Customer spotlight story: Vestas

case study

Read how Vestas was able to achieve a single source of product information for each product and service for both internal and external sales channels.

Vestas is the energy industry’s global partner on sustainable energy solutions. They design, manufacture, install, and service wind turbines across the globe, and with more than 122 GW of wind turbines in 82 countries, they have installed more wind power than anyone else.

Through industry-leading smart data capabilities and unparalleled 108 GW of wind turbines under service, Vestas uses data to interpret, forecast, and exploit wind resources and deliver best-in-class wind power solutions. Together with their customers, Vestas’ more than 25,000 employees are bringing the world sustainable energy solutions to power a bright future.

With PIM, we have already seen a huge efficiency improvement in our processes from day one and more importantly, we now have an always updated and relevant catalog available to customers on our e-commerce.

Lars Elkjær Andersen, Sr. Director eCommerce & Digital Customer Channels

Challenge

Vestas has a clear ambition to be a global leader in “sustainable energy solutions” and a global leader in after-sales and the service market in the wind energy sector.

As part of their ongoing digital transformation, they have established stable and scalable management of their online product range with a new PIM system from inriver. This optimizes their customers’ purchasing, product experiences, and ensures that they can deliver innovative service offerings.

Vestas has an online marketplace for spare parts for wind turbines – Shop.Vestas.com – which is a globally leading platform. From this platform, Vestas’ customers can find thousands of spare parts – from nuts and bolts to blades – from different suppliers for all the leading wind turbine models.

The range of products included approximately 25,000 products and spare parts. Before inriver, the product information was transferred to the webshop from their SAP system via manual processes. The goal was to minimize manual processes to streamline and to automate across the enterprise, and to create a scalable commercial product catalog.

Solution

The solution was a PIM system based on the inriver platform with scalable cloud components on Microsoft Azure built and implemented by partner Immeo. This ensures a single source of product information for each product and service for both internal and external sales channels.

The Vestas products are enriched in inriver with comprehensive and detailed data of both technical and commercial nature in the form of texts, images, technical specifications, and relevant documentation. They are then available to customers on their e-commerce channel.

Technology:

  • PIM solution via inriver
  • Microsoft microservices hosted in Azure
  • Sourcing from PLM and SAP to e-commerce platform on Episerver

Result

“With PIM, we have already seen a huge efficiency improvement in our processes from day one and more importantly, we now have an always updated and relevant catalog available to customers on our e-commerce channel,” said Lars Elkjær Andersen, Sr. Director E-commerce & Digital Customer Channels.

“We have high expectations to also utilize the system to be able to offer our internal people a much better overview of the services available at any given time from one place. The implementation went super efficiently and we have felt in safe hands throughout the process with Immeo as a skilled partner, and inriver as system choice has so far proved to fully meet our needs and expectations.”

Vestas today has a scalable, digital platform that optimizes their customers’ shopping experience and offers them innovative service offerings. Shop.Vestas.com makes it possible to work efficiently with product enrichment, catalog structure, and assortment planning.

Sales, service, and support can ensure optimal customer service with rich and detailed information about service tasks and products via an internal information portal.