Kalahari.net, Naspers`s e-commerce flagship, has chosen Enfinity, Intershop`s sell-side e-commerce application, to provide a continued reliable and secure shopping experience for its customers, and to accommodate the diversification and expansion of its product range.
The local online mall, which offers over a million book titles, CDs, wine, computer goods, videos and DVDs, is the highest earning business-to-consumer (B2C) e-tailer in SA, and one of the few to offer fully integrated real-time e-commerce.
Kalahari.net has recorded significant growth this year and recently acquired online IT product retail venture JellyBean Interactive in support of its plans to diversify its product range.
"We outgrew our existing solution as far as our current and future requirements are concerned," says kalahari.net CEO Hein Pretorius. "We require scalability, flexibility and extensibility to support our expansion. We implemented Enfinity to help us meet our goals in terms of growth and greater user empowerment. A packaged solution also costs less and is easier to maintain than an in-house system."
Enfinity`s integrated e-business platform will enable the automation and streamlining of kalahari.net`s sales and account management activities, significantly reducing administration and transaction costs. It provides a quickly deployable, high-performance, scalable and extensible foundation on which to build electronic relationships with customers.
"Enfinity`s advanced e-business platform was chosen based on its strength and flexibility," says Jacqui van Zyl, marketing manager of Intershop in SA. "It is designed to enable companies to sell through multiple, complex sales channels and capitalise on Internet selling opportunities. It is quickly implemented and easily integrated into internal and external systems."
Enfinity supports high volumes of traffic, transactions and users. Template-based sell-side models are included for rapid development. It also features catalogue syndication and management, and single-point reporting and analysis.
Pretorius notes that the transition to the new system will be seamless and kalahari.net customers will not notice any difference in their interaction with the Web site, other than improved usability. Enfinity also provides the site with enhanced automation, allowing for a customer-centric focus.
"Online shopping is entrenching itself in SA and our success has been testimony to the growth of e-commerce locally," adds Pretorius. "Enfinity will enable us to meet the needs of our customers while offering a quick return on investment, improving business processes and optimising our B2C relationships."
Van Zyl notes that packaged solutions represent a reduction in total cost of ownership, particularly in time to market. "The B2C environment has been in operation for more than six years. From a technology point of view, there is no need to reinvent the wheel. As an out-of-the-box e-business platform, Enfinity provided kalahari.net with an 80% fit and required minimal customisation. Through training, Intershop will enable kalahari.net to take over ownership of the technology."
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