In an important digital initiative to make product selection and procurement easier for customers, SEW-EURODRIVE South Africa has launched an online purchasing feature on its website. According to training manager, Zander Claassens, the portal allows customers to not only order products or parts, but also to find support in the form of documentation and CAD data. To maintain the personal touch, there is even a dedicated person to assist customers with their online requests from 7 a.m. to 9 p.m. every day.
“The online purchasing portal offers users useful tools and functions, valuable information and practical assistance,” says Claassens. “It is clear that many customers are embracing online procurement platforms, especially since the COVID-19 lockdowns, and we are excited to enhance our sales and support channels further.” He explains that the wide and dynamic range of configurations in SEW-EURODRIVE’s offering needed the functions of the shopping cart to be specially developed to make it as user friendly as possible for customers.
There are four different functions that customers can choose from when adding a product to the shopping cart. The first is the product configurator, which guides customers in configuring their required equipment using dropdown options from the company’s vast range of products.
The next channel is the spare parts or replacement product selection function, where one of two routes can be chosen. In the first, the customer can make use of the SEW-EURODRIVE serial number found on the product nameplate. Entering that serial number is a quick and simple way of requesting a replacement and ensuring that the exact configuration is replicated.
Another route enables customers to find an SEW-EURODRIVE replacement product for a third-party drive which is not an SEW-EURODRIVE item. The online tool will not understand the non-SEW-EURODRIVE serial number, but if the specific criteria are supplied, the system will identify what the customer needs so that the product can be delivered.
Registered customers who have already been trading with SEW-EURODRIVE can also use a third option, a customer transaction overview, to help select what they are looking for. When they log onto the online purchasing portal, they will be able to view their history of quotations and orders. This makes it simple to re-order a component that has been purchased before, as they can select the item from a previous transaction or quotation.
Lastly, customers can use the drive selection assistant – a smart online tool that guides the user through three simple steps to find the right drive.
Claassens emphasises that customers wishing to transact on the portal can find support from a real person behind the portal who can provide hands-on advice and assistance. Customers can also rest easy in the knowledge that the security of the portal is world class. “Our cybersecurity is handled by a dedicated IT team in our group headquarters in Germany,” he explains. “Our customer and transaction data are double-encrypted when working online, while the online support is run on hyper-text transfer protocol secure (HTTPS) and is backed up on a geographical redundancy cloud-based system.”
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