Every Vet Deserves a Headless B2B Gateway

Transactional B2B for US and France

Corra’s first initiative with Boehringer Ingelheim was building a B2B platform to handle both ecommerce and loyalty for the French and US markets. 

Because France and the US have different regulatory processes as well as different currencies, Corra’s engineers made location-specific iterations of the site. The US version of the webshop is specifically able to navigate the complex prescription regulation procedures of the United States. 

The French site is coded to process the system of French prescription regulations. To support Boehringer Ingelheim customers in France, Corra coded a single sign-on authentication process between the ecommerce and loyalty webshop and the French National Registry of Veterinarians.

Once the US and France were squared away, the team turned its attention to the remaining markets.

A Headless Gateway for the Rest of the World ‍

The headless global reference build handles the rest of Boehringer Ingelheim’s international markets. Boehringer chose a headless architecture for this phase of the project because headless architecture’s scalability is an asset in the type of large-scale expansion Boheringer is conducting. With this modern architecture in place, each market has unique and personalized experiences in terms of the checkout flow, pricing model, return process, location-specific tax regulations, payment processing, and more. The gateway also stores customer data, which gives customers segmented experiences based on their interests and purchase history. 

Because of the headless architecture, a user can access the website in any language they choose regardless of location. Users select and save their language preferences. so for example, a veterinarian from Korea who now lives in Spain can access an instance of the site in Korean while working from their job in Spain. This multiplicity of presentation layers is made possible by headless architecture’s ability to utilize multiple heads and facilitate Boehringer giving their customers experiential flexibility. ‍

Microservices on Adobe Commerce

The overall goal of Boehringer’s initiative with Corra was to build a future-proof, scalable, and enterprise solution on Adobe Commerce. This was made possible by a microservices-based economy built on top of Adobe Commerce. By leveraging Adobe Commerce’s robust OOTB offering with a selected suite of microservices to supplement specialized business needs, Boehringer can have their cake and eat it too. Adobe Commerce’s OOTB offering is familiar and comfortable to Boehringer’s internal teams, and with Corra’s guidance, they chose microservices to attach to their Adobe Commerce instance with APIs that round out their digital offering. 

The modern microservices-based platform allows them to expand their digital offering internationally, provide consolidated commerce and loyalty experiences, and create a seamless and integrated user experience that utilizes first-party data and customer segmentation to deliver personalized experiences. This modern and digital-first attitude sets their organization up with a commerce platform that decreases time-to-market, increases incremental revenue, and allows customer data to be utilized throughout the organization in more efficient and meaningful ways. 

Enterprise brands looking to have a solution that is both comfortable and familiar, while offering modern and boundary-pushing capabilities, need to look no further than a microservices-based build on Adobe Commerce. 

Business Benefits of Boehringer’s Digital Transformation 

An organization transforming their digital ecosystem isn’t only changing their website, the organization needs to change with their digital solution. Boehringer did that and the results speak for themselves. 

Teams are now structured around the microservices they support instead of being siloed and controlled by the static capabilities of a legacy architecture. When Boehringer releases yearly, company-wide global priorities, they are now filtered through individual, market-specific teams. This means that individual teams are tailoring the company wide roadmaps to  their localized and specific initiatives and priorities. This rescaling of priorities and the resulting microservices-based team model creates more efficient workflows and more productive teams across the organization. 

The Boehringer markets using this microservices-based Adobe Commerce instance have seen an average of two times revenue growth which can partly attributed to Adobe Commerce functionalities like cross-sell/upsell capabilities, CDP integrations, and CMS templates that have decreased time-to-market.

Boehringer’s willingness and skill in shifting their organizational model towards their new adaptive, fast-paced, and modern digital ecosystem shows the business benefit of committing to a digital-first mindset. Moving towards this headless, micro-services-based digital economy was a daunting choice and task, but in the end, it has paid off with revenue growth, more productive teams, and a flexible digital platform.

Another Website Proactively Optimized with TotalCare

Boehringer Ingelheim enrolled in TotalCare, Corra’s flexible managed services program that runs on agile sprints. TotalCare offers simultaneous enhancement and support work streams so that the website is updated, and optimized, with any technical issues resolved in a simultaneous flow. Corra’s commitment to sprint-based agile project management ensures that tasks are both future-oriented and timely. TotalCare is more than a managed services program, it’s a partnership designed around optimization and growth. 

Boeringher benefited from this strategic relationship because Corra and Boehringer were able to frequently collaborate on how initiatives were going, take into account what flows needed to change, and respond with agility to concerns. When building a modern, digital ecosystem, it is important that strategic partners listen to one another and adjust processes and strategies to ensure the roadmap is meeting client goals in a timely manner. TotalCare isn’t only managed services, it is a collaborative partnership where the enrolled brand receives the full arsenal of Corra’s cross-functional expertise.