Charter Controls came to us with a familiar story. They had used an e-commerce product previously which was based around a marketplace of 60,000+ plug-in providers that would provide the integration with their accounting system that Charter Controls needed.

After an enormous amount of effort, this left Charter Controls with a website that was slow, unresponsive and clunky to use, using outdated software that was incompatible with the up to date 3rd party plugins.

“Each time we needed new features we had to hire our software vendor to help us to implement the “plugins” and discovered quickly that support came from multiple different companies – each one needed a service contract for us to be able to speak to them – costing an additional £2000 annual service contract or paying an hourly fee, and that’s when we could actually get to speak to someone!”

“Hosting was also expensive at over £10,000 each year and if we wanted to stay on the current version of our platform, upgrade fees of £12,000 were not uncommon.”

Charter Controls themselves have 3000+ products. They wanted an easy way for their customers to be able to:

• Order products
• Check stock availability and pricing
• See back orders
• See recommended products, promotions and favourites
• Import a whole basket for large orders
• Place orders for out-of-stock products but see when stock is due in
• Be modern, visual and really easy for customers to use
• Be fast and responsive
• Integrate with their new accounting system Microsoft Business Central 365

Glenn and Murray Greenhill, Operations Director of Charter Controls, wanted to be able to change and add things to the site themselves without loads of expensive help and training.

So, Glenn and Murray began the search for a new partner for a completely new e-commerce site that could do these things and be delivered in just 6 weeks to be ready for their major trade show of the year.

They just couldn’t find any e-commerce providers that integrated with Microsoft Business Central 365 and after speaking to lots of web companies they found GOb2b™ who said;

Charter Controls chose GOb2b™’s unique eCommerce platform which gave them a very visual, feature rich website that makes it easy for customers to search across products and see promotions and favourites. Customers can see their back orders, their pricing and can place orders and see when even out-of-stock products are due in. They can see retail prices, their individual prices and volume break prices.

“We asked Emma at GOb2b™ if they could get the site live in 6 weeks and Emma said to us:

GOb2b™ is fully integrated with their Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central accounting software to sync orders, stock information, product data, customer records and pricing.

“During the first set up, we could download all our catalogues, pricing and content and simply bulk import it into our Gob2b site – it was incredibly easy. Now it just all syncs automatically with our accounting system.”

“Our web shop looks better, is smoother and quicker.

Both GOb2b™ and our accounting system are hosted in the cloud, so we don’t have to manage the infrastructure which saves us time and money and makes life much easier for us.

We couldn’t believe the GOb2b™ subscription pricing model which meant no upfront money, it includes training, support and hosting and we can always reach them on the phone, email or the portal.”

“Our customers used to order mainly by phone and email even with the old website they preferred to phone in. Now even our largest customers use our GOb2b™ site and love it.”

“Our customers can see new products, featured products and promotions and their own favourites. They can see all their pricing, their back orders, can just repeat orders and see the stock availability and when stock is due in.”

“You don’t have to be technical to change the site, add content, add new products, create promotions and prices. It really is simple and there are loads of help pages. What used to take hours and cost thousands of pounds now takes 5 minutes and doesn’t cost anything. There are so many things that GOb2b™ does, it really is amazing, easy, responsive and user friendly. 3000 products and I can change all of them in seconds or create promotions in minutes – it really is instant.”

“GOb2b™ also played a major part in ensuring we maintained and even improved our SEO rankings.”

“We expected days or weeks of trouble shooting when we went live but 24 hours later there it was, and we have never had a problem since.”

“We can’t thank the team at GOb2b™ enough. You really are just perfect, amazing in fact. We need to be able to talk to someone who gets where we are coming from.

The onboarding process was fast, and Emma helped us every step of the way. We had access to all the resources we needed and even though we knew we were one of GOb2b™’s first Microsoft Business Central 365 customers – it really went without a hitch and the technical guys were just brilliant.

There we were at our most important trade show of the year, 6 weeks later with our website up and running and looking great. Our customers were ordering from it at the show. We had iPads to sign up new customers straight into the website.”

“We are focused on growing the website now. Our blogs are working really well and are getting good feedback from our customers.

We are working on SEO optimisation that we can now do for 3000+ products in bulk!

The GOb2b™ integration with 365 is brilliant and we want to tell everyone just how great it is so that you have even more customers like us!”

From the team at GOb2b™ – Thank you Glenn and Murray, you really made our job easy.