Sanicare

Sanicare one of the largest German mail-order pharmacies

BS-Apotheken OHG operates three leading online pharmacies: sanicare.de, aliva.de, and medicaria.de from their headquarters in Bad Laer, Germany. The company has been active online since 2004, when German parliament passed a law permitting mail-order and digital sales of pharmaceuticals. They have since become one of the largest online sellers of medicinal products in Germany and regularly serves 1.6 million customers.

Shopware supplants an outdated system

The company's first years on the market were spent using a standard online shop solution. As time passed and their requirements evolved, it was determined the solution was outdated and placed a noticeable hindrance on their growth. So the company looked at the underlying problem and decided it was time to evaluate an entirely new shop system that was, above all, easy to use and required fewer developer resources.

After comparing various enterprise shop systems, the choice fell relatively quickly on Shopware. "As one of the few providers on the market, Shopware offers a framework that is ideally suited for our purposes and does not have to be developed individually from scratch", emphasises Ute Gartmann, Head of E-Commerce.

Shopware stood out as the strongest solution for the following reasons:

• Intuitive operation

• Range of out-of-the-box features

• Based on standard technology

• Close proximity with the customer and partners

“Trust is the best medicine”

All three online shops currently offer 600,000 products in a total of 40 main categories. Following the motto "Trust is the best medicine", the company provides its customers with a wide range of cosmetics and medicinal products, including delivery on the following business day.

Fully integrated with the existing IT system

The project was accompanied and implemented by Shopware Enterprise Partner Portaltech Reply. The experienced agency connected Shopware with a number of existing systems, including the ERP system SAP and the PIM system akeneo. The PIM system is used to manage attributes that are required in the pharmaceutical market. In addition, a direct connection with the pharmacy's own order processing system PROKAS was established.

Advanced Promotion Suite for creating custom campaigns

Several of Shopware's proprietary plugins are used in the new Sanicare Shop. The Advanced Promotion Suite plays a particularly attractive role for the customer: "We expect the greatest sales potential in this area, as the plugin offers more features in campaign control than the previous system", says Linda Becker, Head of Marketing & E-Commerce.The new homepage makes use of elements from Shopware’s Shopping Worlds feature in order to immediately communicate advantages of the shop to the customer. In the future, the company plans to use the Storytelling function to build valuable content around suitable product ranges.

Positive conclusion and exciting plans for the future

The cooperation between Portaltech Reply, Shopware and Sanicare was positive throughout, sums up Linda Becker, Head of Marketing & E-Commerce. "So far, Shopware has proven to be the right shop system for our purposes", says Becker, looking back on the decision to migrate to Shopware Enterprise. The company also benefits from being able to independently make adjustments without having to rely on external service providers.Looking into the future, the company plans to expand its omnichannel strategy, offer its products on marketplaces, and focus more strongly on the B2B segment by offering a separate shop login for doctors and other health-related professionals. Moreover, the shops will also be supplemented by a chat solution and AI modules.