ERP Migration Doesn’t Have to Kill Customer Experience

In the complex world of B2B commerce, outdated tools and generic platforms often hinder businesses from achieving real growth.

But what if your company could increase digital orders by 10x in just 18 months, save the equivalent of 48 full-time employees through automation, and achieve 24% higher profit margins on digital sales?

This isn’t a what-if; it’s the proven impact for companies already using Slize. Born out of a real need observed by founder Brian Fink at Damstahl, a leading steel distributor,  Slize was purpose-built to address the unique challenges of wholesale B2B.

But there’s another reality B2B leaders can’t escape:  ERP migrations are inevitable. And when your operational backbone shifts, customer-facing processes are at their most vulnerable. That’s where most companies falter and where a smarter, more flexible approach becomes essential.

The Hidden Costs of ERP Migration on Customer Experience

For companies with intricate product catalogs, multi-warehouse logistics, and highly specific pricing rules, ERP systems are the operational backbone. Whether it’s upgrading from an older version, consolidating disparate systems across regions, or switching to a new provider (like moving from SAP to Infor, a scenario many in our target industries currently face), the goal is always better efficiency and deeper insights.

Yet, this essential transformation often introduces a period of vulnerability for the customer experience (CX). Here’s why traditional approaches fall short:

The outcome is predictable: customers face delays, incorrect pricing, or an inability to access critical information, leading to frustration, lost orders, and damaged loyalty.

B2B ERP migrations often face costly disruptions due to monolithic systems, disconnected front-ends, and rigid architectures — resulting in delays, data inaccessibility, and up to $50M in lost income

The Paradigm Shift: Composable Commerce in Action

The answer to this dilemma lies in  composable commerce, a modular,  API-first approach that decouples the customer-facing experience from the backend systems. Instead of a single, rigid platform, composable commerce allows businesses to select and  integrate best-of-breed components (like Product Information Management (PIM), Customer Relationship Management (CRM), and Content Management Systems (CMS)) via APIs. This architecture offers several game-changing advantages, especially during ERP transitions:

• Vendor lock-in avoidance: You’re not tied to a single vendor’s ecosystem, allowing you to switch technologies as needed.
• Unmatched flexibility: Each component can be updated or replaced independently, minimizing disruption to other parts of your digital infrastructure.
• Future-proofing: Your digital storefront remains agile, capable of evolving with market demands and technological advancements without requiring a complete overhaul every few years.

How Slize Ensures Customer Experience Continuity

Slize acts as a composable, modular, and scalable e-commerce solution. Here’s how Slize ensures customer experience continuity during even the most challenging ERP migrations:

Unified Commerce for a Seamless Journey

Slize combines your corporate website, product catalog, and online shop into a single, cohesive experience. Storytelling and e-commerce coexist on one domain, eliminating the need for customers to switch between platforms. This unified setup provides:

• Immediate category filtering
• Real-time product and pricing updates
• ERP-integrated product syncs without additional intervention
  

For industries where fast and precise ordering matters more than visual storytelling, Slize offers flexible front-end architectures for streamlined user experiences.

Multi-ERP Compatibility: Business Continuity Guaranteed

One of Slize’s most critical strengths is its proven ability to integrate deeply with multiple ERP systems simultaneously. This is vital for large enterprises or those undergoing phased ERP migrations, as demonstrated by Vargus, a Slize client operating with five different ERPs across countries. Slize fetches real-time stock prices and order statuses directly from all active ERPs, ensuring that even as one system is transitioning, your customer-facing platform remains fully operational and accurate. This capability directly addresses the common objection, “We’re in the middle of ERP transition; we can’t add more complexity,” by turning it into an opportunity for continuity.

Handling Industrial Complexity Out of the Box

Slize understands that B2B commerce in industrial sectors isn’t just about selling SKUs. It’s about managing kilos, meters, bundles, and leftover materials, as well as providing intricate services such as cutting, galvanizing, or sandblasting. Slize supports these complex units and logistics, including multi-warehouse capabilities and detailed certifications for traceability, essential for regulated industries.

This built-in industry-specific intelligence enables your customers to configure customized product packages and access vital documents, such as chemical and mechanical property certificates, instantly, even during backend system changes.

Advanced Pricing Engine

For industries like steel, where volatile commodity prices directly affect sales, real-time pricing is essential.

Slize’s advanced pricing engine supports:

• Dynamic segmentation templates
• Live margin calculations for each quote
• Complex rules based on product type, size, material grade, and market volatility

Sales teams can adjust prices before checkout, control stock visibility during market fluctuations, and maintain transparent communication with customers, even in the middle of ERP migrations.

Robust Client Self-Service

Slize empowers customers and sales teams alike, acting as a crucial buffer during ERP migrations. The client self-service portal allows customers to access saved baskets, favorite products, past orders, invoices, and even download certificates. For sales teams, Slize offers unique tools that drastically reduce reliance on the ERP for daily operations:

• Shadow mode: Sales reps can impersonate any customer to guide them, create orders on their behalf, or troubleshoot issues, significantly reducing order entry time (e.g., 80% faster for Damstahl). This ensures customers receive immediate support without needing training.
• Order creation and quotations: Sales reps can convert carts to quotations, add delivery modes, force order holds, and override system margins, all outside the core ERP interface.
• AI assistant: A custom ChatGPT tool built on the client’s knowledge base (e.g.,  steel welding guidelines for Damstahl) offers instant, industry-specific technical support, a clear differentiator for technical industries.
• AI Order Automation (Upcoming): Soon, Slize will offer AI-driven extraction of order data from customer PDFs and emails, automating basket creation and potentially direct XML order processing from customer ERPs. This will further reduce manual effort and errors.
  

Proven ROI from Digital Transformation

The effectiveness of Slize’s approach is not just theoretical. It delivers measurable business results:

Damstahl

• 10x digital order growth: Damstahl scaled their digital orders from 98M to 956M DKK (€12M to ~€128M) within 18 months of implementing Slize.
• 48 FTEs saved annually: Automation through Slize, particularly in order entry and validation, saved Damstahl the equivalent of 48 full-time roles.
• 24% higher profit margins: Clients, including Damstahl, saw 24% higher gross profit margins on digital orders compared to phone orders.
• For a company with a €300-400M turnover, this translates to a €6-8M increase in profit.

Vargus

• Slize enables Vargus to work with multiple ERP systems (e.g., 5 ERPs by country) and handle multi-brand logistics (13 subsidiaries, 1.com), which is crucial during ERP migration phases.
• Vargus experienced organizational delays and a lack of internal data readiness, which led to their final budget reaching €400,000. As a result, Slize adapted its onboarding process to include hourly-based pre-deployment discovery and data readiness steps.
• The platform offers a significant product management benefit, being used daily by teams that manage thousands of SKUs across physical products.

Weinmann Aach

• Weinmann Aach opted for a modern, no-scroll interface using a drawer layout, which provides a sleek and efficient user experience tailored for fast and precise ordering in industries where visual storytelling is less important than functionality.
• They utilize Slize’s configurable pricing capabilities, specifically monitoring incoming steel costs and past orders to determine fixed pricing points (e.g., €4/kg).
• Weinmann Aach configures orders for custom delivery formats depending on product categories.
• They value Slize’s ability to provide historical sales graphs and planned price trend visualization.
• Weinmann Aach sought a modern, unified commerce solution after observing Slize in action at a peer’s warehouse, resulting in a quick sales cycle and ongoing development of their e-catalog and e-commerce modules with Slize.

How Slize Stands Apart from Competitors?

Slize differentiates itself through its deep industry focus and technical superiority:

The path forward

ERP migrations are complex, but they don’t have to compromise your customer experience. By choosing a composable B2B e-commerce platform like Slize, industrial leaders can ensure business continuity, maintain real-time accuracy in pricing and stock, and empower both customers and sales teams with intuitive, robust tools. This strategic investment enables you not only to manage the complexities of digital transformation but also to emerge stronger, with improved customer relationships and measurable profit gains.

Slize is more than a digital sales platform; it’s an operational backbone for B2B organizations in industries where product complexity, pricing volatility, and fragmented ERPs have historically hindered digital transformation. It ensures that your journey towards greater digital maturity is one of seamless enhancement, not disruption.

Want a quick snapshot of how Slize ensures seamless ERP transitions without disrupting customer experience?

➡ Download our infographic:  Digital Commerce for Industrial Complexity

We broke down the key risks of ERP migration, how composable commerce overcomes them, and highlighted proven ROI from real industrial B2B case studies — all in one visual guide.