The new BayWa AG online store
Company portrait
The internationally active BayWa Group focuses on the wholesale/retail and services sectors. The parent company BayWa AG, founded in 1923, is headquartered in Munich. Business activities are divided into the Agriculture, Construction and Energy segments. Other Group companies are involved in consumer goods production and car trading. Including franchise/partner companies, the Group has around 2,700 sales locations in 8 European countries. The main sales territories are in Germany, Austria and Eastern Europe. The Group generates the largest share of its turnover from the agriculture and food industry. The Construction division accounts for just under a third of Group sales. The Energy division is the third major business segment. The focus is on sales of heating oil, diesel and lubricants.
Initial situation
RI-Solution GmbH, an IT subsidiary of BayWa AG, has been operating and managing its online store (B2C store) since 2001. In this store, end consumers can purchase articles from the technology sector (including agricultural/forestry technology and horticulture) and mineral oils via the Internet ‘around the clock’. Over the course of time, the historically grown system could no longer keep pace with the technological and professional requirements of BayWa AG. For this reason, RISolution GmbH initiated a replacement of the standard software with a flexible individual solution based on the Microsoft .NET platform.
At the beginning of August 2006, RI-Solution GmbH decided to use PTA (project ID: 2072) as a partner for the development of the web front-end on the basis of its expertise and a meaningful prototype. The front end contains the entire area that is accessible to customers. RI-Solution developed the backend for the administration of the article data offered in the store. The development was completed on schedule by the end of 2006, and the new website has been online at www.baywashop.de since the beginning of February 2007.
The collaboration
Goals for the new development
- appealing layout
- Convenient expandability
- better user-friendliness
- Future-proof platform and architecture
- Higher customer acceptance
- Increased security
- Simple configurability
- Low maintenance effort
- Increased flexibility
- Extended functionality
Technology and architecture
The online store was developed with the help of ASP.NET 2.0 on the basis of the .NET Framework 2.0, using a 3-tier architecture. In this 3-layer architecture, the database layer stores the application data. The database layer is maintained via the independent backend application. The use of stored procedures prevents attacks using SQL commands (so-called SQL injection). The application layer receives the requests from the presentation layer, interacts with the data layer and sends the processed result back to the presentation layer. This contains all the graphical elements of the front end as well as the entire logic for controlling the user’s interaction. The design of the online store used for the presentation layer was developed in collaboration with the design office ‘human interface.design’ (partner of PTA).
The new store
The new BayWa Shop with its dynamically configurable start page contains the Technology division with the usual catalog functionality and the Mineral Oils division. The latter offers functionalities specially developed for the needs of BayWa AG. This allows each oil company to set its own individual prices. In addition, variable quantity scales and hazardous goods surcharges are taken into account when calculating the price.
Project ID: 2132
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Essential additional functionalities
In contrast to conventional standard solutions, the new BayWa Shop developed by PTA GmbH offers the following additional functionalities, among others:
- Use of a dynamically configurable start page. Among other things, temporary banners are used for this purpose.
- Design of the websites in accordance with the corporate design guidelines of BayWa AG.
- Adaptability with regard to sector-specific design specifications.
- Navigation through tree-like mapping of the product hierarchy stored in the database and display of a 'breadcrumb'.
- Possibility of expanding the product range to include additional divisions and product categories.
- Possibility to highlight articles in the category overview.
- Browse functionality in the article overview.
- Detailed article view with print preparation, price calculator (for regional marketing), selection of article variants, display of related articles and browse functionality.
- SSL encryption protects the transmission of sensitive, customer-relevant data.
- Possibility to order items from different divisions in a single order process.
- Calculation of freight costs (with minimum order value) depending on total amount or weight.
- Separate tax statement for the sale of items with different tax rates.
- Possibility of checking and crediting gift and promotional vouchers.
- Creation and dispatch of emails (e.g. order confirmation) via database text modules.
- Dynamic contact determination with 'intelligent contact form'.
Customer testimonial
“The recipe for success of this project was that a clear distribution of tasks was agreed: RI-Solution GmbH (IT service company of BayWa AG and RWA AG) was responsible for the overall project management, technical conception and communication with BayWa AG, while PTA was responsible for the technical conception and implementation with ASP.NET 2.0 and MSSQL. In addition developed a binding technical concept with the customer, which provided the strict guidelines for implementation.”
Günter Fleidl, Head of Consulting & eBusiness
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