Graphic Controls
Case Study
Headquarters:
Buffalo, New York
Industry:
Medical and Data Recording
Apps Replaced:
Custom website with no e-commerce capability
Company Overview
Since 1909 Graphic Controls has been producing precision printed products for industrial monitoring applications. From oil and gas recording in the 1950s to modern-day digital well-logging, Graphic Controls Data Recording by Nissha continues to focus on cutting-edge recording systems for advanced drilling and exploration activities, including remote monitoring solutions. Graphic Controls is now known as Nissha Medical Technologies as is a wholly-owned subsidiary of Nissha Co. Ltd., a Japanese publicly held company based in Kyoto, Japan (TSE:7915). Nissha Medical Technologies has four divisions: Vermed, Biomedical Innovations, Graphic Controls Data Recording, and Graphic Controls Transactional Media.
Impact
Nissha Medical’s existing site for Graphic Controls supported ecommerce and provided a positive user experience. However, the manual entry required to keep everything updated across several brands was unmanageable, especially with their growth and acquisition strategy.
Being an organization that historically created and managed its own solutions, deciding to partner with Brilliance was a significant step not only for the IT and marketing departments but for the company altogether. The idea to use a co-development strategy became prudent when Nissha Medical Technologies began reviewing budgetary numbers as well as understanding the work involved. They wanted outside development and technical guidance and support, but they also wanted to gain skills internally and find ways to control their costs.
Outcome
“The biggest benefit, we now have an easy way to keep content under control and updated and translated in multiple markets”, said Jennifer Wolff, Director of Corporate Marketing for Nissha Medical Technologies.
To date, Nissha Medical has moved two sites onto Episerver and targets to move another two soon. The project was approached with a co-development strategy - meaning, Nissha Medical and Brilliance programmed the solution together. Nissha Medical would have created this solution internally but realized by leveraging Brilliance’s Episerver and B2B digital commerce expertise, they could launch quicker.
The success of Nissha Medical’s new sites will be measured by conversion rate and traffic. Part of the project involved the implementation of product recommendations (formerly Episerver Perform). By implementing product recommendations, Nissha Medical is ultimately looking to increase revenue and average order values (AOV).
Situation
Nissha Medical Technologies four divisions all had custom-built websites that were a headache to maintain. Every year, Nissha was acquiring a few companies. Part of the process, post-acquisition, is to pull the data from the acquired company and push it to the website that is managed by Nissha Medical’s marketing and IT team. While the numbers of products can vary, it required substantial effort. In addition to data, the Nissha sites support 5 to 6 different languages and markets. Maintaining the ever-growing complexity was becoming more than a full-time job and the idea of improving their transition process became necessary in order to support their growth. Additionally, adding features with the ability to suggest alternative products, was a key piece of technology that was missing from their current offering.
Resolution
Nissha Medical launched the Graphic Controls site on the Episerver Digital Experience Platform on September 19, 2019. Since that time the Nissha team has moved an additional brand to Episerver, leveraging their internal team with Brilliance’s support when necessary.
“Brilliance is really good at learning your lingo,” said Jen. The ability to step in and take the time to learn the Graphic Controls terminology was significant. This alleviated a lot of stress and work while allowing Graphic Controls to focus on learning the new software.
The initial site was launched integrating Praxa (Nissha Medical’s current ERP). Nissha is in the process of moving to Oracle but in the interest of time to value it was decided to integrate to Praxa initially and the integration to Oracle is planned soon.
Episerver Search and Navigation (formerly Episerver Find) was extended to allow users to search through customer-specific descriptions, customer-specific part numbers, and to display customer-specific items, limited to the appropriate customer.
The commitment to this project was significant for several key individuals at Nissha Medical. Considering the co-development approach, two individuals within their organization were full-time on this project for 6-8 months until the first site was launched.
After the site had gone live, a few pain points were associated with customer service. Being on the front lines, Graphic Controls was responsible for supporting existing customers during this transition. Within a few months, complaints decreased, and customer service has adopted a new system to support any issues. “For the most part, it was relatively smooth,” said Jen. Despite the bumps in transition, the change was immensely positive as it has supported their goal of rapid growth.
The project leveraged Brilliance’s Catalyst for Episerver to deliver pre-built page templates, Braintree payment gateway, and support multiple users per account, enabling the Nissha team to collaborate on the development starting from a strong technical foundation.
