Aviall Partners with Credera to Increase Online Sales and Improve Customer Experience

The Opportunity

Aviall, a subsidiary of Boeing, is the leader in aftermarket parts for the aviation industry. Aviall sells its parts via a distributed field sales and customer service team as well as electronically through Electronic Data Interchange (EDI), web services and their online channel, aviall.com. An updated version of its online channel launched in 2010. Although the online channel had experienced significant growth and continues to receive very high customer ratings, Aviall wanted to explore additional capabilities and differentiators to drive the customer experience to new levels by refining its eCommerce vision, strategy, and roadmap.

The Approach

Credera utilized its Strategic Planning Approach to understand Aviall’s current eCommerce state.  Interviews were conducted with key stakeholders, as well as, the assessment of current processes, online features, user experiences, and existing systems.

Once the initial assessment was completed, Aviall’s eCommerce strategy was refined to more closely align with business goals and an implementation roadmap was created. Implementation efforts are ongoing. A few completed activities include:

• Improved Web Analytics – Interviewed leaders in the company who identified additional Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) for the business to reflect new capabilities. Web analytics were reviewed and new reports were created to measure against these KPIs. Some of these KPIs included: tracking shopping cart abandonments, user search terms, page render times, and part numbers not found in search. These analytics proved invaluable for deciding website enhancement priorities.  This information will also be fed into the Aviall predictive analytics tools as well as routed to sales teams for immediate action.

• Created Public Catalog – As a wholesale distributor, focused primarily on B2B transactions, Aviall’s product catalog (i.e., over 2M parts) was previously available only behind the login page and inaccessible by search engines (e.g., Google, Bing, etc.). Aviall was losing out on potential new business and prospects that weren’t finding Aviall, even when Aviall had available parts customers needed. In order to increase online sales and acquire new customers, Credera created a new product details page, without the pricing and availability, and a process to generate the page so all Aviall products would be exposed to search engines.

• Implemented Architecture Improvements – Credera conducted an architecture assessment to identify current state opportunities. Code was improved and re-structured to drive additional systems performance for faster response times. Credera recommended different technology options to improve efficiencies and upgrade the framework.

• Standardized Logins – Previously, customers had to login multiple times to view products and place orders. Now, customers need to login one time to access all information needed.

• Launched Content Delivery Network (CDN) – Credera helped implement Akamai to increase Aviall’s Internet speed and improve user-experience around the world. Prior to implementation, users experienced 6 to 20-second delays in international locations. Homepage load times across the world were less than 3 seconds after CDN was implemented.

• Increased Brand Awareness and Product Selection – Aviall’s current catalog was only visible to registered users or existing customers. Credera exposed Aviall’s product catalog to the general public and used SEO optimization to get the best possible search result rankings.

The Results

Before this initiative began, Aviall was in the midst of a multi-year migration of its current enterprise resource planning (ERP) system to SAP. To not lose momentum in the eCommerce space while implementing SAP, Aviall engaged Credera for targeted activities to create immediate value. eCommerce upgrades and enhancements are on-going.

Aviall will continue to experience improvements throughout the initiative life-cycle. Initial results include:

• Increased Online Sales – Aviall reported that project activities have contributed to increased sales and positive user-experience feedback.

• Improved Customer Experience – Customer experience has improved dramatically: catalogue search times have been reduced by at least 50% due to architecture changes; customers save time when purchasing bundled “kits”; customers login one time to access all information; and customers experience significant performance improvements.

• Improved Web Analytics – Aviall has more insight into customer experiences and can make adjustments accordingly. Analytic improvements include: tracking shopping cart abandonments; user search terms; page render times; and part numbers not found.

• Increased Site Speed – Site launch times improved around the world due to CDN changes. U.S. launch times reduced from 6-20 seconds to 2 seconds. Previously, some international users were unable to access the site at all. Now, international users can access the site in 3 seconds or less.

• Improved Brand Image – Aviall’s brand perception has improved due to improved user- experiences. Credera’s eCommerce roadmap includes: additional feature changes; functionality upgrades; and UI/UX changes. These enhancements will further improve Aviall’s online brand image and maximize revenue.

• ECommerce
• Strategy
• Management Consulting
• Aviall
• Boeing