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Community contributions
Centarro works with all of its customers to ensure any bug fixes, performance optimizations, or usability improvements their projects sponsor on publicly distributed open source modules make it upstream into new releases of those modules. Worthington makes use of and has contributed to the likes of Commerce Core, Commerce Pricelist, Commerce Shipping, and Commerce Variation Cart Form, amongst others.
Worthington also sponsored the Commerce Order Document module. It gives merchants the ability to generate and email documents to customers like pro forma invoices, packing slips, and more to customers at appropriate points in the lifecycle of a transaction.
Worthington Biochemical sells ISO 9001 certified enzymes, proteins, acids, and other products used in biomedical research, pharmaceuticals, biotech, and OEM applications. They also maintain a comprehensive library of reference manuals and peer-reviewed journals, all available to researchers and students.
Worthington’s complex distribution and sales processes required a custom CMS integrated with a custom ERP system. Innovation with the custom system proved to be challenging, time-consuming, and costly. The purchase experience also fell short of what customers expected in an internet-first sales environment.
Centarro helped Worthington modernize their B2B commerce experience with Drupal Commerce. We simplified the ordering process for complex products, integrated with their in-house ERP, and accommodated current fulfillment processes and communications, all while maintaining the relationships between their sales team and customers.
A commerce platform that conforms to established business processes
Worthington has established business processes that have served them well for over 75 years. Orders have several states, each with specific conditions that must be met before transitioning to the next state. Additionally, only certain individuals have the authority to advance an order to the next state.
We modeled Drupal Commerce to conform to these processes using custom entities for institutions and distributors, a custom order workflow, and role-based permissions for order state transitions. Only the right people at the right time can process an order, reducing misshipments and incorrectly fulfilled orders.
Flexibility for the future
Worthington’s previous solution was closed, rigid, and required custom development to add new features. Their new Drupal Commerce platform is made to be extensible. Their internal team can quickly spin up new marketing and sales channels. New integrations can be built, often with help from the community. Changes to sales and fulfillment processes can be supported without a long development cycle.
A modern B2B self-service experience
Worthington’s customers now enjoy the ease of a modern checkout experience, which gets even better as Commerce Core itself improves. They can research and make specific lot requests during checkout, as well as request quotes, all from a unified interface built with Drupal's flexible content modeling.
Sales staff can create, edit, and fulfill all orders. Whether placed online by the customer or over the phone, the unified eCommerce backend streamlines the sales and support processes.
A seamless transition
The new commerce platform models complex institution and distributor relationships through custom entity types and extended product variations. Backend processes were maintained to make it as easy as possible for the sales team to switch to the new platform.
We worked with Worthington’s internal development team to develop the new customer-facing eCommerce website and prepared all data to facilitate migrations and synchronizations to the custom ERP.
Unified content management
Because Drupal Commerce is built on a powerful content management system, Worthington no longer needs to maintain its custom CMS. They can manage their vast library of content, create relationships between products and research materials, and surface related content for browsing customers. This consolidation eliminates technical debt and saves Worthington development and maintenance hours every year.
Back to top"If cookie-cutter e-commerce software never quite works for your business, you should give Drupal Commerce serious consideration. As a small biotech/manufacturing company that's been doing things its own unique way since the 1940s, we've always needed custom. But custom is difficult if you're too small to have a dedicated IT department in-house or can't afford the price tag of major technology service companies. We've found that Drupal Commerce plus Centarro is a powerful and affordable solution."
Lisa Streeter, Information Systems Manager
Worthington selected Drupal and Drupal Commerce for several strategic reasons:
- Drupal's Data Modeling Strength: Drupal is unmatched in its ability to model complex data and create customized workflows based on data values and relationships. This was essential for Worthington's intricate product catalog and multi-tier customer relationships.
- Open Source Flexibility: Unlike their closed legacy system, Drupal Commerce offered an extensible platform that could evolve with their business needs without requiring expensive custom development for every new feature.
- Content Management Integration: Because Drupal Commerce is built on Drupal's robust CMS, Worthington could consolidate their separate custom CMS and eCommerce systems into one unified platform, eliminating technical debt and reducing their maintenance burden.
Technical Specifications
Drupal version:
Key modules/theme/distribution used:
These modules and many others contributed key functionality to the build. Commerce Core of course provides the foundation for all things eCommerce related, and it in turn depends upon the State Machine similarly maintained by Centarro. Every data type requiring workflow management uses the state machine for the definition of states and transitions, with custom enrichment further regulating how business users manage those data objects.
Search API and Facets are used to create a compelling search interface that looks attractive and works great, even with Worthington's highly technical product catalog. The custom design and theme by Centarro evoke print catalogs and other industry publications, bringing a high level of polish to every aspect of the front-end a customer sees.
Tools like Views Data Export make it easy to get transaction data out of Drupal and into third-party systems, like Worthington's custom ERP. Similarly, optimal use of SEO and analytics related modules like Google Tag Manager, MetaTag, and others facilitate tracking and improving the performance of the site through common tools.
