TheAgileStartup

Why Create a Magento Integrated SAP B2B Webshop?

To sell more product.  Plain and simple.

b2b2dot0 Initiates Office Relief's Magento Paymetric SAP Integrated B2B and B2C eCommerce Website Initiative

It's been almost two weeks since I facilitated our Project Initiation Workshop at the Oakland, CA HQ of Office Relief.  It was an intense and exhilarating two days where we demonstrated a live B2B eCommerce website integrated to their SAP QA system.  We "threatened" to put the website into production the following Monday and asked the simple question of "why can't we?".  (This is how our standard Agile Implementation Methodology, that I've written about over the years, works.)

Integrating Magento with SAP for B2B and B2C ecommerce

Content is king. 

That's the conclusion we've come to as we enter our fourth year of business at b2b2dot0.  Real time integration into SAP are the table stakes when deploying a B2B Webshop. 

Paymetric and b2b2dot0 Enable SAP Webshop Credit Cards

This is one of those matches made in heaven.  It just makes so much sense!

eCommerce websites and credit cards are like bread and butter.  Each is good by itself, but they are so much better together.

On-Demand B2B Webshops for SAP Business All-in-One

SAP's Business All-in-One is a brilliant offering designed to allow a small to mid size corporation to transition onto a fully integrated ERP platform in less than 4 months. 

Five Things You'll Never Hear from EDI Lovers

I used to loathe EDI (electronic data interchange).  Its promise to totally automate the industrial supply chain with "hands free" computer-to-computer interchange of key business documents seemed to threaten the fundamental existence of b2b2dot0.  We had a bit of drama at b2b2dot0 last week that...once again...reinforced the fact that while hype may make our job difficult, reality presents our opportunities. 

Thinking Document Management? Think Esker.

I just came across a post with this title over at the itelligence blog.  That reminded me that I've yet to formally announce our relationship with Esker, which we entered into at the end of last year.  So that's the subject of today's post.

Measurable Insights from SAP B2B eCommerce Websites

Now that we're approaching close to 70,000 visits, and almost $10M of revenue, per month from our various B2B websites, I think it's time to reflect on what we're learning from an analytics' perspective.  If for no other reason than to establish  benchmark metrics that can guide future SAP Integrated sell-side B2B ecommerce projects across the industry. I wish we had access to this information when we got started!

The Value of SAP Order Status According to Google

Over the last several months, we've had several conversations with manufacturers who have told us that their primary means of receiving orders from their customers is via EDI or FAX/email. Furthermore, because of their desire to provide superb customer services to their customers, that was not going to change in the near future.  They reasoned that if that was their customers' preferred way to interact with them, who were they to tell them otherwise?  They certainly were not going to ask their customers to retype their orders into an eCommerce website!

Taking SAP B2B eCommerce Websites Internationally

We spent the better part of 2009 deploying our service internationally.  In fact, a quick scan of Google Analytics shows that our client's customers transacted business with them through our SAP Integrated b2b websites from over 50 countries around the world.  Blount really led the charge this year by deploying language specific microsites to France, Germany, Russia, Belgium, Sweden, the UK and Canada.

CentralDesktop Features the b2b2dot0 Story

Combine a great idea with bright, passionate and motivated people, a little bit of money, and empower them with Agile processes and tools and magic can happen.  It's that simple...and it's that hard.  I can honestly say that one of the keys to our success of the past two years has been the way we've embraced our collaboration tool, CentralDesktop.  So when CentralDesktop approached me to have a case study written about us, I jumped at the chance.  Partly because I wanted to let them know how important they were to us, and partly because I'm always looking for free publicity :-).

The Anatomy of a Hack Attack

Yesterday started off like any other day. 

I scanned my overnight emails, read our daily production log, attended our daily standup meeting and then planned my priorities for the day.  High on my list was to research a competitor that we were about to do battle with.  Little did I know that half way around the world in Chennai, India, they had the same priority. 

Helmuth Guembel and Sapience 2009

Helmuth Guembel is an iconoclastic ex-Gartner Analyst who is currently a partner at Strategy Partners. I learned about Helmuth last week as a result of Dennis Howlett's "Irregular Enterprise" blog post entitled "SAP's feet put to the fire".  This led me to Helmuth's blog where I learned that he is taking on one of my personal favorite battles, SAP's licensing policies towards internet users. I instantly became a fan of Helmuth, and was compelled to reach out to him, if for no other reason than to encourage him on.  We spent an hour on skype a few days later.