Tacton and Intershop combine expertise to enable manufacturers to sell highly configurable products via self-service customer portals

• Manufacturers with complex product configurations benefit from extensive self-service options added to their customer portals
• Sales and after-sales combined in one customer portal
• support of customer retention and cross selling

 Jena and Stockholm, November 23, 2020 - Intershop and Tacton, a leading global provider of smart commerce solutions for manufacturers with CPQ (Configure-Price-Quote), today announced a partnership offering a self-service e-commerce solution. The innovative visualization capabilities of this combination enable manufacturers to sell highly configurable product portfolios to their business customers via customer portals providing a consumer-grade self-service experience.

 The partnership between Tacton and Intershop empowers manufacturers' customers to collaborate digitally throughout the entire purchasing process making use of digital customer portals - from configuration to product lifecycle management, including the after-sales share with maintenance contracts or re-orders.

 Thus far it was close to impossible to sell highly configurable products online. Products engineered-to-order, or with a high degree of customization, complex supply chains and installation projects hindered this. However, customers ask for online end-to-end self-services to support their purchases. The new intelligent solution helps B2B customers to configure an intelligent product definition within their customer portal, taking into account variables such as product architecture, customer requirements, market compliance, pricing, order processing and on-site service delivery. This leads to a significant increase in sales efficiency by reducing errors in offers and quotations and accelerates user decision-making.

 "Our customers are focused on their customers' needs and expectations, and this partnership takes that focus to a whole new level," said Bo Gyldenvang, CEO of Tacton. "Intershop is a proven innovator in the field of customer portals offering personalized information and self-service e-commerce to make the jobs of buyers easier. We look forward to combining their solutions with ours to enable manufacturers to deliver a truly superior customer experience to their customers".

 “Intershop provides B2B customers portals offering the same type of high-end experience they are used to in the B2C world, throughout the customer life cycle. Our solution aligns perfectly with Tacton's goals in the manufacturing space,” said Dr. Jochen Wiechen, CEO of Intershop Communications AG.