Normet bridges digital gap with a modern B2B eCommerce platform

“How deep underground can we take our eCommerce?” That was the question posed by Mathias Nyman, Sr. Manager, Digital Customer Excellence at Normet. Many of Normet's customers are engineers that work in underground mines, and not in front of desktop computers. This is why it was critical for Normet to develop an experience that could meet its niche customers' specific needs. To achieve this, the company needed a commerce partner capable of addressing these unique challenges. 

Understanding why Normet needed eCommerce 

Like many B2Bs, Normet didn’t offer an online sales channel for its products and services for underground projects, including providing complex machinery, spare parts, rental equipment, equipment refurbishment, as well as performance and field services.  

But the company recognised that this gap in the customer purchasing experience needed to be addressed. Normet had long standing relationships with customers, and though many of them were placing orders to sales reps over the phone and email, a younger generation of B2B shoppers found these interactions time-consuming and inefficient. 

“People working in the mining industry are still normal people. In their personal life, they use eCommerce. They are used to easy processes. And when they were making B2B purchases from us, they were experiencing a cumbersome and complex buying journey. So, many of our customers were asking if we could provide more modern, simpler ways to make those purchases,” says Pekka Jaarinen, Director of Digital Services at Normet. 

Providing an easier buying experience with eCommerce would not only benefit customers, but also the employees at Normet. Previously, every phone call and email inquiry about products and pricing required employees to manually look up information, consuming significant time and resources. Digitising product information would make it automatically available to B2B customers, directly addressing several operational inefficiencies. 

Columbus is Normet’s implementation partner for the digital commerce solution for spare parts — based on Commercetools. In addition, Columbus is helping Normet to create a coherent and relevant experience across mobile, web and eCommerce. 

The bedrock of Normet’s B2B eCommerce architecture: MACH™ 

The newly formed digital team at Normet knew they wanted an eCommerce solution that was flexible, easily customisable and future-proof. The technology that best fit those requirements is MACH-based architecture. The term MACH, an acronym for Microservices-based, API-first, Cloud-native and Headless. This technology, originally coined by Commercetools, aligned with their requirements, leading Normet to choose Commercetools as their commerce vendor. 

With Commercetools’ MACH infrastructure in place as Normet’s eCommerce solution, the company can customise its tech stack with best-of-breed components. Each part is pluggable, scalable and replaceable, allowing the system to be continuously improved through agile development to meet evolving business needs. If a component becomes outdated, it can be swapped out without disrupting the rest of the system, eliminating the need for future replatforming.  

The light at the end of the tunnel 

In addition to Commercetools being an easy-to-implement backend solution, a big part of the success of Normet’s launch was due to system integrator Columbus. 

“Columbus is Normet’s guiding and implementation partner for the digital commerce solution for spare parts, built on Commercetools,” says Robin Slotts, Partner Manager at Columbus. “In addition, Columbus is helping Normet to create a coherent and relevant experience across mobile, web and eCommerce — and this is just the beginning of the journey.” 

Robin says that the implementation from the first line of code to full production deployment was four-and-a-half months. During this time, Columbus stayed within the requested budget and delivered the project two weeks ahead of schedule.  

One of the biggest pain points for Normet prior to completing its online store was the significant number of products in its catalogue — over 65,000 highly specialised spare parts. Providing customers with clear visibility of pricing, availability, and product details was difficult through traditional channels. By moving the catalogue online, B2B buyers can now easily view all products and related information, including items they weren’t previously aware of. This shift has increased sales while also creating opportunities for upselling and cross-selling. 

Normet’s digital future holds several possibilities, with automation of operations and processes – both for customers and internally – at the top of the list.