Impermo, becoming an omnichannel retailer

At Xcommerce, we see ourselves as experts in digitally transforming our customer’s sales and marketing channels.  Working tightly with Impermo, we have successfully rolled out multiple projects in their omnichannel transformation and more interesting transformations are about to be added.

Impermo is Belgian’s leader in tiles, natural stone and parquet. They have 4 large showrooms in Belgium that are visited by thousands of people every day.

Xcommerce digitally transformed Impermo’s sales approach to become an omnichannel retailer focused on strong customer binding and process optimization.

Where multichannel serves the customer with multiple independent sales channels which he can choose from, omnichannel provides one consistent, seamless customer experience over multiple (or all) channels.

Omnichannel retailers align their communication, vision and design across all channels to result in better customer service.
Benefits of omnichannel retailing include increased sales and margins, improved customer perception, satisfaction and commitment, enhanced brand value and overall a higher efficiency and productivity.

Next to building all digital sales channels, Xcommerce integrated them with Impermo’s ERP application, SAP Business One.

With their old website, Impermo presented at most 5% of their products online with limited information because all this had to be extracted from their business systems manually.

Customers had to go to the showroom to see all products and to face long queueing to talk to a showroom agent. 

Requesting and submitting quotes, confirming delivery dates and obtaining more information about products was done by phone, email or face to face at the showroom.

It took a lot of time and effort at both ends to convert a quote into an order while reordering and returning products was difficult.

After transformation, all products, accessories and technical specifications stored in the backend ERP system are displayed online in effective inspirations pages and a powerful product catalogue.

Now customers can find details about the products they are interested in while navigating on Impermo.be from their home.

Sales processes (ordering, paying, scheduling the delivery and other) were also transformed to online functionalities which can be performed by the customer himself without the participation of the showroom agents.

Xcommerce made a radical new design to increase the online user experience on both desktop and mobile devices.

Also, the complete website has been integrated with the backend, SAP Business One. When a product is added, modified or deleted in the backend system, this action is automatically pushed to the website.

The inspiration feature has its purpose to show products integrated in "ready made" rooms.

A wide variety of photographs give the customer inspiration for buying the correct tiles, natural stone or parquet.  With every inspiration, a list of used products in that inspiration is shown.

When the customer finds the product of their choice, more details, instructions and the showroom location are shown.
Using the inspirations website, inexperienced floor customers can easily find the right products

Showroom visitors were interested in an interactive product catalogue that they can browse at home.

These visitors would look for interesting products in the showroom and continue their research at home or could do their research at home first and continue in the showroom.

Now they can rapidly filter, browse, search and view the products they are interested in.

While browsing the catalog, visitors are also being informed about the interesting promotions that Impermo is currently promoting.

The product catalogue is well integrated with the inspirations, with the blog and also stands on its own. It gives the user a view of the wide range and gives them more details about the product such as technical information, installation manuals, accessories and related products .

Useful for the customers but also an effective marketing tool, the blog is creating a community of people and companies interested in flooring.

On the blog, interested visitors can find news about the current trends in flooring, details on how to decide on what to purchase, installation instructions and many other topics

A customer can now walk into a showroom, choose the desired products and get a quote.  At home, using the My Impermo portal, customers can convert their quotes into orders.

Before submitting the order, they can modify quantities and set a desired delivery date, pay online and select the delivery method (Cash and collect or Impermo delivery).

Customers could still pass by a showroom and finalize the order by paying it at the cashier or at the digital kiosk if they want to.

Using My Impermo features customers can also reorder products, return products and do other operations that initially could be done only in the showroom.

The physical kiosks are running MyImpermo features.  Customers can log in and have access to MyImpermo functionalities directly from Impermo’s showroom. Besides the capabilities which we previously described (quotes, reordering, retours) customers can finalize their order and pay it with the POS payment system that it is integrated the kiosk.

Implementing an omnichannel solution for your company is a serious job. There are many approaches (sales flows, sales tools, sales capabilities) to choose from and it is key to select the one that best suits your business.

This long term strategy needs continuous evaluation and updates. Your business is dynamic; it changes, it adapts to what the market is telling you. It is important that your sales channels and your people are ready to follow these business adjustments.

In order to efficiently develop an omnichannel project, a strong bond between Impermo and Xcommerce was required.
This tight bond with the marketing and sales department gave us clear insights in order to build a solution matching both their needs.

After being transformed into an omnichannel retailer, Impermo’s customers will enjoy the same brand experience whenever and wherever they interact with Impermo.

Impermo is now ready to sustain and to further grow in the market, online and offline.

Questions? Want to know more? Need help? Let us know! Go to contact page...