111 Billion EUR
Worldwide
Munich, Germany
Automotive
B2C, B2B
Serving markets worldwide and housing a multitude of product and service brands were the ambitious requirements for the new eCommerce solution for the BMW Group. In addition to showcasing its enormous catalog of automotive products and accessories, the company also aimed to present its complex digital products, such as Connected Drive and bookable services, including routine maintenance checks, oil changes and more, via digital commerce interactions.
Basic functions such as the product catalog, shopping cart and orders needed to be available at high speed and be combined with the Group’s existing systems, including OMS, CMS, warehouse and fulfilment management. Additional requirements were playability on different touchpoints, excellent API implementation and a cloud-native architecture.
In a nutshell, the BMW Group tech team required a powerful, scalable and customizable eCommerce solution, in which the flexibility of combining with other internal systems was a top priority.
The BMW Group’s requirements perfectly matched the composable commerce approach pioneered by commercetools.
Now, the company supplements its various in-house programming solutions via API interfaces, including a partially headless-based CMS and a self-programmed data management and payment system, as well as an application that checks whether products can be combined.
In spring 2020, in cooperation with the Professional Services Team from commercetools, a client proof-of-concept was created to map all brands and markets part of the BMW Group against existing projects, stores and channels on the commerce solution. The next step was software implementation, which was deployed piece by piece along the customer journey. The first go-live took place in March 2021.
With its cloud-based headless commerce platform, commercetools offers an uncomplicated integration with inventory systems. In this way, existing processes can be retained and customers can experience modern and high-performance eCommerce at the same time.
Within the first eight months, the BMW Group released 100 deployments online. The tech team is particularly impressed with the “versionless” solution powered by commercetools, which has significantly reduced maintenance efforts.
"Thanks to the outstanding expandability, we can implement specific requirements without permanently bending the software," explains an IT employee at the BMW Group. "The commercetools APIs enabled us to continuously increase the value for our customers."
Now, new applications and services, such as installing virtual products like digital license plates, are possible. Furthermore, new customer experience touchpoints can be added at any time, which are seamlessly integrated into non-commerce features, including vehicle maintenance and configuration.
Full flexibility to experiment with complex products, digital touchpoints and services combined with real-time inventory, price and promotion updates across all sales channels.
Simple selection and ordering processes for an optimized shopping experience, as well as diverse, innovative checkout procedures and payment options.
Simple connection of thousands of channels worldwide, from desktop to smartphone and in-store dealers to service and repair workshops.
