Hyster-Yale Group Lifts B2B2X Ecommerce
Situation
Hyster-Yale Group (HYG) is a leading, globally integrated, full-line lift truck manufacturer that offers a broad array of solutions aimed at meeting the specific materials handling needs of customers’ applications. Having served the material handling industry for over 90 years, with 21 manufacturing operations in 12 countries, HYG is a multi-billion dollar publicly-traded organization.
HYG wanted to digitally support customers and an expansive dealer network that serves both Hyster and Yale brands. With a combined catalog of over one million part SKUs, HYG sought an enterprise ecommerce platform that could scale globally.
Challenge
HYG desired to align brand selection, product identification, order placement, and dealer fulfillment in one platform for a unified shopping experience. This experience mandated B2B2X ecommerce capabilities and a change to its technology stack.
Having multiple brand catalogs, HYG wanted to deliver unique shopping experiences for both the Hyster and Yale brands. HYG required the platform to be extensible, addressing needs to meet specific use cases and unforeseen technical requirements. Lastly, as a publicly-traded company, HYG required SOC 2 compliance from the ecommerce platform.
"It was really critical for us to choose a platform that had B2B capabilities, but not just B2B capabilities - its performance needed to serve our unique B2B2X requirements.
We found that in Znode. It’s headless, API-driven and very flexible. The data model allowed us to have multiple stores and multiple catalogs to match our organizational set-up.”
- Kellie Casey, Aftersales Communications and Ecommerce at Hyster-Yale Group
Solution
Through a blueprinting and platform selection process led by Ntara, a leading digital transformation agency, HYG was able to identify a single solution to meet its requirements, Znode. Upon implementation of Znode, the single shopping experience for SKU selection, purchasing, and order routing to dealers was configured, addressing the B2B2X ecommerce model.
Hyster’s and Yale’s separate brand experiences were created to serve the varying customer types. Along with the different experiences, multiple unique catalogs were created to represent the brands. Customers can experience different brands based on the accessibility to dealers in which orders would route. Additionally, HYG benefited from Znode’s extensibility to deliver a multiple cart option to customers managing numerous requisition requests at the same time.
Znode is a SOC 2 compliant platform, and a product of Amla Commerce. The material handling giant continues to see a lift from its partnership with Znode and Ntara as it moves through digital transformation.