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Kalahari.net uses hybris and Endeca for e-commerce and multichannel expansion

Kalahari.net uses hybris and Endeca for e-commerce and multichannel expansion

 

A leading South African e-commerce retailer, kalahari.net, is using multichannel commerce software from specialist provider, hybris.

 

The retailer will use hybris’ business-to-consumer (B2C) Commerce solution, including product information management (PIM) and mobile commerce functionality, to underpin its new e-commerce and multichannel strategy.

 

As Africa’s leading online retailer of books, music, DVDs, games, and consumer electronics, kalahari.net, part of the Naspers Group, a leading multinational media group, has built-up an impressive reputation since it was founded in 1999. With its business rapidly expanding, the company realised that its existing e-commerce system, which it had built-up over the last few years, would not be able to scale to support its expanding business strategy.

 

Putting components together

 

As a result, kalahari.net started to look for a new system and considered a number of solutions available in the market and chose hybris as its main e-commerce and multichannel solution, with Endeca providing the search capability. The system is being implemented by a combination of hybris, its South African partner, EMC Consulting, and kalahari.net’s own in-house team. Hybris’ Professional Services team is also providing support from its teams in the UK and Germany.

 

Michael Needham, chief technology officer of kalahari.net, explained: “We wanted to go for best-of-breed solutions for our new e-commerce system and so took a very open approach to the vendors we evaluated. In the end, we chose hybris because of its agile architecture and comprehensive functionality. They also had a great way of doing business by being very customer-centric and pulling out all the stops when necessary to make things happen. That, combined with the Endeca integration on search, made hybris the winning ticket.

 

“The new kalahari.net e-commerce system goes live in 2011, and we look forward to seeing the benefits it will bring as we expand our offering to other parts of Africa,” he concluded.