The new way of trading precious metals at C.HAFNER
Success Story
The project
C.HAFNER, a long-established company in the precious metals manufacturing industry, has succeeded in implementing a reliable e-commerce store based on Salesforce with the help of Salesfive as a central component of the company‘s digitalization strategy.
This has enabled the company to fully automate its trading, ordering, and pickup processes on a single platform, thereby increasing customer loyalty and satisfaction through a unique user experience.
Overview
This was implemented
Thanks to a new trading platform based on Salesforce solutions, C.HAFNER can now offer its customers a unique user experience.
Introduction of the B2B Commerce Cloud as the basis for the international trading platform
Price Engine ensures customer-specific price calculation in real time
SAP integration for seamless customer data transfer
International orientation of the new customer portal through multilingualism
Technologies
These technologies were used
Systems are only as good as the technology behind them. That‘s why we rely on modern solutions from the Salesforce ecosystem for our customers‘ digitization projects. The following technologies, among others, were used at C.HAFNER.
Heroku
Heroku is a cloud platform that allows developers to easily build, deploy, and scale apps.
“By working with Salesfive and the new customer portal, we have not only been able to automate our internal sales processes and make them more efficient, but have also created a means of customer retention in terms of a convincing user experience.”
Challenges
How things started
C.HAFNER‘s online portal was only partially integrated into downstream systems, requiring manual processing of transactions and orders as well as time-consuming data maintenance, which made the entire process inefficient and resource-intensive.
Trading in precious metals is subject to price fluctuations every second. Although the online portal previously used by C.HAFNER was able to map these and record orders, all other processes had to be carried out manually and took a lot of time.
The purchase and sale of precious metals had to be carried out entirely manually: customers had to contact the company by phone to inquire about transaction options and further information.
The portal for order entry was only incompletely connected to further processing systems. Maintaining the data in several places was therefore error-prone, monotonous and time-consuming.
Setting up collection orders for the scrap and downstream precious metal recycling also tied up important internal resources due to several manual process steps.
“I would like to describe the C.HAFNER portal in one word: Outstanding! The portal is very easy to use and so clear at the same time. You also receive the invoices after a short time. If you compare it with other retailers, it's worlds apart.”
Solution
The project success in detail
Customized CRM solution for optimal fit
With the introduction of the B2B Commerce Cloud, we created the foundation for the new precious metal trading platform. The Salesforce solution was customized to ensure that all time-critical processes and functional requirements were reliably covered.
Efficient price calculation and order processing
The connection of Salesforce to SAP and the Price Engine enables the calculation of precious metal prices from the current market price and the customer-specific conditions in the online portal. Orders are automatically transferred to the B2B Commerce Cloud in real time.
Automated processes thanks to web store
The order process for collecting scrap gold has also been automated: Companies wishing to recycle old gold can now place a collection order via the newly set up web store. This eliminates the need for telephone processing.
Tangible added value in the customer portal
In the new customer portal, C.HAFNER customers can now independently access their weight account and view relevant information. There are now also completely new possibilities in the area of trading.
Technical and strategic partnership
By working together as partners, we were able to provide C.HAFNER with comprehensive technical and strategic advice.
“It fills the entire team with pride to see how positively the new C.HAFNER platform has been received both by customers and internally and how usage is continuously increasing.”
Company
About C.HAFNER
Founded in 1850, C.HAFNER is now one of Europe‘s leading providers of products and services in the field of precious metal technology. The family-run company is now managed in the fifth generation by Birgitta Hafner and Dr. Philipp Reisert and focuses equally on innovative products, digital technologies, high customer orientation and the highest environmental standards.
C.HAFNER extracts precious metals from secondary materials, which are further processed into semi-finished products, components, powders and ingots. The technological origin and core of the process and material expertise is therefore precious metal separation, i.e. the recycling of precious metal waste from a wide variety of manufacturing processes.
Areas of application include industry, jewelry and watches as well as dental technology, resulting in a wide range of products and services. C.HAFNER generates added value for its customers through technological advances in service and process workflows.
Technology
Salesforce Commerce Cloud: the central platform for personalized shopping experiences
Salesforce Commerce Cloud brings dynamism to commerce. Manage your digital business centrally, from product management and pricing to ordering and customer experience.
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