The Heidelberg Online Shop will go live on April 8, and will be rolled out in the lead up to Printex at the end of May. HAN’s entire consumables range of around 1000 line items will be available for order online.
As well as detailed product descriptions, buyers can view clear images and product safety data sheets, making the shop more user-oriented than traditional phone, fax and email ordering methods. Existing consumables customers will be invited to register for online shopping, with new customers also being able to register their interest in setting up an online account.
Heidelberg says its Online Shop is the only place where printers can order consumables online in the Australia New Zealand marketplace. On a global level online ordering for Heidelberg consumables has been in existence for more than four years. There are Heidelberg online shops operating in 12 countries, including Denmark, Sweden, Finland, Switzerland, France, Canada and the USA.
According to Heidelberg each of these countries have similar internet savvy populations to Australia and New Zealand, and their experiences have been taken into account in the development of HAN’s online business.
HAN’s general manager for product management and marketing, Glenn Plummer, says of the initiative, " think the most obvious benefit to customers with online consumables shopping is the time they will save from order placement through to goods receipt.
"The shop is open 24/7 and the functionality means customers will have far more information on hand to make their product choices. The system is directly integrated with our SAP business system and as such pricing, order confirmation and warehouse pick slip generation happens in real time."
Bill Wall, HAN’s sales manager – consumables, explains the customer benefits further. "By their very nature, consumables are high-turnover items where customers place many orders and often for the same products. Online ordering offers considerable time savings against the existing ordering methods of phone, email and fax.
Wall says, "Each customer’s account keeps shopping lists for regularly ordered items and items specific to that customer’s machinery. Buyers can save time by going straight to their shopping lists and amending or confirming items as desired, rather than initiating a new product search each time they log in."
The Heidelberg Online Shop enables customers to order their consumables items against their trading account under their usual terms and conditions of sale. The 24/7 nature of the Online Shop offers greater flexibility, particularly for smaller operators where one person often handles both production and administration.
Consumables supplies are kept replenished without taking the customer away from day to day operations. Heidelberg will continue to maintain existing phone, fax, email and postal order fulfillment to ensure comprehensive customer service.
