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This week, Arno talks with Richard Musson from Moto Direct. He chats with Arno about how he was able to speed up the implementation of his web store through ERP integration. There was no time wasted on transferring over catalogs and inventory, which enabled a full web store launch in just three months.
Arno Ham, CPO of Sana Commerce is interviewing for this podcast series IT leaders of manufacturers, wholesalers and distributors to understand their perspective on B2B e-commerce (technology). The goal is to encourage other IT leaders to have a louder voice in a world dominated by the business.
[00:00:28] AH: Hello, and welcome to another episode of the IT Stand Up. We are interviewing an IT leader with experience in B2B E-commerce and see what we can learn from him today. So, I have with me Richard Musson, IT and Communication Manager at MotoDirect. Richard, welcome.
[00:00:45] RM: Good afternoon, Arno.
[00:00:48] AH: Good afternoon. Great to have you here on the show. Like always, I want to start with a stand up the way we start our day at Sana Commerce. So, Richard, what is your priority of today?
[00:00:58] RM: Well, apart from this podcast. Today, I'm in our Blackburn offices and I'm busy working on an infrastructure transition to connect our offices to the French offices.
[00:01:10] AH: Alright. We will talk more about that later on. Because you're in the middle of a, how to say it, merger or actually a company has been taken over by my company from France. So, we will talk about more later on. But it's interesting. Any hurdles or obstacles doing so?
[00:01:26] RM: Every project such as this, is a challenge. So far, I'd like to say it's gone smooth, but there's been no what we will call showstoppers. So yeah, happy sailing.
[00:01:35] AH: Alright. Happy sailing so far. Okay. So my priority for today is I have also a customer visiting the office today, which I always like. They're going to share some insights, and they probably also have some input for the roadmap, which I'm also responsible for. So, we'll see what they come up with. But it's always great to talk with customers. So, any KPIs you're tracking? What's your KPI today or something you want to share about that?
[00:02:01] RM: Well, typically, we'll start the day looking at support KPIs, just to see what support calls are outstanding, how long have they been outstanding? And just really the tracking progress of those depending on the person, department, or the nature of the support calls? And that is a daily review each morning.
[00:02:15] AH: Okay. How does it look? Is it green or red or orange?
[00:02:19] RM: Last week was a little bit orange to red. This week, we're green. So yeah, all is good.
[00:02:25] AH: Great to hear. So yeah, so my KPIs, last time I shared that I was tracking Azure cost as a daily KPI, still do. But we have another one as well, more from a product perspective. So, we recently launched a new product, which is called Sana Pay. We'll share more about that maybe in a later podcast or another episode. I believe at tech talk, we have scheduled for that as well, to have that subject, to talk with some customers or people from the industry about B2B payments. But we recently launched a product. So, we are also with a team, tracking the deals we are doing on it. We have another one sign up to date. That's plus one and that looks good. So, we’re just live for two weeks and we have already the first customers on board. So happy to share that. Any good news from you to share yesterday or last week? Some small or big victories you have done?
[00:03:10] RM: As we transition with the merging of IT infrastructure systems, we are forever each week hitting milestones, if you like and targets, more targets in the project. Last week, we connected our Blackburn offices. Today, we are completing that section. And yeah, it's a large step towards connecting the UK over to France into the group systems.
[00:03:34] AH: Understood, understood. Yup. Small steps makes, in the end, the big dream work, right? So, that's how you need to get there. My good news is actually Sean is over this week in the Dutch office, and I need to explain a little bit to the viewers and listeners who Sean. But Sean is an ex-colleague of Richard. And just as a fun fact, small story behind it, is that he's actually one of the product owners now in my team. So, what's the story? MotoDirect was actually our 500th live customer and we celebrated this milestone here. Your first couple of years back. And to celebrate this, we invited actually Sean, because he was responsible together with you. I think that we invited Sean to go live and he came into the office and he was so impressed with the party and the company culture that couple of years later, he shared with me say, “Hey, I actually want to work with you.” I took that opportunity with both hands, because how beautiful can it be if you can have a product owner, which is actually an ex-customer or somebody that really worked with your product, right?
So, we are very happy to have Sean here on board. But the good news here is that he is here. Over this week, we have our quarterly meeting and then we also always bring all our product owners, brought to them or Dutch headquarters. It's nice to be now, have the possibility to meet in real life. I have to say hi from him. So just that you know. All right. So, Richard, I'm curious what got you into IT in the first place?
[00:04:58] RM: Well, really, I've been into IT or computers, since a child. I've always been interested in the way they work. And I'm lucky enough to pursue that into a career and later in life. I'd say later in life, it's slightly different to what I used to do when younger, but the day-to-day challenges, and also the successes. So, the satisfaction that you can get from the success stories, and happy to say that the success has come more than the catastrophe. So, that's the reason why I like IT. It's the challenges.
[00:05:29] AH: Yeah, the challenges for sure. And technical challenges, but also maybe, working with the business, technology is a people thing, right? So, both combining in the role, that's also the part that I like about it very, very much. What is your current role at MotoDirect? Can you describe it a bit for the listeners?
[00:05:46] RM: Sure. Absolutely. Yes. So, my role is, I slightly changed from the IT and Communications Manager role for MotoDirect as their parent company, Bihr, bought MotoDirect. So, my role is the UK Regional IT Manager and I'm responsible for the day-to-day operations of the IT systems for the UK and the various locations in the UK. So, that's from technical to the operations, to the costs, and obviously, such things as budgets and keeping within the budgets as well.
[00:06:14] AH: How does your team look like so? Are you alone, or do you have multiple people in the team?
[00:06:19] RM: We've got three and the team. So, we are a small team, and we're primarily based in Derbyshire. But with this day and age, everything is remote anyway, so the most of the time we work out of Derbyshire or working from home, as recent times have dictated.
[00:06:35] AH: Okay. Yeah. So, Sean told me everything about Derbyshire. I know that it's such a beautiful place, but I've never visited it. But I promise that I will do once because yeah, it seems like a hidden gem in the UK, right? It's in the middle of the country, actually.
[00:06:48] RM: It’s in the middle of the country. It’s pretty. You would like it and just pop into MotoDirect and have a coffee as well.
[00:06:55] AH: Thank you. Thanks for the invite. Nice. Alright. But what is MotoDirect been all about? I think it's something with motors, right?
[00:07:01] RM: Yeah, absolutely. So, distributor of motorcycle apparel, primarily from the Derby location. The Blackburn location is parts and accessories, so sprockets, change exhausts, tires, everything to do with motorcycles, and MotoDirect itself was born around 2000. And yeah, 22 years later, we're still going strong.
[00:07:22] AH: Okay. Seems like a big catalog.
[00:07:25] RM: Yes, absolutely. Yes. We do have a lot of brands in the portfolio.
[00:07:28] AH: All right. Do you know how many products roughly or by heart?
[00:07:32] RM: I don't actually know. Certainly, in the thousands. Product lines are in the thousands, yeah.
[00:07:36] AH: Wow. Do you want to share something more? What customers are you selling typically? Of course, I think it will end up to motorcycle enthusiasts. But there are some people in between, right?
[00:07:49] RM: Our customers spread from the large corporations such as JNS and JNS accessories. And they go to the other side of the spectrum, which are small garages.
[00:08:00] AH: Retailers or garages, yeah.
[00:08:03] RM: Exactly. So, from a technology point of view, yeah, we have a broad spectrum that we cater for. So yeah, they're the type of customers that we have.
[00:08:11] AH: And then most of the time, B2B, because you're not directly selling to consumers, right? Or are you doing as well, a little bit, right? Direct-to-consumer sell?
[00:08:19] RM: Not really, no. We sell primarily as B2B. Yeah.
[00:08:23] AH: Understood, understood. And what makes the B2B, that's a business for you so complex? Or is there any complexity that you can share with us that's in your business makes, let's say more complex than just selling it to consumers, for example?
[00:08:36] RM: We sell, I would say the only complexity is to purchase in bulk, due to it being a trade portal and not selling individual items. So, in order to purchase in bulk, we still look at the product. We have the matrix system, which is one of the most appealing things to us when we were looking at solutions. So, we can choose the matrix type order in, which our customers love, and they can order multiple items with ease.
[00:09:03] AH: Maybe just for the viewers or listeners that do not understand what let's say, a matrix is in purchasing in B2B. But if we talking about that, it's mostly about a way visually to select the correct products as it's visualised in the matrix. That's why it's called matrix ordering. And most of the time, or let's say, especially in apparel, or clothing, fashion, it's used a lot because not only for, let's say the size and colour varieties, for example, but also if you talk about packages, or what you mentioned that say, have purchasing in bulk there, it's very handy and I would say most have in B2B E-commerce. I think we have already, it's for 15 years or something in that – 15 years in our product, from day one, because so many customers of ours are using the day by day, right? And makes let's say, complex ordering, at least a bit easier. And at least you have a nice overview, I think, on a certain product if you want to order a certain size ranges or something like that, right?
[00:09:57] RM: Absolutely.
[00:09:57] AH: Cool. Yeah, Richard, so maybe you've heard about it or not yet, but we have recently done research with Sapio, that's a research company. And they actually surveyed for us over 1,000 IT leaders and professionals globally. So not only in the Netherlands or in the UK, but also US, you name it, everywhere in the world. And we wanted to get their opinion around B2B e-commerce and IT-related topics. So, we have compiled this survey into a, what we call, B2B and IT commerce tech report, which is going to be launched soon. The first, let's say, topic, we are going to launch it in three, let's say, pieces. But the first one will be around costs and risks. It will be launched in the beginning of July. So, probably when we are publishing this podcast, it's already live. So, then I would invite listeners or viewers to download it. It's from sanacommerce.com. But from our survey, we know that 55% of the IT managers talk challenges, high costs and low budget. So, how is it for you at MotoDirect?
[00:10:55] RM: Well, I'm lucky enough to set the budgets working with obviously at a senior management, and obviously, the cost of IT can be quite high. Obviously, you have to stay within those constraints of the budget. So, that would be not too much of a problem for us. The company in itself does invest heavily in IT, and does recognise that IT and obviously in this day and age is a huge benefit when invested correctly.
[00:11:22] AH: Awesome. That's great to hear. So, if you have also senior management that is believing in the same dream that you have, or a division that you have, but still if you want to keep the costs low, is there anything that you are doing, or you have any challenges about that? If you're achieving that, maybe reduce costs here and there. So, what are you doing with the extra budget?
[00:11:43] RM: Well, we do reduce costs wherever we can, having commercial awareness is obviously key. And we do always go with suppliers that can provide the best service but at a reduced cost. What do we do with the extra budget? It will just get moved around simply in IT. So, what is it being invested in certain areas would just get shifted to a separate area, wherever it's needed.
[00:12:04] AH: Yeah, trying something new, try to evolve, and experiment maybe a bit and then see if that is also having an effect on the business or let's say on the operation that you have, right? So, another part of the report or a big thing is that let's say, on average, like 188 orders are at risk per month. On the people that we have interviewed, due to downtime of the B2B e-commerce platform or any issues around that. That means that on average B2B companies experienced, yeah, a couple of hours, even more than four hours of downtime per month. So, how do you experience that MotoDirect? Do you have a lot of downtime? Which isn’t planned, for example? Or do you have also around 188 orders per month on average at risk? Or is that a different story?
[00:12:47] RM: I would say that's a very different story. I am happy to say, we don't have anywhere near that amount of downtime using Sana. I would say it's close to 100%. We had a slight issue over the weekend with an SSL certificate, nothing to do with Sana, it was more to do with our ERP system, but it did put Sana into maintenance mode. So, certain functions were limited. But that was more of an oversight, unfortunately, and nothing to do with Sana’s uptime.
[00:13:17] AH: Yeah, maybe it's good to touch upon a little bit because maintenance mode to explain it for the listeners or the viewers is that, we of course, have a different approach on let's say on integration or B2B e-commerce in IT. So, we are sometimes totally in the direction of the general, let's say, common architectures, or how you design systems. We integrate directly with an ERP system. A lot of consultants always say, “Oh, no, that's extremely dangerous, scary, because if the ERP is down, your rep store is down as well.”
On the other end, we know and it's not only us, but everything we speak to in B2B e-commerce space is that you need to actually backend systems like ERP systems, or sometimes other customers use other systems. But for this pricing, engines or stock, there is so much logic around it that it is very hard to mimic or copy to a B2B e-commerce, storefront. So, you need a real-time integration that is actually the best solution for those customers. But yeah, if you have this real-time integration, if one of your systems, backend systems, which is very important systems are down, then you might run into troubles on the front end.
At Sana, also, already for many years, we spend our R&D deals and how can we have some kind of safety net, so we have multiple them but one of them is the maintenance mode, which kicks in if something happens and puts your store still in a certain mode, orders can be placed, it depends actually how you configure it, many different ways. But at least a business can more or less continue, and once certain thing is fixed, it turns back on green and the real-time aspect of our solution is kicking in again. So, that's great that the mechanism work. And it's also good to hear that you're experiencing not at all these numbers that we got from the report, because yeah, I was actually shocked a bit that there is still so much to win in a world and also that even though a lot of the people in the IT industry is saying, “Hey, this is not the way how you want to connect things.” Most of the people that we interviewed, they didn't even have this real-time integration. So, can you imagine what troubles they have if they are losing so many orders on average per month is I think, a huge, huge waste. And there is a solution for that. That's also where we, at Sana, believe in. So, that's great to hear.
The third thing, which I want to share with you is about adoption. So, shifting topic a little bit is that only a third of the IT leaders that we have interviewed felt that the adoption of the platform exceeded their expectations. How is it that MotoDirect? How is the adoption? And how did it end?
[00:15:33] RM: Well, the system itself, and the project or the adoption of the platform was quite painless. And as you mentioned, Sean, who joined you recently, he was heavily involved on that side, of the setting up of Sana. Maybe, depending on what solution you were using previously. So, your legacy solution would affect, I suppose, how your expectations maybe we're moving over to Sana. Our previous solution was very slow, very limited, didn't have many features, and quite frankly, outdated. When we moved over to Sana, it was a breath of fresh air. So, I would say it did exceed our expectations.
The slickest parts of this was simply the carrying out of the product from basically setting it up to go in live. We managed to do that around three months. So, we were very limited on time due to the reasons and the projects and the parts of the project failing. Not due to us, but due to other third parties. So, we decided to go with Sana, and if memory is correct, it was about three months before that we managed to, with the help with your guys, make it a success, and we went live.
[00:16:43] AH: Thanks. I think, three months is also very, okay, as timeframe. It's actually rather quick. On average, it takes longer. I think it doesn't really matter what kind of solutions you're taking. Also, we just look at the industry reports. It fluctuates a little bit between the year and a couple of months. One system is more sophisticated to integrate or to implement than the other. It also depends a little bit what kind of system it is, right? Is it a suite? Or is it the best of breed? Is it something that you can just hook into a little bit like Sana, let's say hook into your existing system? Or is it the suite that you need first need to implement everything to make it operational?
So, you have autonomy, choose the second one. We are more like, best of breed solution that we believe that we need to integrate with existing landscapes, where ERP, maybe PIM system or other things are already in place and we are using these systems of record or let's say specialised systems to integrate with, because yeah, we believe in focus, and our focus is B2B e-commerce, and then even integrated with the ERP or with the backend systems that we are supporting.
Okay, that's great to hear. And in terms of adoptions with the customer base that you're serving, do you recall or do you remember any tricks that you did? Maybe it's not really an IT-related question, but maybe more that you heard something from the business? Any promotions or something or ways to motivate customers to move to place orders online?
[00:18:06] RM: Mainly, it was around shipping costs and we've always used that as a carrot to really encourage people to move over to online ordering. Like I've said, already, our customer base is quite diverse and it ranges between large companies, which are more technologically advanced to some of the smaller companies or as I say, garages that are purchasing, for instance, oil. They may not have as much budget to put into the business, obviously, as the larger companies. So, we did focus on shipping costs and there were various other campaigns that marketing would have been doing at the time. It was taken on by our customers, and they loved it.
[00:18:44] AH: Nice, great to hear. This is maybe not really IT-related, but it's actually had to make it happen at Sana, and I think in the European integration, it's very easy to do, right? So, you can say, “Okay, these orders do not have any shipping costs.” If you configure it like that in Sana or in ERP, I think that can help your marketing teams to be, let's say, so creative. There are so many ways to stimulate online ordering. I like to take the shipping cost angle because I think it was not shared yet in a previous podcast. It was mostly about promotions or pricing. Of course, everything is related. But shipping cost is important as well.
It's also one of the things you can try, to see if you can increase adoption. So, more feature focus. You shared already that the matrix functionality is one of, let's say, important, but maybe also one of the favourite features in the platform in the B2B e-commerce platform that you're currently using. Is there anything else that you see or hear about, that is frequently used or being liked by the customers?
[00:19:38] RM: I don't really get that feedback anymore. I’m being completely honest. I don't get that feedback anymore. The good thing with Sana is we put this in a couple of years ago, and when we went live with Dynamics NAV, it really just does what it says on the tin. It's up, touchwood, 100% and the features — being a B2B, we wouldn't want too many features. Because be in trade, the customers typically want to order, they want to order a lot of products, and they just want to be able to order it in a quick, easy, straightforward way.
So, in certain terms, less is more for the customer. We wouldn't want to bloat the website too much anyway. But any specific features, I mentioned the matrix. We had some enhancements, just based on feedback from out in the field, we wanted to toggle trade and RLP, simply because the stores may not want their customers, the end users to see what the trade prices are on the screen. We had a feature where we could help our customers order spare parts.
On a motorcycle helmet, there's a lot of spare parts that you can purchase, and it’s quite fixing kits or anything like that. And quite frankly, they are quite difficult to understand as to what part actually goes to which helmet. So, we add something called a hotspot, what we called a hotspot feature. There's an image of a helmet where you can hover, basically the mouse over it, and that will list the relevant parts to that area of the helmet. So, that was another feature that we implemented.
[00:21:15] AH: Cool. Yeah, a lot of customers are using that, especially also for B2B and spare part ordering. Actually, it's a feature we currently have in the product that is used for two scenarios. One is Lookbook, because it's like an image, and you can make hotspots on that image, let's say. One part is more for inspiration is like using it as a Lookbook. The other one is indeed for a spare part finder, or maybe even if it's not a picture of a helmet can also be like a technical drawing with all the components. So, we use a lot, especially. Thanks for sharing that. That's awesome.
Actually, although you're a little bit further away of the business, in that sense, you're still able to share a couple of the insights, so I'm happy about that, Richard. Thanks for that. Great. So yeah, IT managers and support, and last thing is from the report is that IT managers expect to spend on average, let's say 37% of their budget on the integration or if they purchase new software. So, if they purchase new software, 30% of the budget goes to integrating it in their existing IT landscape. So just wondering, do you feel that as well? Maybe not particularly with Sana, but maybe with the other things you're currently doing. Maybe you're purchasing new tools or implementing new tools, especially now you are in this merger with a Bihr, the mother company, I would say. Is that something that is part of implementing new software at MotoDirect?
[00:22:28] RM: That's a very a huge focus at the moment is we're looking at new software for many different tasks, primarily, it's around IT security, and I'm heading that project for the group and having this project we'll look more into information security management, and how we’ll actually improve that going forward. Obviously, with more territories are forming as part of the group, it's a never-ending, or should I say, it's a forever-moving target to complete. So, with regards to the budgets and integration of new softwares, into existing systems, I would say wherever you can, it’s always a given that somebody will want just simply having a centralised system, is just keeps everything. You have one version of the truth, so whenever we can integrate, we will. With regards to how much of the percentage of the budget actually is in that that can be very, very fluctuating, depending on the time of the year or depending on the type of project that we're doing. But everything at the moment, Arno, is basically integration where we can just on a very large scale.
[00:23:34] AH: Okay. If you compare that with Sana, let's say, when you did the project, you mentioned that it was, let's say, if you do it in three months, and it was pretty quick, right?
[00:23:40] RM: Exactly. It's quick. I would say a lot of the pre-planning helps. Obviously, having senior management support always helps. Having buy-in from the rest of the team in the company helps again, and that just makes everything go so much more smoother.
[00:23:56] AH: Nice. Great to hear that. Last question, actually, from my side, or maybe my second last question, I have a couple more. So, we had a pre-talk. I always relate it to podcasts, so that is always nice to get to know each other a little bit better. Of course, we were in contact and at least, with Sean. I knew a little bit about your company. But I know before Sana, actually, you mentioned as well, you were trying to implement an agenda for your B2B e-commerce. I think you touched upon already a little bit. So, why did you – if you go back in time, so why did your company, maybe it's interesting for the others, first made the choice for Magento. So, what was attractive for them to go that path?
[00:24:29] RM: Well, Magento has typically been used for many years, the platform Magento for our brand sites. It's quite a sophisticated platform, and it's nice on the eye. And our previous marketing manager, he also had quite a lot of input when it came to the B2B platform. What we did is made a decision to go down the route of having our B2B use the Magento platform as well. That's how the choice came about.
Unfortunately, it failed. The main reason why it failed was the complexities around our ERP, which I'm sure all your ERP is very similar. But in a vision has very complex pricing rules with regards to net prices, special prices, et cetera. Magento, the developers, the company that was developing the site for us struggled to replicate those pricing rules that we had in NAV. So, we did speak to Sana during the project of selection, and we did know that Sana already had this capability to retrieve the correct prices from our ERP system. So ultimately, the project failed with Magento platform. But as I've said, when we moved over and made the decision to move over to Sana, that headache went away because Sana does deal with the prices, just as it should.
[00:25:51] AH: That's not particular about Magento. Because Magento in any way is a great product, right? It’s the leading product in both B2B and B2C, or at least in B2C e-commerce, for sure. In the past, we have seen that coming by a lot. But I think you're aware, it's always turned out to be always getting difficult. It's about pure B2B functionality on one hand, but if especially around pricing stock, and all those real-time calculations. It is so hard to mimic that or to copy that into other systems and too many are doing as have by copying that fails even sometimes, I still see that with file transfers, which is really from the old ages, obviously. But also, with web services, it simply fails because you're copying complex stuff into multiple places, and it's never a good thing. I think it's the only us sharing decision, of course, because yeah, we believe in that direction. But with integration, or with B2B and pricing, I think the only solution is actually integration, because you need to calculate as real-time in the systems of record or where the truth is, or you need to sit very simplified for the online channel. But that's probably also not what you want, because then you have different pricing structures on your different channels, which is not good for business if you have this omnichannel approach or what you want to achieve that.
So, nice to share your story. You're now happily running so far. Last question, but maybe that is also if I'm making short summary of the call today, because time is flying, Richard, when you're having fun. But any tips for other IT managers, leaders, if you are starting to implement a B2B e-commerce solution? Or if you're looking for something new, you've been already quite a while on the business. You have seen a couple of actually, I think you did a couple of implementations with MotoDirect, even at field one, as you mentioned. So yeah, what would be your list of tips?
[00:27:39] RM: Well, having now been part of two ERP projects, and looking at a third one in the future, I would say the main focus should be for any IT manager is do their homework. Simply plan and plan and plan. Get your senior management or the board to buy in, get their support, the project should be looked at as a companywide project, not just an IT project. It’s not for that one person to bring it across the line. He's going to need, he or she, should I say, is going to need assistance buy-in from the teams, buy-in from the staff. Every single person who will be using that ERP solution in that company should be given a chance to have their input heard and just plan. That's all you can do. Everything else comes on – I wouldn't say easy, but it makes life easier once you've done your homework.
[00:28:33] AH: I totally agree. I think that is a great lesson that you share, Richard. All of that, become more like a business navigator than just an issue fixture or books measure or something like that. It's not like, “Hey, fix my laptop.” Or, “Hey, this system needs to be implemented next week because we believe it will be successful as important for our business.” Now, it's the other way around, right? This is the company strategy. I think IT can help here and they are to achieve that or even to become better. This is how we are going to achieve it.
You have of course shown to be, at MotoDirect, but I think also now, what are you doing, the same step by step. You're taking bigger projects to show to your business navigate and not only initial fixture, although your phone was ringing once or twice, maybe there was a showstopper, but hopefully not. Anyway. Thank you very much, Richard for this moment. MotoDirect is a great company, and yeah, thanks for inviting me to the beautiful countryside of Derbyshire. When I'm in the neighbourhood or around, I will definitely stop by and say hi in the offices. Thank you and have a nice day.
[00:29:31] RM: Thank you very much. You're very welcome.
[END]