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Four Steps to Handle an Unprecedented Sales Surge with Ease

Learn how top personal protective equipment (PPE) provider AMMEX kept up with demand in the fast-growing digital commerce category.

 

March 2022

3.8 min read

 
Ammex Logo

From a one-person operation to a global distributor of one of the most in-demand products of the COVID-19 era, AMMEX is a true success story. In March 2020, market demand for disposable gloves surged 670% — and this rapidly became the fastest-growing ecommerce category.

As web traffic spiked — and the COVID-19 pandemic showed no signs of slowing down — AMMEX doubled down on its Salesforce investment to support unprecedented growth at scale.

AMMEX stayed on top of an increase in lead volume while creating a seamless online ordering experience for B2B customers with Salesforce Customer 360.

“Having one system for all our B2B sales, marketing, and CRM data enables us to tie the pieces of the customer experience together much faster and react more quickly than ever before. We're very excited to have a platform that we can continue to build on and grow with.”

 
Chad Ghosn
Global CTO, AMMEX
 
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Contents

Step 1: Build a connected platform to react at the speed of business.
Step 2: Bring stakeholders into the process to turn resisters into fierce advocates.
Step 3: Create experiences that prioritize high-value customers.
Step 4: Share critical communications at scale.

1. Build a connected platform to react at the speed of business.

Chad Ghosn, CTO, has been at AMMEX for close to three years, bringing decades of experience in developing modern infrastructures for big brands like Wayfair, Dell, and Expedia. “What attracted me to this role was the challenge of turning a small company like AMMEX into a large corporation through technology,” said Ghosn.

Because of the work Ghosn and his team had done upfront to build a connected platform, AMMEX was able to quickly revamp its B2B sales experience in just 10 weeks.

“It’s been great because everything is 100% online — and we’re able to move very quickly, making new products available on our site for people to purchase through the speed of B2B Commerce and the systems we’ve built.”

Chad Ghosn
Global CTO, AMMEX
AMMEX also powers its ecommerce business with several app integrations. This includes an app that automatically calculates the appropriate tax across SKUs, and another for streamlined payment processing. With other key systems integrated with the company’s digital store — including its ERP — AMMEX can scale with ease while ensuring records are synced across platforms.

2. Bring stakeholders into the process to turn resisters into fierce advocates.

Since this wasn’t the company’s first foray into digital commerce, AMMEX applied lessons learned from the past to ensure a successful rollout of Salesforce B2B Commerce.

Adoption of AMMEX’s previous digital commerce platform suffered for a variety of reasons, including limitations of the solution itself and the way it was rolled out. “The product we selected years ago just couldn’t scale with us,” said Ghosn. “It wasn’t introduced into our business the right way — and our sales team did not see the value in it.”

This time, AMMEX took a different approach, involving sales throughout the design process and communicating the value the solution would bring to both the company’s bottom line and its customers’ experiences.

“When our sales teams started seeing the benefits, adoption went up. Now, instead of handling a couple hundred clients, they can handle thousands.”

Chad Ghosn
Global CTO, AMMEX
Today, close to 90% of customers are ordering through AMMEX’s digital commerce site, an increase of 30%. For sales, just removing manual order entry has resulted in increased productivity, allowing reps to shift their time to higher-impact tasks like building richer relationships with customers.

3. Create experiences that prioritize high-value customers.

Increased demand for PPE — coupled with major supply chain slowdowns — put AMMEX in a challenging position. The company needed a way to reserve stock for loyal long-term customers — particularly those in the healthcare and government sectors — while also prioritizing new customer experiences. AMMEX built a custom solution within B2B Commerce that enabled it to guarantee existing customers a specific allotment of PPE inventory. “Having that connection between our CRM and ecommerce platform was essential for us to be able to service the right people and keep track of which customers we may need to pay attention to, including potential price gougers,” said Ghosn. “There’s no way we would have been able to handle that if we didn't have the technology in place.”
 
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4. Share critical communications at scale.

At the start of the pandemic when the supply chain was heavily disrupted, AMMEX was able to keep customers in the loop about delays, product shortages, and price fluctuations. For existing customers experiencing these things for the first time, it was critical to provide essential information quickly and at scale — without having to increase head count. To do this, AMMEX relied on Pardot, boosting email communication volume by 273%.

“Our core focus is communicating market conditions and the rapidly developing situation with our customers. Having Salesforce helps us keep track of everything and turn around critical information.”

AMMEX also leverages data captured by its ecommerce site to target the right messages to the right people. And with customer insights from sales, marketing, and ecommerce collected on a single platform, AMMEX is in a prime position to deliver smarter, more personalized customer experiences. “It’s going to be even more important to us as time goes by,” said Ghosn. “We’re just scratching the surface.”
 

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