Shopmacher get the B2B commerce platforms of servoprax on track

For decades, servoprax has been a reliable partner for the medical specialist trade. As a wholesaler for medical products and medical accessories, the company has made a name for itself, not only through a broad range of branded articles but also through the development and distribution of its own products. What sets servoprax apart is a deep understanding of the specific requirements of the industry. Despite its success in classic sales through the field team, servoprax recognized years ago the need to strengthen the online area as well and to make it future-proof.

servoprax runs a complex e-commerce system that spans a main shop and 46 subshops. Three of them are in the Netherlands, three in Austria and the rest in Germany. Some of these subshops are operated by license partners, while central administration sits with servoprax. Technologically, the entire architecture was built around an older Oxid version. While the design of the online shop serves its functional purpose, it shows clear room for optimization compared to modern e-commerce platforms.

Over the years, the system became increasingly hard to navigate. The large number of subshops and the high regulatory requirements of the medical industry, for example around product labeling and customer verification, made shop management increasingly complicated. The result: updates became more and more expensive and error-prone, and load times kept getting longer. On top of that, some modules from the previous development phase were encrypted, which made bug fixing and adjustments even harder.

Nevertheless, servoprax had big plans. Alongside the B2B business, the requirements from the B2C area are also growing, since the subshop license partners usually sell directly to consumers. In addition, a step-by-step expansion into further European countries is planned. But the existing shop system was not up to these requirements. It was neither flexible enough for the strategic realignment nor technologically future-proof. A comprehensive modernization was unavoidable, but it had to happen carefully so as not to endanger ongoing operations.

Instead of replacing the existing shop system in one go, servoprax decided together with Shopmacher on a step-by-step modernization approach. The first step was a comprehensive inventory: an audit was to clarify which problems needed to be fixed most urgently and where a gradual renewal made sense. It quickly became clear that the poor performance and the lack of update capability were the biggest stumbling blocks. In theory, an update of the existing Oxid version could have provided a remedy, but the effort would have been comparable to introducing a completely new system.

Before larger adjustments could be implemented, however, Shopmacher first had to stabilize the existing system, fix bugs, clear out technical weaknesses and create a reliable basis for the upcoming optimizations. Only once the system ran stably again could targeted modernization measures be tackled.

The kickoff of the modernization was the optimization of the search function, a central element in the B2B business. The previous search solution was inefficient and caused long load times that were simply unacceptable for business customers. After a detailed evaluation, servoprax, with support from Shopmacher, decided on the search provider Battery Included, a powerful and at the same time cost-efficient solution. To implement the new search function as gently as possible, it was rolled out in a minimal version at first only in the servoprax main shop and tested under real conditions. Only after successful stabilization is it set to be extended with further features and then gradually expanded to the 46 subshops.

The introduction of the new search function, however, brought another challenge to light: the highly complex data management of servoprax. In the medical industry, many products have different item numbers, some for dealers, some for medical registries or certifications. This variety meant that data records were often confusing and inconsistent. On top of that, the servoprax shops run in Germany, Austria and the Netherlands, which led to additional linguistic differences. To solve this issue, Shopmacher developed a "vocabulary book" together with servoprax, a kind of internal reference work that systematically captures and unifies product numbers, synonyms and industry-specific terms. This ensured that the new search not only worked faster but also delivered the right results, regardless of which number or term a customer entered.

In parallel, Shopmacher began evaluating a new content management system (CMS) that would best fit the requirements of servoprax both technically and commercially. The goal: to give the shop operators more flexibility in maintaining content while laying the technical foundation for future developments.

Through the step-by-step optimization, servoprax was able to achieve first noticeable improvements, without affecting ongoing operations. Shopmacher were able to solve many technical problems primarily through analysis, consulting and smart reshifting, rather than going fully into new development. "At first we were worried that modernizing our technical infrastructure would be a gigantic development effort," says Hendrik Narius, Team Lead E-commerce at servoprax. "Thanks to Shopmacher, we were able to deploy our resources in a much more targeted way."

In the long term, the shop is being moved step by step onto a modern, scalable architecture, a process approached carefully to minimize risks and achieve sustainable results.

The project shows that even heavily overgrown and technically challenging e-commerce systems can be modernized, when you set the right priorities and follow a well-thought-out strategy. servoprax is now a decisive step further along this path.