De Bruijn in Wijnen customer case
“The webshop is an extension of our service. That is only possible if the data from Business Central is correctly transferred to the Shopware webshop.”
—Jesaja Alberto, Business Development Manager at De Bruijn in Wijnen
ERP system: Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central 14
E-commerce platform: Shopware
To make selling gastronomic wines to a demanding target group more customer-friendly, De Bruijn in Wijnen started a digital transformation. The choice fell on Shopware as a webshop. Jesaja Alberto, Business Development Manager at De Bruijn in Wijnen, talks about the reasons for choosing Shopware. How did the road to get there go with the associated collaborations and the integration with their Business Central environment? What is his experience with the Tinx Shopware Connector? “The webshop is an extension of our service. This is only possible if the data from Business Central is correctly transferred to the Shopware webshop and vice versa. This was our core need.”
What e-commerce challenges did you have before integrating with Business Central and Shopware?
“We had several challenges. The CMS system we used was integrated with our Navision ERP environment and built especially for us. It was state of the art at the time, but we did not have the know-how and skills to further develop the systems ourselves. Over time, the market has evolved from offline too much more online. We were more or less stuck with systems that didn’t scale well. The CMS was outdated, lacking a lot of functionality, self-reliance was less, and the look-and-feel lagged compared to new webshops and CMS systems.”
“People decide within a millisecond whether they trust a webshop. If the look-and-feel lags, attracting people to your webshop and ensuring they place orders is difficult. The regular customers always knew how to find us and knew exactly how to order, but we missed out on new customers in particular.”
“In order to be able to scale more to today, to be able to do more with marketing and not to lag behind the competition, a lot had to change in terms of software systems. Migrating B2B customers to online ordering was also a major challenge. To realise our goals, a migration to Business Central and Shopware had become a real necessity.”
Would you like to introduce De Bruijn in Wijnen and yourself?
“De Bruijn in Wijnen is a traditional wine trade that has been around for more than 250 years. The company, founded in 1772, is the oldest independent wine trade in the Netherlands. To offer gastronomic wines in a more customer-friendly way, De Bruin in Wijnen has started a digital transformation. We have chosen Shopware as a webshop. I’ve been working here for a good eight and a half years now; I originally have a background as a sommelier. At De Bruijn in Wijnen, I became involved in purchasing various wines about 6 years ago. We have continued a change of course from mainly selling only French wines to European wines. I have always found that strategic element and thinking along with how, what, and where the company could go very interesting.”
How do you describe your core business?
“Our core business is the import and sale of gastronomic wines. This means that our wines are more artisanal and of higher quality than, for example, the wines you find in the supermarket. We supply to quality restaurants, larger hotels, gastronomic companies, wine bars and quality wine shops. In fact, to everyone in the Netherlands looking for quality wines. We have a loyal customer base in major cities. We currently do this via our own online platform and internal service that takes orders by telephone, e-mail, app and in writing for both our B2B and B2C customers.”
“We want to achieve 20 to 25 % growth in B2C.”
We ask Jesaja what important objectives are for De Bruijn in Wijnen. Jesaja: “We are now in an important digital transformation because we want at least 90 % of all catering and retail customers who currently still order via apps, telephone, e-mail and basically every conceivable method, soon via the B2B portal on our Shopware webshop. We will then migrate these customers from offline to online ordering.”
“With this, we take a lot of pressure off the organisation, and mistakes are less likely to be made. Plus, what is very important, is a customer experience that is much more in line with this time. We see this as an extension of our service. Soon it will be possible for customers to view their invoices with their prices and conditions.”
“In addition, we want to achieve 20 to 25 % growth in B2C compared to current online sales. We have entered a partnership with Marveltest. Marveltest specialises in data analysis and customer profiles. The customer profiles are used to set up online marketing correctly. We sell to both B2C and B2B customers via the Shopware webshop.”
Initially, you looked at Shopify as a webshop platform. Why did it eventually become Shopware?
“For several reasons. During the technical discovery, we discovered that our wishes did not fully fit into a fairly closed SaaS platform like Shopify. Critical questions arose about how we envisioned certain data streams with Shopify. The B2B part, in particular, including customer-specific discounts and export, was difficult to realise. We could continue with Shopify, but that was a cobbled-together solution and absolutely not scalable. In the end, there were so many reasons why Shopify was not the right solution for the package of wishes we had on the table.”
“Our former e-commerce partner only supplied Magento at the time. That would have been fine, especially from your side. But I had more of a Shopware feeling myself, and after research, Shopware fit just a little better. Shopware is newer, has the API-first principle and is easier to scale up if you want to go headless later on. Shopware also has a faster time-to-market and a slightly lower investment than Magento. In addition, self-reliance is just a bit easier within Shopware, and in the end, that was also an important topic.”
“Strix, our current e-commerce partner, showed a completely different form for the realisation than two other parties. That was of such a different order that I indicated to Strix to also investigate Tinx in addition to Alumio. Everything came together then, and the collaboration between De Bruijn, Strix and Tinx started with Shopware as the webshop platform.”
What was the main reason for choosing the Tinx solution?
“From the first second, Bob van der Lelie was involved in the process. He had given a lot of expert advice in the field of integration. The integration seemed to fit well between Business Central and Shopware, and Strix liked how you approached the process. Suppose we say that we want to migrate to the BC19. Then that is also much easier to implement. This also made it a lot more attractive financially. If you do not have the knowledge and skills in this complex area, it is very important to get certainty about this. For us, that was Tinx in combination with Strix.”
How do you experience the Tinx Shopware Connector?
“If I compare it with our previous webshop: we had many problems such as duplicated customer cards and issues like that, which took a lot of time every month. So far, everything we have changed in the Tinx Shopware Connector seems to work immediately and permanently. As a not super-skilled ERP/integration specialist, I would like to mention one of the advantages: the Tinx Connector ensures that the standard functionalities within BC can be used optimally. And: the synchronisation takes place correctly. This allows us to import orders and update products and stocks easily. So yes, at the moment, I am very positive.”
What do you find most impressive about our product?
“What’s really great: an adjustment that has been made works immediately and, moreover, is sustainable. Its consistency is really gold and very unburdening for us as users. Besides that, I’m still learning and using more features. The journey has just begun!”
What would you tell someone in another company about Tinx?
“During the sales process, I saw that Bob van der Lelie does sales, of course, but also really thinks along with me as a customer. You always have to find a good way of working with each partner, but I notice, for example, in contact with consultant Kasper Dissel, a drive and motivation you rarely see in people, so much commitment to the project. I can’t remember a moment when that man wasn’t at work. At any hour.”
“In addition, I think the most important thing is that the things that have been delivered and that we have fine-tuned together work, but also continue to work. And in the end, that’s what really matters. Whether or not you can work well with each other, whether or not you deliver within the timelines. The primary goal is that a delivered functionality works well. That it stands. I think this is really well done at Tinx!”
Solution provided
Tinx E-commerce Shopware Connector
