hawkins hvac distributors heats up b2b ecommerce with znode

Hawkins HVAC Distributors provides high-quality heating and AC parts and equipment to dealers in the Carolinas and the surrounding territory. The distributor’s management team brings 150 years of combined experience to offer the best industry service and support to its customers. Seeking to better enable dealers and grow business with larger partners, Hawkins saw an opportunity to align its digital experience with its industry know-how.

Hawkins knew its current B2B ecommerce platform was hindering a successful user experience for dealers. Struggling with a single-product-catalog architecture, Hawkins was unable to supply dealers with a personalized product selection. To improve the customer experience, Hawkins wanted dealers to be able to search on multiple product attributes to find products. Beyond products, finding a distribution branch location was also a necessity to improve the business's customer experience. Hawkins aspired to modernize not only the shopping experience but also offer supporting content to educate buyers.

Plagued by the notorious load time and site performance issues of a common monolithic ecommerce platform in the distribution industry, there was a clear opportunity for improvement. Most importantly, Hawkins was seeking an ecommerce solution that would easily integrate with its Infor CloudSuite Distribution service cloud and ERP system, which is an industry standard in the distribution space. Hawkins wanted to eliminate the challenge of exchanging data with Infor and executing API calls which was further adding to site performance challenges.

Hawkins selected Znode to enable an improved experience for dealers and better management of a growing customer base. Xngage, a Znode channel partner, utilized the software development kit and Content Management System (CMS) with configurable themes and page templates to quickly deliver Hawkins an improved user experience. Znode’s ecommerce site search and store locations empowered buyers to quickly identify products and branches with inventory for pick-up.

Hawkins was able to provide dealers with the personalized product offerings desired, managing multiple product catalogs through Znode’s native Product Information Management (PIM) system. To ensure each dealer was able to view products at its account pricing, the Znode pricing engine allowed the management of pricing for catalogs as well as account-based pricing on specific products.

Xngage was able to use the native Znode commerce connector to integrate Hawkins’ ERP system, Infor CloudSuite Distribution. Znode improved the site performance with increased stability, as evidenced by the site’s 100% uptime since launching. With Znode’s flexible and extensible platform architecture, Hawkins is primed for launching cutting-edge ecommerce that draws in larger dealers.