hybris Announces B2C Commerce Accelerator for China Market

Singapore – November 21, 2013 – hybris, an SAP company and the world’s fastest-growing commerce platform provider, today announced the coming availability of hybris B2C Commerce Accelerator for China at China SAPPHIRE in Beijing, November 20-21. As businesses move from a single channel, like print catalogs, to multiple channels - including online, mobile, print and call centers, complexity increases. Founded on the hybris Commerce Accelerator, a production-ready omni-channel commerce system that is fully customizable including support for Web, mobile, callcenterand order management, the hybris B2C Commerce Accelerator for China has been specially configured and equipped with functionalities specifically to address Chinese ecommerce needs.

For companies of any size who need to get started quickly, B2C Commerce Accelerator for China offers fully-functional Web storefronts and seamless channel integrations including all the tools that enable organizations to meet the demands of today’s discerning omni-channel shoppers.

Adapted expressly for the Chinese market, it comes with preconfigured page templates that are designed to suit the highly characteristic ‘click’ culture and specific shopping ‘atmosphere’ enjoyed by Chinese consumers, providing big product images, larger merchandising bars and a very visual user experience. In addition, dynamic scrolling functionality creates the very long pages that Chinese e-shoppers have come to expect while store locator functionality, integrated with Baidu Maps, allows site visitors to find their desired store purely through a visual, clickthrough process.

“China has the world's largest online population with over 591 million Internet users1. With more people shopping on the internet, online shoppers are becoming more impatient as they shop and if they cannot easily find what they want, they move on quickly,” explained Burghardt Groeber, Vice President Asia at hybris. “To address the market’s very precise needs, we are launching China’s very own version of our hugely successful hybris B2C Commerce Accelerator.”

One of the key characteristics of the Chinese market is consumers’ distrust in advertising and news sources. Relying more on word-of-mouth from friends, family and key opinion leaders, recommendations from online reviewers and peers on social networks have far greater importance. In fact, McKinsey2 believes that social media has a greater influence on purchasing decisions of consumers in China than anywhere else in the world. To address this, hybris B2C Commerce Accelerator for China comes fully integrated with plug-ins for China’s biggest social networking sites, Weibo and QQ, to allow consumers’ comments and product recommendations to be automatically up-loaded on to the relevant site at the click of a button.

For retailers, omni-channel projects can now start with fully working storefronts in simplified Chinese.With Alipay integration, Chinese customers simply have to enter their Alipay login details and they are ready to complete their transaction and check out.

Future developments for the solution include an integration upload to Tmall, which hosts over 50,000 branded stores, which will enable retailers to tap into the site’s several million daily visitors. By adding products into hybris at the back-end, retailers can not only seamlessly update their own online stores, but the system will automatically upload onto Tmall, with synchronized status and stock levels. In addition, hybris will introduce a Chinese mobile storefront, to truly enable seamless omni-channel commerce across multiple devices.

“Customers want to shop seamlessly across all channels,” continued Burghardt Groeber. “hybris B2C Commerce Accelerator for China will make it easier for retailers to be everywhere that their customers want them to be – especially on their mobile devices. This development will enable retailers to deliver a consistent brand experience across all those channels – anytime and anywhere they connect.”

Other key benefits include:
Superior Customer Experience
• Increase conversion rates and average order value with integrated promotions and crosssellopportunities
• Offer customers convenient ordering with user-friendly, modern checkout in retailers’choice o f single or multi-step checkout

Omni-Channel
• Integrate order management to support cross-channel stock visibility, purchasing, and fulfillment

Fast Implementation
• Reduce time to market by more than half using a best-practice storefront design,
straightforward coding, a good set of sample data, and precise technical documentation

• Simplify implementation and maintenance with clear documentation, as well as how-to and best-practice guidelines

1 ttp://www1.cnnic.cn/AU/MediaC/rdxw/hotnews/201307/t20130722_40723.htm

2 http://www.mckinseychina.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/04/McKinsey-Chinas-Social-Media-Boom.pdf