Webshop, PIM and NAV integration in one solution

The core platform

The standard integration with NAV, the data mirror, and user management with single sign-on and two-factor login.

Applications

Chainbox PIM (where you enrich your products with copy, images and data that don't belong in NAV) and Sales Insight. They're shared by all customers and updated continuously.

The webshop

Chainbox Webshop on Umbraco CMS. It runs as a separate, dedicated instance just for you, which is why it can be customised.

It's standard software. If you run the standard version, the webshop is updated automatically. If you have it customised, it's still the same standard software, and it comes with an update agreement that brings your solution up to the latest version 4 times a year.

Hosting and maintenance

You buy licences for one complete solution, which we host and run for you. We take care of hosting in the EU, monitoring and ongoing updates. The solution runs on our side, but the data is always yours.

B2B, B2C or both

The webshop is set up around who you sell to: an open catalogue with checkout, open without checkout, or login only. Product views, prices, variants and add to basket are controlled with settings, so you don't need to be technical.

Customer-specific pricing

Prices are calculated from the price structure in NAV. For a logged-in visitor linked to a customer account, the webshop calculates the price from the customer and the item, and every combination of price and discount is covered by the standard integration.

If people can buy without logging in, you set up a default customer number from NAV in the webshop. That customer's setup controls the prices for everyone who isn't logged in.

Customer login and self-service

Create logins and link them to customer accounts, so customers buy at their own prices. In their account area they have favourites lists, open and previous orders and invoices, including those created in NAV through other channels. Orders from logged-in customers are transferred to NAV on the right customer account, exactly as if they'd been entered there.

The customer's purchase history from NAV

If a customer has so far bought through a sales rep or over the phone, those items are already on the list of the customer's most-bought products and can be reordered the first time the customer logs in.

The webshop as a sales rep tool

Staff in your order department and your field sales reps can get a sales rep login with extended access. With it, they switch between customers from NAV and place orders on the customer's behalf. It's also where they introduce new customers to the webshop.

Multiple languages, markets and sites

Several shops, languages or countries can run in the same solution, or you can have several installations sharing the same PIM. Product copy can be translated into as many languages as you like, and fields marked for translation can be machine-translated as a first draft.

Product lists right in your content

With a set of extensions to Umbraco, you set up product lists based on filters and place them wherever you like in your content. The lists update themselves as new items are added and old ones are discontinued.

Guides and brand pages linked to products

Build guides, brand pages, size guides or other content, and link it to products directly or via category, brand or tags. The content is then shown automatically on the product pages it belongs to.

Categories maintain themselves

Categories without active items aren't shown. When the last item in a category is discontinued, the category disappears on its own.

In PIM you can build one or more category hierarchies and choose which parts the webshop shows.

Large product ranges and variants

The solution is built for large catalogues, both when there are few categories with many variants and when there are thousands of items in a deep category hierarchy.

Product data in PIM

In PIM you can bulk-update precise selections of your product range and extend the product model with your own fields. Views, filters and forms adapt to the way you work with your products, and changes show up quickly on the webshop.

Customer-specific product ranges

Control which items each customer or customer type can see and buy, such as products that require a certification or may only be sold in certain markets. The rules are set up directly in the solution.

Search and filters

Free-text search finds products, categories and content, even when the customer misspells something. On the product lists you choose which filters customers can use, and filters without values are hidden automatically.

Synonyms and filters at every level

Set up synonyms and keywords, so search also finds products by the words your customers use.

Filters can also be controlled per level in the category hierarchy and for the product lists you've added to your content.

Related and popular products

Accessories, replacements and related products are set up in PIM. On top of that, we continuously calculate from invoicing in NAV which products are popular and which are bought together. This is used to show popular and related products on category and product pages.

Feeds for ads

The webshop keeps your Google Merchant feed up to date for product ads, and you decide how often it's generated and where it's stored.

Punch-out for large customers

Many larger companies and public organisations buy through their own procurement system. With punch-out (OCI 3, 4 and 5 and cXML), the webshop connects directly to it, so the customer can find your products and send the basket back for approval in their own system.

Ongoing updates

New features are rolled out to everyone. Standard solutions are updated automatically, and solutions we've customised have an update agreement with 4 updates a year. See more in the questions at the bottom.

What needs to be in place

If you run NAV 2009, it has to be on SQL Server, as we don't support the native database. The client has to run on a version of Windows that Microsoft still supports.

NAV 2009 to 2018

The integration covers NAV from 2009 to 2018. Which data we fetch, and how prices are fetched, varies from version to version, so we go through it with you and your NAV partner before we start.

Why we mirror data

The webshop could look things up directly in NAV via web services, but using a data mirror gives faster response times and better stability. We keep the dependency on NAV being available to a minimum and reduce the load on your back office.

It's about efficiency and robustness, and the experience is better on both sides: for your customers in the webshop and for your staff in NAV.

You decide when data is sent

The client is started by Windows Task Scheduler, and when it runs, and what's included when, is something we agree with you. Stock levels can be sent more often than invoices, for example, and individual tables can run on their own schedules - the more data there is to move, the more thought we put into what goes when.

If the jobs are set up automatically, the client sends invoices and credit notes twice a day and the other data every hour between 6 am and 6 pm. In the evening and at night it usually pauses, so NAV's own overnight jobs can run in peace - they can lock tables if they're being read at the same time.

The order

Web orders are loaded into a journal. NAV doesn't have standard modules for e-commerce, so the journal has to be built, and here we have components from other customers that your NAV partner can take inspiration from - what's possible depends on your licences and which object ranges are free. Orders can also be dropped as CSV or XML files in a folder we agree with you.

Together with your NAV partner we go through the mapping, and sales orders are created in NAV from the journal or the file. From there, sales order processing, release, picking, packing and shipping happen exactly as if you'd entered the order yourselves in the order screen in NAV. Our responsibility ends at the journal, and after that your normal sales order flow applies.

Web orders are fetched from the webshop by a job that Windows Task Scheduler starts on your side, every 5 minutes by default. Until they're fetched, they wait in the webshop.

Prices

Every combination of prices and discounts in standard NAV is supported. If you've customised the price calculation, we go through it with you before we start.

Which items and customers are included

At start-up we fetch all data. If there's a pattern for what shouldn't be included, such as blocked items and customers, we put a filter on the replication, and we agree that with you once we've seen your data.

Sales history goes back 2 years as standard.

Related data

Items and customers come with their related data, such as customer addresses and contacts and item groups. If you have your own tables, fields or lookup tables in NAV that the webshop needs, they're easy to add to the replication.

If the server is switched off

Then we don't get new data, but the webshop keeps running and takes orders, which wait until the connection is back.

We monitor the replication and have fixed playbooks for outages and known errors.

You and your NAV partner

• Provide a server where the client can run and reach the NAV database.
• Make sure web orders can be loaded into NAV, for example via a journal, an existing workflow or a CSV or XML file, in dialogue with us.
• Handle payment and capture in the order process in NAV.
• Handle customisations in NAV as usual.
• Manage user permissions for your own staff on the platform and can extend product data in PIM yourselves.

Us

• The client, the replication, the data mirror and the monitoring.
• Data mapping, so the webshop works.
• Hosting and maintenance of PIM, webshop and platform.