East 22nd Street

Suite 400c Lombard, IL 60148

630-599-0620 ext. 200 www.cditechnology.com

SAP and all SAP logos are trademarks or registered trademarks of SAP AG in Germany and in several other countries. All other product and service names

mentioned herein are the trademarks of their respective owners.

©2014 CDI All Rights Reserved

3

What is the defining characteristic of today’s buyer – of anything? They take control of their own purchasing

experience. And how do they do it? Through connected devices. There are now more connected devices than

people, and this has given rise to The Always Connected Customer.1

They typically have 3 connected devices and have been spoiled by Google, social media, and online, one-stop,

super-shops like Amazon and Ebay,

with specs, techs, videos and reviews

all in one spot, a checkout process

that takes 30 seconds, and all of it

done from a smartphone. As of 2015,

The Always Connected Customer

easily makes up 60% of the

population.2 They are a force to be

reckoned with. If they need to search

for something on your site for more

than a minute, they are on to your

competitor without a second of

thought about loyalty to your brand.

If you don’t know how to connect to this type of customer, you can forget about doing business with 60% of the

population, whether they are buying for themselves or for their business. The most sobering thought for most

B2B companies is that the B2C e-commerce weekend buyer is also a B2B weekday customer.

Here are the ways the Always Connected Customer takes control of their purchasing experience. They…:

Use new ways to evaluate products (think peer to peer reviews)

Eliminate vendors long before they know a sales opportunity exists

Have new shopping habits (because they now work and live online)

Eliminate traditional sources of information (like your non-interactive infomercial website)

Manage Personal and Business life on multiple mobile devices.

And here’s the most important thing: Customer Experience trumps product price and features.3

If you want to truly know if your online presence has a good customer experience, you have to ask yourself

honestly – “Would I shop here? Am I making it easier for my customers to do business with me?”

But what about the buying process your company set up 10, 15 years ago that makes it easier for you to do

business with them and involves them stopping by one of your brick and mortar outlets, warehouses or dealers?

Or how about calling or emailing a rep to place an order? Or the worst, using an outdated online portal to

manually type in an order, provided they remember the product codes? Forget about it. They’re moving on.

Here’s some other interesting facts4 about B2B customers:

MEET THE DEMANDS OF THE ALWAYS CONNECTED CUSTOMER WITH ERP2WEB

4

Almost 9 out of 10 B2B buyers would prefer to

shop online

94 percent of B2B buyers wanted suppliers to

make their Web sites more like B2C

Most B2B suppliers offer little or nothing to

make E-Commerce easier for their customers

The B2B suppliers who offer a B2C-like customer experience in their market early, will gain the biggest lift from

their e-commerce projects and beat out their competitors in every metric.

CDI’s ERP2Web was built right the first time. CDI understands what companies want, and more importantly, what

their customers want, to conduct business online. CDI’s long experience in e-commerce is shown with such

industry leading features as Configure Price Quote (CPQ) for Online Sales, Convert Quote to Order, Spend

Management and Flexible Deployment. Flexible Deployment simply means that you can make numerous choices

with the ERP2Web solution out of the box in a way that can give you a B2B solution or a B2C solution, or both,

with the same software.

Flexible Deployment also means you can implement ERP2Web for your entire business spectrum from end

customer to distributor to sales representatives to service representatives and to other employees needing

visibility into the sales or service cycle. Combining the variety of user roles with very broad and in-depth

functionality means ERP2Web is the most complete and most robust e-commerce system for your needs. A

sampling of such functionality is shown in the figure above and discussed later in this document in more detail.

©2014 CDI All Rights Reserved

5

Besides the great variety of choices in user profiles and functional offerings, ERP2Web is very strong on real-time

integration. Whether it is integration with your SAP system or another legacy system in use or even a system for

your eCatalog images and descriptions, ERP2Web brings it all together seamlessly for presenting real-time

information to your customers. With ERP2Web you get the strength of the e-commerce capability you need

delivered real-time when you need it and at an effective cost for a rapid and positive ROI.

CDI BACKGROUND

Founded in 1991, CDI's mission is to be the best eCommerce solutions provider to customers that use ERP systems. In the early 1990’s CDI focused on the emerging AS/400 marketplace. We have worked with many of the leading ERP/MRP software solutions from our beginning. Throughout the mid to late 90’s CDI predominately focused on services and web “projects.” In 1999, we leveraged our ERP and “Web” expertise to develop e-commerce software products for ERP companies. CDI became a certified SAP partner in 2009. ERP2Web, a Web storefront and customer portal, is our flagship offering. Other products include SnapVSS - Vendor self-service, and SnapPay - Credit Card sales order automation. Today CDI is an authorized business partner for SAP, Oracle, Microsoft, and IBM with payment solutions that are PCI tested and validated. CDI is a Chicago area (Lombard, IL) based company that has successfully helped hundreds of customers accomplish their IT vision. With 20+ years of offering the highest quality Software & Services value to more than 300 clients, CDI has established itself as a premier provider of affordable solutions to businesses in the ERP space. ERP2Web ERP2Web is a suite of components that transform your ERP application into a real-time Business-to-Business (B2B) and Business-to-Consumer (B2C) solution over the web. It is easily and rapidly configurable enabling you to extend Web functionality quickly without making any changes to your existing SAP application code.

ARCHITECTURE OF DESIGN

The software design implements open architecture. ERP2Web does not require any changes to the SAP system business logic. The Web client (Browser) sends a request via the Web to the ERP2Web application residing on the Web Application server as noted in the following figure. The Web server processes that request by connecting to the SAP system and making a call to the appropriate SAP BAPI. The BAPI gets executed and returns the data

back to the web server. The web server then sends the response back to the web client or browser. Zero Client Solution The Web interface for ERP2Web is completely designed using .NET Framework, so any .NET enabled Web server is supported. ERP2Web is a zero client solution with centralized application maintenance. There is no client side software required, no “app” to download for mobile use. A Web browser is all that is required to access ERP2Web functionality.

MEET THE DEMANDS OF THE ALWAYS CONNECTED CUSTOMER WITH ERP2WEB

6

Security We share your concern for security with your data on the Web and we have designed and built ERP2Web with security as a key factor. The ERP2Web server sits behind your firewall and maintains data security and integrity. Payments with ERP2Web are handled compliant with PA-DSS and PCI requirements. Administration and Customization ERP2Web is an easily manageable solution, setting it apart from the competition. It comes with built-in, easy-to-use administrative tools to enable you to customize and manage your Web and wireless presence the way you desire. This means most all of your ongoing management of your ERP2Web implementation is done without programming changes being required. Easy-to-use configuration settings are all that are needed to manage ERP2Web. Maintenance & Support To ensure your satisfaction, CDI has instituted an ongoing Customer Support program. CDI offers comprehensive help desk support and technical self-service via the Web. The program helps ensure that ERP2Web continues to meet your business needs for the future. ERP2Web Customer Support Representatives, who are ERP2Web experts, will promptly address all questions or concerns that come from participating clients who subscribe to the ERP2Web maintenance program. By subscribing to the CDI maintenance agreement, a client is entitled to unlimited Call Center and email support. Subscribers also receive ongoing software releases and upgrades. Additionally, CDI guarantees support for your current and future versions of SAP with respect to ERP2Web. Protecting Your Future CDI’s ERP2Web software is used to extend your SAP system into a web eCommerce solution. ERP2Web will be used to add significant productivity to your order processing capabilities with a new B2B/B2C Storefront eCommerce order channel. ERP2Web’s flexible software architecture allows extending its functionality in other areas with optional suites like

vendor self-service – SnapVSS; and Customer Service credit card sales orders – SnapPay.

ERP2WEB INTEGRATION WITH SAP SYSTEMS

CDI’s many years of experience as a partner with several ERP software companies has resulted in keen insights into best practices for Web based query and transaction processing for integration with ERP applications. Our powerful technology uses your company’s SAP business processes to ensure accurate and responsive real-time integration. ERP2Web uses the SAP business logic rather than duplicating it. This means that, even if you have modified the SAP system, the possibility of errors being introduced into the system is eliminated. This also means that there is no need to endure the maintenance burden in multiple systems in the future. This integration means that when your customer inquires as to order status, inventory availability, A/R status or any other information, the data presented is current, and it comes directly from your SAP system. Functionality such as item pricing uses the SAP business logic that is already present in your system determining the correct price for that particular customer. The superior integration between ERP2Web and SAP is the foundation to the business benefits you will realize with ERP2Web. The “core” ERP2Web capabilities, centered on ERP2Web B2B/B2C e-commerce superior design, mean you do not have to understand the structure of e-commerce before you begin with ERP2Web. ERP2Web, out-of-the-box, works with the following SAP functional areas of SAP Sales and Distribution:

Sales Order Entry Creation

Sales Order Inquiry

Quote Entry Creation

Quotation Inquiry

Check Price & Availability

Credit Worthiness

Customer Master Revisions

Product Variant Configurator

©2014 CDI All Rights Reserved

7

ERP2Web was designed to allow extending SAP functionality beyond the existing SAP programs and functions. This can be accomplished through ERP2Web’s administrative capabilities without programming efforts. Integration with SAP and other servers (email, marketing, engineering, etc.) occurs, at a general level, in two ways.

1. Transactional Integration – ERP2Web, real-time, works against certain SAP transaction related programs for the purpose of order creation, retrieving customer pricing, item availability, customer credit information and customer creation. For example, with real-time Order Creation and Customer Pricing, ERP2Web makes RFC calls to pre-identified BAPIs.

2. Synchronization of Data – e-Catalogs can be

created and maintained in ERP2Web. CDI will provide a template that will have material data from SAP and other (e.g., Marketing for graphic files) servers. For most customers the SQL import executables are scheduled on a daily (nightly batch update) basis.

ERP2Web is a SAP Certified Integration Solution.

FUNCTIONAL DETAILS

Companies provide Customer Self-Service as a way of using the Internet to grow business, increase customer satisfaction and lower operational costs. Order management is the heart of ERP2Web and is a key function in such customer self-service. All ERP2Web functions are fully integrated with SAP business logic and require no changes to the SAP code to implement. An overview of ERP2Web’s functionality areas include:

Order Creation: There are 8 ways to create an order through ERP2Web:

1. E-Catalog Drill-Down - ERP2Web provides an

extremely functional and robust catalog product presentment working with SAP and non-SAP data. This includes personalized (at user or group level) e-catalog functionality.

2. Basic, Advanced and Predictive Search

Capabilities - ERP2Web allows the customer to look up any item within seconds. Predictive Search allows a “Google-like” capability that gives suggestions as the customer types a word into the search bar. Significant flexibility allows you to tailor a ‘Search’ to your company, industry and marketplace. Advanced Search allows “Exact Phrase” to “Wildcard” searching against descriptions, part numbers, manufacturers, features or specifications.

3. Re-Order from a previous order in the

customer sales order history - For B2B this is a must. With one selection, a customer can take the line item contents from a prior order (open or closed) and put them in the ERP2Web shopping cart to order as-is or revised.

4. Favorites or My List - Allows users to create

pre-defined lists (group of items) that can easily be selected and added to the cart, ordered as-is or revised.

5. Upload from Excel - Orders may be entered

directly into the ERP2Web shopping cart from an MS Excel file. A simple Excel spreadsheet with item numbers and quantities populating two columns is all that is needed. This can be a manually created Excel spreadsheet, or utilize file output (to Excel) out of your customer’s business system to better automate their ordering process to you.

MEET THE DEMANDS OF THE ALWAYS CONNECTED CUSTOMER WITH ERP2WEB

8

6. Quick SKU Entry - Customers either know your part numbers by memory or they have your catalog sitting in from of them. Simply enter the item number and quantity or choose Bulk Pad to enter multiple items and quantities at once.

7. Intelligent Graphics - Customers can click on

a picture of your products and are then prompted for quantity and additions to the shopping cart.

8. Convert Quote to Order – Customers can create quotes through ERP2Web, save them, and come back later to convert those quotes to orders – all in real-time.

Electronic Product Catalog(s) – The e-Catalog

within ERP2Web offers a unique Web storefront experience for users. You can publish and deploy your catalog to all or a subset of your customers for their business transactions over the Web. The catalog provides real-time price and availability information from the SAP system. e-Catalogs can be built from your SAP Material Masters with SAP data and with non-SAP data (e.g., graphics, Adobe / MS Office documents, CAD view drawings, etc.) or from any legacy system to which ERP2Web is connected. e-Catalogs can be personalized for Customers or Groups as to what is shown as available for purchase by them.

Real-Time SAP Pricing Integration - All pricing is

maintained in SAP, not in ERP2Web, and is available real-time. When you update your pricing in SAP, your customer sees the change real-time. Also, customer contracted pricing, product specific pricing, and contracted trade promotions are all available real-time as you maintain them in your SAP system. Earned rebates, volume discounts and multiple prices can be displayed to the customer if desired.

Real-Time Availability Integration - Showing

Calculated Value or Condition (in stock, due in, out of stock) is your choice in the multiple ways

of presenting or not presenting availability of particular products. This can include branch plant availability if set up in SAP.

Real-Time Order Status Check - Any open or closed SAP sales order can easily be displayed in a real-time view that includes any changes made in the SAP system.

Multiple Order Status Inquiry - An inquiry may be made on multiple status elements including SAP Order Number, PO Number, Date or Range of Dates, Order Status, and Order Type.

CPQ (Configure Price Quote) for Online Sales –

Some items may need to be configured, with many optional attributes and a multitude of different contracted pricing and rebate possibilities. Through ERP2Web’s “Build & Buy” function, your customers can configure products online through an intuitive, guided process that validates the configuration and pricing in real-time from SAP. They can order that configured product immediately or store it as a quote that later can be easily converted to an order

Spend Management – a uniquely B2B requirement for customers who want to set budgets and spend limits based on location or user log-in. Customers handle their own exceptions through an automated workflow and make the decision whether to approve, modify or reject an order that exceeds the set limit.

Automated Email Notification - Order creation notification emails with order header and line item detail can be sent to the customer upon order entry through your standard email system. Order Shipment emails with SAP order detail and other information (e.g., shipment links, transportation data, etc.) can also be transmitted. The emails may be enhanced with ‘look and feel’ configuration as you like.

B2C Functionality - A web registration form

creates Sold -To and Ship -To parties from within

©2014 CDI All Rights Reserved

9

ERP2Web for updating your SAP system. Also, your choice of whether login is required to shop or not is configurable.

Powerful Item Detail Page - The screens provided for viewing are very customizable, including showing item detail, hyper-links to other documents or web pages, and related items. One powerful detail is “hovering” that allows the Administrator to give a description for an item, which will be displayed in a hover window when the cursor is taken to the item.

Related Item Selling - Related item selling, known as Cross-Selling, is provided and can be configured to effectively help increase order revenue. You will have choices on how it is presented to customers.

Shopping Cart - ERP2Web provides a straightforward and familiar shopping cart for viewing and managing the order items. This efficient checkout process allows for payment options such as Payment Cards and ACH.

Up-Selling Items - Up-selling involves marketing additional products to those items ordered and also suggesting to the customer what he or she may have considered previously. Specific catalog items from a Global, Group or User Deployed catalog may displayed in the shopping cart.

Direct Customer Partner Logic - ERP2Web factors All Sold-To/Ship-To logic in the workflow. A parameter setting allows customers to create additional ship-to addresses if you permit.

Credit Card Payment Terms – ERP2Web provides complete SAP credit card sales automation between SAP and your credit card payment processor or gateway if you desire, or can also work with your existing SAP certified payment card solution.

Customer Defined Shipment Options – If you

select Customer Shipping Options many choices

are available for deployment that provide tracking links and detail among other shipment related information either from SAP or particular carriers depending on the information.

Item Download Functionality – In today’s online ‘need it now’ economy, many companies sell products and/or subscriptions that can be downloaded upon payment or that enable continued service to be provided upon renewal. ERP2Web has functionality built in to handle purchase of documents, software in a download-type transaction, and renewal of subscriptions that can be downloaded online when purchased.

Fully Customizable Interface – ERP2Web

empowers your marketing team to effectively manage your brand and have a consistent branding message from website to your webstore. You can easily deploy the GUI theme of your choice for a consistent look and feel throughout your ERP2Web system.

Multi-lingual and multi-currency capability – If

you conduct business outside the US, then ERP2Web is the solution you want for your business in countries where you need other languages and other currencies. ERP2Web is double-byte capable and fully supports any language for which you can provide the necessary scripts. Many of our customers use several languages with their ERP2Web system.

Online Open AR Item Payment – ERP2Web

includes a robust online bill payment system for open invoices. The AR payment system gives your customers the ability to select all or specific invoices for payment with multiple payment methods available. Even if you do not want to allow online payment, the AR component is great for your customers to see the status of transactions and invoices on their account via a self-service function, thereby saving your call-center staff significant time for other duties.

MEET THE DEMANDS OF THE ALWAYS CONNECTED CUSTOMER WITH ERP2WEB

10

Google Analytics – CDI provides Google Analytics to give you best-in-class analysis of your conversion-to-sale rate. You will have full view into the number of visits, number of abandoned shopping carts, and many more details of your customer’s interaction with your webstore.

Responsive Web Design – It’s important to provide seamless ERP2Web functionality to the Always Connected Customer through all their devices: iPad®, iPhone®, Android phones and tablets, BlackBerry® devices and other Smartphones. ERP2Web is built on a Responsive Web Design (RWD) template. Users can perform all the tasks mentioned above on a 24x7 basis directly from the mobile device of their choice.

IMPLEMENTING ERP2WEB

Another key to the success of an e-commerce solution for your business is the time and complexity of implementation. If the selected solution is difficult to implement, requires additional SAP software, has a long project cycle and related installation issues, then the desired ROI is much more difficult to attain and may jeopardize the overall project.

CDI has many years of e-commerce experience and knows the right questions that need to be answered to gain the greatest impact from your e-commerce solution.

Business Requirements Kick-Off Meeting

Every CDI ERP2Web implementation begins with a formal CDI/Customer (on-site) Business Requirements meeting. CDI personnel at that

meeting include a CDI project executive sponsor, your assigned ERP2Web Project Manager and the CDI Technical and Functional experts. CDI will create a formal Project Plan reflecting both standard and any/all custom modifications. Once the project plan is approved by you, the project will begin in earnest. Periodic status meetings will keep the project on its timeline and management informed as to its progress. Pre-Built Components One important way that CDI makes the project time efficient and most effective is with pre-built components that only need configuration for your choices, not time-consuming programming efforts. ERP2Web’s pre-built components include functions that most commonly require remote access.

Sales Order Processing

Order Inquiry – Open and Historical

Credit Card Processing

Financial Inquiry And much, much more. Implementation Project Most of the e-commerce solutions on the market are not designed with the aforementioned pre-built components and as a result, require significant development time to produce the templates you use for your various workflow items in e-commerce. As you can see in the figure below, this development time can extend the total project time greatly. With ERP2Web, your project is time efficient, giving you a much shorter time to production status, resulting in a quicker ROI.

ERP2Web stands alone as the best eCommerce solution for your SAP system and our

customers are happy to share their experience with ERP2Web and why you should

consider ERP2Web for your eCommerce business as well.

ERP2Web is a proven solution currently deployed by SAP companies. Our Customers rate

ERP2Web as a class leading SAP B2B/B2C Web storefront and customer portal solution that has

intranet (employee usage) functionality as well.

ERP2Web offers high-end functionality usually only associated with very expensive commerce

engines, yet we do so at an affordable price.

Standard functionality in ERP2Web provides a state-of-the-art eCatalog that allows for creation

of an extremely user friendly and highly functional Web-based Product and Documentation

catalog. This catalog supports both SAP data and rich media content. SAP data includes,

description, part number, UOM, pricing, availability, etc. Rich media content includes graphics,

pdf’s, CAD drawings or schematics, data sheets, video clips, installation docs, etc. Both

ERP2Web catalogs can be personalized at the group and/or individual level. ERP2Web also

provides high-end functionality like cross-selling, portals, up-selling, new customer creation,

advanced web services (integration to UPS, FedEx, credit card, credit check, etc.) and much

more.

The ERP2Web integration approach with SAP is superior to anything else in the marketplace.

ERP2Web considers all current and future SAP versions so you will never need to change your

eCommerce solution. And since ERP2Web is not embedded in your SAP system, you can keep

your webstore open even if your SAP system is down.

ERP2Web protects your future hardware/software direction. ERP2Web will protect your

eCommerce investment if/when you move to future releases.

ERP2Web offers you greater flexibility with “custom extensions” and the ability to personalize your

eCommerce environment in a Customer specific manner. ERP2Web is based on state-of-the-art

software that provides minor/basic customization enhancement to be usually measured in hours

and days vs. weeks or months. This flexibility is demonstrated in the many ways our customers

have adapted ERP2Web beyond basic sell-side eCommerce.

MEET THE DEMANDS OF THE ALWAYS CONNECTED CUSTOMER WITH ERP2WEB

12

CDI has one-stop shopping for your eCommerce needs. We develop, enhance, distribute, install,

and support ERP2Web all from one company using only our employees. With CDI, there is no

need to deal with multiple partners for your purchase, implementation, and support.

To stay ahead of your competition and increase your own revenue stream, now is the

time to fully transform your business through real-time integrated eCommerce for your

SAP system? Let CDI show you how it can be easily done for your success.

CDI Technology

400 East 22nd Street Suite 400c

Lombard, IL 60148 630-599-0620 x 200

www.cditechnology.com

Footnotes:

1. Crandell, Christine (10/22/13) “The Always-Connected Customer Has Killed Marketing, Finally” Forbes Magazine

2. Joachimsthaler, Erich (2/27/2014) “Divining The Future: The Always-On Consumer” Forbes Magazine

3. Brandweiner, Natalie (5/9/2013) “Customer experience trumps price for loyalty, Forrester reveals” MyCustomer.com

4. Klobucher, Derek (9/11/2013) “What B2C Can Teach B2B About E-Commerce” Forbes Magazine

Personalized & Customizable Online Storefront

Integrated Order Payment Processing and Routing

Targeted Promotions, Personalization

ERP2Web

SAP Order-To-Cash

Auto Email

E-Marketing

Help Desk, Help Page, FAQ, Tutorials & More

In/outbound e-mail management, Auto response

Support