Automotive parts manufacturer uses Salesforce B2B Commerce to increase sales and reduce cost through automation Forte Group

Ex-Guard is an independent U.S.-based manufacturer and distributor of high-quality patented aftermarket automotive grille guards and bumper protection systems that offer durability, strength, and ease of use. Ex-Guard sells its products through an extensive and ever-expanding dealer network spanning the U.S. and Canada.
Having established a stable share in a niche market, Ex-Guard aimed to solidify its position and streamline ordering, processing, and fulfillment. By switching to a self-service B2B marketplace, the brand planned to accomplish two major goals: Eliminate mundane tasks for its sales team, and create custom-tailored and smooth experiences for its buyers.

A self-service Salesforce-powered B2B marketplace

Industry:
E-commerce and retail

Website:
ex-guard.com

Type of work:
Managed Software as a Service

Technology and Platforms:
Salesforce B2B Commerce

Background

Ex-Guard needed its existing enterprise resource planning system, integrations, and other business-critical features to stay intact while reinforcing the storefront.
With Salesforce CRM serving as the core of their business operations, adopting a Salesforce B2B e-commerce portal allowed data flow integrity within the same product ecosystem.
The novelty was a challenge since Salesforce had just released its B2B commerce solution, and its performance and capabilities were yet to be explored by businesses and developers.
Ex-Guard used a wholesale-specific and complex pricing structure with multi-level discount tiers assigned based on the order size.
Ex-Guard needed automatic shipping fee calculation for different delivery methods and product combinations to remain flexible.

Results achieved

By digitizing its B2B buying experience, Ex-Guard now provides its products in a way that enhances customer relationships
Ex-Guard’s sales cycle has already shrunk dramatically, requiring 50 percent less effort to process an order.
Thanks to automated operations like price generation and tax and shipping fee calculation, Ex-Guard has increased its sales at a lower management cost.

Business challenges:

Introduce a variety of features that make the marketplace available to the international customers

Sort out and digitalize the complicated sales and order fulfillment process

Reduce time and effort spent on manually processing orders

Featured-based challenges:

Enable multi-tier pricing complexity for different order sizes

Develop a system to apply variable postal fees for domestic and international delivery

Offer customers a highly-personalized and smooth buying experience

“By adopting Salesforce B2B Commerce as our primary sales engine, we’re headed forward as a business at a faster pace. The marketplace’s feature flexibility has already proven to be effective and allowed us to optimize multiple internal processes and cater more precisely to our buyers’ needs. With a newer version of the MVP rolling out, we’re determined to expand our dealership network further with a better service offering.”

Ryan Holt
General Manager at Ex-Guard Industries

Solution highlights

Utilizing their hands-on Salesforce B2B expertise and value-driven Agile approach, Forte Group’s cross-functional team focused their initial efforts on covering as many Ex-Guard requirements as possible with out-of-the-box features.

To build a secure and reliable gateway connecting the Ex-Guard internal CRM and ERP to the storefront, Forte Group engineers implemented critical integrations related to pricing and fulfillment. The first viable MVP was delivered in under 60 days.

By using an integration with SYSPRO ERP, a managed package application for syncing invoice coding and invoice payment data, real-time order status updates and shipping details can now be displayed in customer accounts.

Among the standard e-commerce features powered by Salesforce, Forte built a custom faceted search by year and model to match Ex-Guard’s industry standards.

Pricing now supports instant tax calculation for dealerships based in Canada.