A dental products maker sinks its teeth into ecommerce

A B2B manufacturer that makes orthodontic products and peripherals for more than 25,000 customers is sinking its teeth into an updated ecommerce platform. The company, American Orthodontics, recently relaunched its B2B ecommerce site, AO Direct.

American Orthodontics manufactures orthodontic products and peripherals in more than 110 countries. The company wanted to ensure an efficient and accurate ordering process for its complex and regulated products across multiple channels.

“The efficiency factor was especially important to support our continued growth,” says Peter Drozda, business operations manager at American Orthodontics.

The company’s new AO Direct B2B ecommerce site, is designed to ensure accurate product configuration and pricing and ordering through multiple channels. The channels include self-service ecommerce, punchout applications that connect a customer’s procurement software with AO Direct, and electronic data interchange. In addition, AO Direct supports the manufacturer’s sales and customer service agents with tools to onboard new customers. It also assists them through the buying process.

“Our new site ensures these requirements are met whether the customer is served from the ecommerce solution, punch-out, or EDI,” Drozda says.

The new AO Direct ecommerce site runs on ecommerce and content management technology from Optimizely Inc. and integrates with the manufacturer’s Microsoft Dynamics enterprise resource planning (ERP) system. American Orthodontics retained digital agency Avensia to deploy the new ecommerce platform.