As a leading global supplier of maritime safety equipment, it is literally a matter of life and death that VIKING Life-Saving Equipment provides complete and accurate information about their product range. They do this through a professional digital platform consisting of a website and a B2B webshop that retrieves product data from their underlying SAP Commerce Cloud. The website and shop were developed in close collaboration with Illumi.

Broad customer base and extensive product range

VIKING Life-Saving Equipment supplies a wide range of safety equipment, including life rafts, life jackets, fire-fighting equipment and evacuation systems for the maritime, offshore, fishing, boating and military industries. In other words, the company has a wide customer base and an even wider product range. Therefore, it is important to have a clear structure and good filtering options on their website so that each customer can easily find products that match their specific industry and safety needs.

For example, VIKING customers can filter by industry, product category, purpose, approval types and product brand, and for each product they can find detailed product information and documents with certifications etc.

A product presentation based on valid data

Many of the products come in several variants, and customers should be able to find the variant that best fulfils their needs. Choosing one variant affects which other criteria they can fulfil. The system must therefore constantly respond to the criteria that customers are searching for and reflect the current inventory.

The information on the website and in the shop is retrieved in real time from VIKING's underlying SAP Commerce Cloud. SAP Commerce Cloud acts as the company's single source of truth, and VIKING can therefore trust that the product information on the website and in the B2B shop is always correct.

Automated workflow ensures interaction between self-service and personal sales

The actual product sale takes place via a customer consultant, but before that, customers can make the process easier for both themselves and the consultant by finding and selecting the products they want. Instead of paying directly for the products they put in the basket, they can send the basket as a quote request to a sales consultant. All specifications are already specified by the customer, and via a workflow, the enquiry is automatically entered into SAP Commerce Cloud, after which the customer is contacted by a consultant.

Being able to find all the details about the security equipment and assess it on their own before speaking to a consultant gives customers peace of mind - and at the same time, the personal relationship and service is important for both customers and VIKING. Therefore, the platform supports the interaction between self-service and personal sales. Some of VIKING's customers have special self-service options behind a login that appears as a natural part of the website.

Making a difference

In addition to selling products, the website also serves as a directory of more than 280 service stations that VIKING has across the globe. Through a map function and simple search and filtering options, customers can easily find the nearest service station wherever they are in the world. They can search for service stations that can maintain and repair specific safety equipment, and they can easily find contact information for faster assistance.

As part of VIKING's mission to save lives around the world, the right equipment and fast assistance are essential. Essentially, that's what VIKING's website and B2B shop contribute to. And at Illumi, we are extremely proud to have made a difference for an ambitious company - and ultimately for the safety of the maritime world.

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