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Superior Food Services
Delivering Superior ecommerce
SSS Australia have been supplying medical equipment and consumables to the Australian healthcare market for over 45 years. Known for their unwavering commitment to customer care, the team at SSS Australia strive to set a benchmark in gold standard service. That aim naturally extends to their online channel, and with an eye for innovation, they work hard to offer their customers the best online experience possible.
SSS Australia aren’t new to eCommerce. The successful healthcare supply company has offered its customers online ordering since the early 2000s. But since that time, B2B eCommerce has matured and its users have grown more sophisticated. Recently, the team at SSS Australia had come to realise their existing platform wasn’t delivering the sort of agility and flexibility they needed. They found they needed to build customisations on top of their existing platform in order to offer their customers features that were considered ‘non-standard’ for B2B.
They found themselves at a crossroads: either upgrade to a newer version of their current platform, or start evaluating other options. And thus the partnership with Commerce Vision was born.
Superior Food Services are one of the largest foodservice distributors in Australia today, and they didn’t get there by accident. Whether navigating a global pandemic, floods, bushfires and other extreme weather events, or adapting to the ever-changing hospitality landscape – Superior are experts at evolution and adaptation.
“Not too large to care, or too small to compete,” Superior Food Services have been an industry leader for 30 years, constantly innovating to support their customers.
Their digital journey is just one of many ways Superior have stayed at the forefront of such a highly competitive market. And their partnership with Commerce Vision has played a pivotal role in that journey.
Platform
In 2018, the team at Superior were evaluating their technology stack and had determined the time was right for an ecommerce platform upgrade. Their existing web portal was integrated to their ERP, but required an increasing number of modifications, plugins and add-ons to bring the functionality up to the level Superior Foods envisioned.
PunchOut in particular was proving a pivotal piece. This enterprise-level procurement function was increasingly being sought by large customers and prospects. But Superior’s current platform provider couldn’t guarantee delivery of a PunchOut project that met Superior’s budget and functional requirements.
Enter Commerce Vision.
Building a branded PunchOut prototype in under two weeks, the Commerce Vision team were able to demonstrate deep knowledge and understanding of what is often a misunderstood, ‘niche’ procurement technology. From there, the decision was clear - Superior Food Services turned to Commerce Vision as their new ecommerce partner.
With the CV ecommerce platform, Superior have been able to offer their customers key foodservice features, such as the ability to order variable weight goods (think deli meats by the kilo), customised pantry re-order lists, personalised B2B portals, and more. Superior even trialled a direct-to-consumer home delivery service during the pandemic, working closely with Commerce Vision to get the functionality up and running quickly.
In tandem with the website project in 2018, Superior also signed on for CV’s Mobile Sales application to empower their 35-strong team of field reps. Adapting the product to their individual needs, some reps use Mobile Sales in an account management capacity. Others are out there in the field, taking orders to the tune of 150 per week with the ERP-integrated mobile application.
Still hungry for innovation, Superior continued to seek greater efficiencies, cost-savings, and service delivery. And they found it in Lucy, welcoming her to the Superior Food Services team in 2019. Automating their manual sales order processing has allowed Superior’s CSRs to focus on higher value activities, instead of punching orders.
Uptake and onboarding of new trading partners has steadily increased since Superior went live with Lucy, encouraging an automation roll-out to even more of their nation-wide locations.
People
Mark Thomas, National Business Systems Manager at Superior Food Services, says the people at Commerce Vision are a huge part of what makes it so special.
In addition to a deep level of knowledge and experience, genuine care for our customers was evident from day one.
“Commerce Vision’s project management style was just different. From the specification process to the implementation phase - the CV team was more collaborative, hands-on and engaged than anything we’d experienced prior.”
Commerce Vision’s proven technical capability was important. But even more, it was CV’s ethos of treating the customer’s business like our own which gave Superior Food Services the confidence to expand the partnership across multiple products and services. According to Mark, “With Commerce Vision, we found that there were promises made…. and there were promises kept.”
Understanding complex problems is key to delivering simple solutions - which is why Commerce Vision works so hard to partner with our customers and understand their business, their goals, and the unique industry challenges they face.
This understanding of business process, ERP integration, and industry best practice is what set Commerce Vision apart from other ecommerce providers.
Results
Today, Superior Food Services is at the forefront of B2B commerce. Leveraging not one, but three Commerce Vision applications (ecommerce, mobile field CRM, and sales order automation), they take in nearly 60% of their total orders digitally. For an organisation with $1B annual turnover - in an industry that has been historically slower to adopt digital channels - this is no mean feat.
True to form, Superior Food Services don’t plan to rest any time soon. From new integrations to a one-stop-shop vision, Superior have several new innovative ecommerce projects underway with the CV team. Lucy order automation is also expanding across the Superior business, with undeniable benefits. “Lucy’s an excellent tool to have in the kit. In addition to benefitting our business internally, Lucy also benefits our customers (whether or not they realise it).” As Mark explains, “We never want to force anything on our customers. Instead, our approach to them is ‘You can order and transact your way, and we’ll use the tools to meet you where you are.”
The Superior team understand that today, we are all selling so much more than just a product. We are selling capability, and a promise to deliver. This promise lies at the heart of why Superior Food Services partnered with Commerce Vision. Together, we’ve ensured that our capability is just as much their capability.