Are you tired of awaiting availabilities and prices from your material supplier? Would you like to see stocks at a glance and be able to order 24/7 by a few clicks? Is the status of your order a blackbox for you? If yes, you should consider visiting us at Outokumpu Connect!
Today, October 18, 2023, is a milestone for us. We have never been closer to our vision of providing customers one platform from which they can purchase all Outokumpu products and have a variety of self-services at hand – making their stainless steel purchase a seamless and pleasant user experience.
Since today, Outokumpu Connect includes the offering of all our 6 coil service centers in Europe. But how did we come here? How can you benefit from this and what can you expect going forward?
From pilots with an external partner to our own platform
Our eCommerce journey started in February 2018 by going live with a web shop for our Hockenheim service center in Germany. In order to “test the waters”, we decided back then to collaborate with the online platform of an external partner. In May 2020, our Castelleone service center in Italy followed and in July 2021 we brought our service center Sheffield in the UK online.
But our ambition level changed. In 2021, we came internally to the conclusion that we need to build our own platform to not endanger our further development path.
Mid-December 2022 was our moment-of-truth. We went live with our own customer portal, Outokumpu Connect, including the product portfolio of our service centers in Hockenheim, Castelleone and Sheffield. One year of work came to a successful end in which we had captured customer and business requirements, created the architectural design, selected technology and an implementation partner, built the functionality and user interface, harmonized processes and data and migrated as well as tested.
Our first 10 months and the integration of our remaining coil service centers
Meanwhile, 10 months have passed since we have gone live with Outokumpu Connect. The number of registered and active customers, our online order intake as well as our online share-of-wallet have since then steadily increased. Our customers give us very good feedback on their customer experience and our own sales organization has with the help of Outokumpu Connect become more efficient.
Today, October 18, 2023 is now our next major milestone as we integrate our service centers Dąbrowa Górnicza in Poland, Alfortville in France and Sachsenheim in Germany into Outokumpu Connect. With that, the product portfolio of all our service centers in Europe is now online.
Our eSales and eServices features for your benefit
Outokumpu Connect is your exclusive channel to explore and purchase Outokumpu’s product offering 24/7 online. The vision of our customer portal is to provide you on one platform a comprehensive and intuitive shopping experience including self-service capabilities, automated features, and valuable information on our products.
Outokumpu Connect is today able to help you with, among others:
- Call-off finished goods (from your dedicated contract stock or our free-available spot stock)
- Issue finished goods (from your consignment stock)
- Purchase cut-to-length sheets (from our free-available spot stock)
- Follow the status of your shopping carts, orders & invoices
Further features you can expect
As we go forward, we will further develop and expand Outokumpu Connect. The plan is to add our mill business to the online offering and as well to further enrich our eSales and eServices functionalities.
This may include make-to-order, slitting, polishing and brushing as well as enhancements on e.g. document management, delivery status, contract management, claim handling or further languages.
Sustainability is for us also online key
Being the world’s most sustainable stainless steel producer with the lowest carbon footprint in the industry is also part of our online DNA. Already today, Outokumpu Connect allows you to understand the carbon emissions (t CO2/t) of each material on stock.
Quite soon, you will also be able to purchase the first Circle Green products via Outokumpu Connect – the world’s first towards zero emissions stainless steel. Furthermore, we plan to provide you with the CO2 footprint of your transport and suggestions how to optimize it.
Visit Connect
Are you interested to learn more? Please visit us at connect.outokumpu.com, request your personal login or feel free to get into direct contact with us.
Dennis Pieper, Head of Digital Sales Transformation, dennis.pieper@outokumpu.com
Simon R. Hoffmann, Head of E-Commerce, simon.hoffmann@outokumpu.com
Stay tuned!