In 2009, over a decade before the pandemic-driven shifts in buying habits towards ecommerce, Interform realized that their customers’ needs would be better served through providing an online shopping solution. Namely, providing each of their clients their own custom webstore, where they could easily order promotional materials from Interform.
As it so happened, the ERP Interform was using at the time already had an ecommerce component, so they adapted it to serve as their customer-facing online store. However, due to ERP’s inflexibility, limited features, and dated interface, they eventually realized like many others that this make-work solution not only wouldn’t fit their needs but it would make it difficult to scale.
The Problem with Shoehorning Solutions
“The ERP platform wasn’t easy to use,” said Web Development Manager Jason Grow. “The look and feel was not modern, and we ran into limitations as to what we could customize. Also, the platform was locked. You couldn’t go out and find your own plugins or make connections.”
Jason was dissatisfied with this make-work system, and Interform’s customers were disappointed, too. They had high expectations for the online store Interform was going to give them, and voiced concerns that the ERP-based stores didn’t match their vision. “Those that felt strongest about the old ERP represented a quarter of our business. We wanted to find a different shopping cart solution that best fit their—and our—needs,” Jason admits. “In addition to existing customers, there were opportunities on the table that could only move forward by investing in a proper online store platform.”
They had to find a new solution—and quickly. But they couldn’t just go with any old alternative (that’s how they got in trouble in the first place.)
“We needed to find a platform that would allow multiple stores, where each store could be personalized separately, but all managed from one backend,” Jason said.
They first approached BigCommerce, one of the bigger names in the ecommerce sphere, but Jason and his team couldn’t make it work for their specific needs. “We were able to set up different stores, but because all permissions were shared, we weren’t able to give each store the individual admin rights that they needed. We were able to provide each store with their own unique branding, true, but that was a paid customization, not a built-in feature.
The Benefits of a Flexible Multi Store Platform
After a few discouraging false starts, Jason and his team found AmeriCommerce by Cart.com.
“I found them just by googling ‘multi-store,” Jason shares, and it wasn’t long before Cart.com’s product offering proved itself to be Interform’s ideal solution.
Unlike its competitors, AmeriCommerce could run multi-stores with a high degree of customization and individuality. Customer teams were granted the permissions necessary to make their own changes and perform their own updates. This streamlined the store management process tremendously and required less manual effort by the Interform web team.
Also, the sheer variety of integrations and add-ons that could be used with AmeriCommerce (such as a product customizer for creating things like business cards or shirts) was key in getting stores to function the way that consumer brands wanted. Jason shared, “Being able to have custom payment and shipping methods, gift cards, a rewards system, all those things definitely factored into our decision.”
It’s these capabilities that are giving Interform its competitive edge, according to Jason. “We’re able to offer a more customized look, feel, and operation of stores than most of our other competitors. Our competitors are using a more generic platform that doesn’t offer the same flexibility that Cart.com provides.”
In adopting AmeriCommerce, Interform both strengthened its position with current accounts and invested in a more robust online shopping platform that would help attract and grow future business through technological innovation.
The shift to AmeriCommerce proved to be a wise and impactful decision, as it reassured Interform’s most vocal customer critics that their concerns were being given serious consideration and that the company was taking steps to not only resolve them but continue its innovation into the ecommerce space.
Of course, starting up a multi-store isn’t as simple as it sounds. There is a degree of setup involved. But fortunately, Interform had help for that, too.
The Value of Professional Services
“Cart.com’s customer service has been fantastic,” Jason said.
“Their implementation team has been invaluable, especially when you take into account so much customization that had to be done before we could get rolling. The first stores we started with were our most difficult stores.”
The Cart.com implementation team was able to get Interform’s webstores up and running within 6 months—quite an accomplishment when you consider the complexity of these early stores. “When we started the process, we had 62 stores on the other system. We still have several of those stores to bring over, but we expect to exceed a hundred within the next one to two years with this platform.”
Now, Interform has the confidence to move forward with this migration and roll out their new solution to new and existing customers. Jason says, “Switching to AmeriCommerce by Cart.com has prevented us from losing customers, and we’ve got another half-dozen potential customers that have just been waiting for us to move platforms.”
“Thanks to Cart.com, we’re able to offer a more customized look, feel, and operation of their stores than most other competitors. Because most other competitors are using a generic platform that doesn’t give them the flexibility that Cart does.”