GRAYBOX designed and built a large catalog B2B Magento ecommerce site with over 200,000 SKU’s. In the backend, data is pulled from four different integration points, combined into a common data stream, and updated. On average, EE Schenck cycles through inventory every 60 days so their site needed to catalog and merchandise hundreds of thousands of products efficiently.
Overall Outcome
GRAYBOX built an integration for EE Schenck that pulled additionally data and allowed EE Schenck to monitor and expand.
The Results
EE Schenck saw an ongoing increase in site traffic through the efforts of GRAYBOX’s team.
7:49
Minute Average Session Duration
294K
# of User Sessions
38.8%
Of New User Traffic
The Overall Problem
E.E. Schenck is one of the oldest and largest wholesale distributor of fabrics, notions, and patterns in the US. They have nearly 50,000 SKU’s, with inventory turns over roughly every 60 days, looking for data to be integrated across several different sets.
EE Schenck came to GRAYBOX with a legacy database system from several decades ago. It was accessible, but cumbersome and was presented several challenges to business operations. GRAYBOX needed to connect their legacy system with a modern ecommerce platform. The client also requested that we design a system where their staff didn’t have to perform any data input within an ecommerce system.
After comprehensive discovery with EE Schenck, GRAYBOX determined Magento would be the most efficient and flexible ecommerce platform to accommodate their over 200 business requirements.
We came to GRAYBOX working on a complete website redo, rebuilding our website from the ground up. The GRAYBOX team gave us advice on what platform to use, what features would add the functionality we wanted, where we could use plugins and what would need to be custom built. They laid out a comprehensive plan for the new site and set us up with systems to integrate easily with our existing business systems. Working with the GRAYBOX team is great. They are professional but not stuffy, always willing to answer questions for us and explain anything we don’t understand. They worked equally well with our IT and Design departments to create the look we wanted with the functionality we needed. The new website launch was both exciting and scary. It was a very smooth transition from our old site and we have received so many great comments about the new site. We couldn’t be happier with GRAYBOX and the results.
Our Solution
1. Systems Mapping & Workflow
The first step with any complex site implementation project is to do a comprehensive audit of all data sets, where they live, how they’re currently accessed, what the existing access options are and evaluate the best case setup to support the client. GRAYBOX identified four different data sources that would need to be combined and integrated with the new Magento site.
2. Output Items from Database & Data Integration
EE Schenck’s inventory for their nearly 50,000 SKU’s lives in a legacy database. Previously, the client engaged a database administrator who worked in this legacy language to set up the system to regularly output an .xml feed that tracked the inventory for all their SKU’s and kept the system updated. GRAYBOX implemented a revision with the database so that instead of outputting all inventory, it outputs only what has changed since the previous day and sends an .xml file nightly. This reduction in data transfer greatly increased the speed of updating inventory with the ecommerce system.
GRAYBOX built an integration following to pull new inventory data and parse it into a data table along with existing unchanged inventory data. The data table pulls item info from one place and inventory levels from another database, and then serves up a number of available units for each item for the Magento ecommerce site. This integration doesn’t perform a replacement of the database, instead it imports new data directly into Magento’s database via row insertions or modifications.
3. Build a Self-Cleaning Data Management System
EE Schenck’s marketing department did not merchandise in their ecommerce system – setting such details as product category, descriptions, whether a product is new, whether the manufacturer changed the name, etc. The client records this data with FileMaker in a local database on their computers which are then are then shared to the cloud. The integration compares each row in the table of inventory and item information against this FileMaker file. To meet the client’s desire to avoid working directly with Magento to manage data, GRAYBOX built in functionality that allows staff to use FileMaker to list new product fields or edit existing fields, and these changes then get made to the Magento product database. If product categories need to be added, the client can add them in FileMaker and the integration automatically creates custom fields dynamically in Magento.
The integration also has built-in functionality to automatically sanitize the data. The system is designed to recognize human error in data that is entered into FileMaker. For example, it identifies errors such as misspellings, accidental spaces before or after a word, and inconsistencies in capitalization – and then fix them. The last integration GRAYBOX built for this project was for the Magento site to automatically grab images from a central FTP server and serve them up online. This allowed the EE Schenck staff to keep product images fresh on the site updated without having to interact with it via Magento.
Building the EE Schenck Magento websites was a great experience, but a unique technical challange. We tightly integrated into their very old ERP/Inventory system via a custom & robust middleware application that connected multple data sources into Magento. But getting all the data live and up to date into a modern tool has opened up exciting new oppertunity for their digital presence. Using this data, we’ve been able to create an API, connect to other systems and build modern mobile apps.
Our Services
GRAYBOX utilized their ecommerce expertise to provide a variety of services to EE Schenck and their business.
EE Schenck has a new tool that is the hub for all their omnichannel and digital efforts — it's both modern and it connects with all their existing legacy systems.
EE Schenck’s new Magento site launched on June 23, 2015 and successfully integrated data sources, sanitized its own data, and allowed the client to serve up data from their legacy system without having to adjust the site through Magento. This design and elastic server setup allows their enormous catalog to be quickly refreshed every 24 hours during the night without sacrificing site performance. With the new importer, E.E. Schenck saw an increase in site traffic and a significant increase in user session. It improved their business processes significantly.
7:49
Minute Average Session Duration
294K
# of User Sessions
38.8%
Of New User Traffic
Contact Us
We'd love to answer any questions, give you some free advice, and talk about your next project.
Beyond just individual projects, we work with you to find success in everything digital. Trust us to guide your unique business in an everchanging digital world.
Our Results
