Case study: Atea
Atea's strategic eCommerce initiative has earned them the market leading place
About
Atea is a well-known name in the IT-sector. As the market leading IT-infrastructure and services provider in the Nordics and Baltics, they’re one of Europe’s biggest IT-companies. Covering seven different countries and with 8000 employees, Atea is a one-stop-shop when it comes to everything within IT infrastructure.
Atea has worked strategically with eCommerce since the early 2000’s and has been one of Netset’s longest standing business relationships. Together, they’ve created a unique eCommerce platform that’s played an integral part in Atea’s business strategy.
We’ve met Søren Bartels, Program Director at Atea Denmark, who tells us about how Atea approaches eCommerce, their custom-made platform from Netset and finally, gives us his best advice for succeeding as an IT-reseller.
Mergers, acquisitions and new partnerships
Atea started working with Netset In 2006 after the company acquired and merged with several of the top IT-resellers in both Denmark and Norway. In the whirlwind of combining many different companies, with many different platforms, Atea needed to figure out which system they were going to implement across the whole Atea group.
“It was a period of quite a lot of mergers, and we needed to decide which company had the best technology suited for our goals of a common platform. We reviewed many options. The choice stood between several technologies, systems and potential partners that were in the myriad of companies we were merging into one,” says Søren.
Netset, who was already established in the industry, became a strong contender to help unify Atea’s growing needs of a scalable eCommerce solution.
“One of the companies we acquired was already working with Netset and they won the competition. They were found to be the one we preferred to work with, both technology wise but even more so as a partner."
Explore further: Read more about the challenges facing IT-resellers today
High ambition resulted in complex eCommerce
Atea realized the potential of eCommerce early and has had their sights set on reaching huge growth targets.
“We decided very early that eCommerce would be a strategic initiative that helps drive our business. For us, eCommerce is a lot of revenue, about 75% of our transactions and 25% of our business. Our eCommerce is very complex, and our ambition level is very high,” says Søren.
Due to the complexity and magnitude of Atea’s eCommerce, most of their solutions have been custom made for them by Netset over the years. What started out as Etailer (Netset’s first version of Nettailer), is now more or less the base on which Netset and Atea have created custom applications on top of. The integration layer and the basic foundation are still the standardized Etailer, but the rest is built specifically for Atea.
“The complexity is high because of our sheer size and the intricacies of our business. We are in seven countries, each with local organization and systems so, the system alignment becomes complicated. Therefore, our system has been custom-built for us over the past 15 years. We have a dedicated team at Netset working for us and we build new functions continuously,” says Søren.
Meeting the needs of Atea’s customer base
Since Atea doesn’t have in-house developers for this particular platform, they rely on Netset to work with Atea’s teams for further development of the solution.
“Netset is a part of a system where business continuity is imperative. They don't deliver business continuity as a service for us, but the fact that they deliver a stable and fast system is critical to our business continuity.”
It’s important for Atea to maintain a good relationship with their customers and always make sure they meet the needs of their customer base. Atea’s customer base consists of large B2B and B2G enterprises which, for example, require the possibility to integrate their systems. A functionality known as punch-out, which enables the customer’s workflows and procurement processes to integrate directly into Atea’s web shop.
“Punch-out is a standard feature in B2B today that you need to have if you are doing business with large companies and organizations. The ability to have an integration into the customer’s procurement system and integrated flows is fundamental,” says Søren.
The many functionalities, third party integrations and other implementations that Atea has created together with Netset during their partnership has laid the foundation for their successful eCommerce.
Not just a partnership, but a team
Netset and Atea go way back and they’ve both challenged each other and helped each other grow. It’s a partnership that has been very valuable throughout the years.
“It’s very much an actual partnership and a business relationship where we have a good cooperation and an ongoing dialog where we can speak freely. When there are things that are challenging, we make sure to talk openly about it.”
And thanks to Netset’s low staff turnover, Atea has the security and safety of being able to work with the same people for a very long time. Something that they greatly appreciate.
“The continuity of the people is important. Quite a few of the people we’re working with now were part of the first project in 2006. They’re still there, and that means a lot. It means there’s a lot less friction and there's a basic understanding that we don't need to re-establish with new people all the time. Sometimes they know our business better than we do, or parts of it at least,” laughs Søren.
Atea’s top two tips for succeeding with eCommerce
Finally, as one of the biggest IT-resellers in Europe, we asked Søren Bartels for Atea’s greatest advice for achieving business success with eCommerce:
1. Have a clear strategy: The most important thing as an IT-reseller working with eCommerce is that you have to be really clear on your strategy for what you want to do with eCommerce before you start. Because no matter which direction you go, it requires a lot of dedication.
2. Invest for the long-term: Be prepared to keep investing continuously. There needs to be an understanding that eCommerce is something that will actually be a driving force in your business growth. Your eCommerce needs to be treated as a non-negotiable and long-term investment.
