Intershop: ‘Cloud revenue increased with 200 percent’

Ecommerce software provider Intershop introduced its commerce-as-a-service solution in February of this year. This software solution is an important strategical milestone in the company’s cloud-first strategy. Ecommerce News Europe interviewed Sales Director EMEA Gerrit Enthoven about the current state of affairs.

About 350 companies worldwide use the ecommerce software of Intershop. Together, these customers operate over 2,400 online stores and generate a total revenue of almost 80 billion euros.

Most of these companies are a manufacturer or wholesale distributor, which isn’t surprising as Intershop has a strong focus on the b2b industry. In many of these markets, companies don’t really make the most of the online possibilities, but Intershop believes this will change fast soon.

Faster ROI because of new cloud solution

At the end of 2016, the German software company started its Lighthouse strategy plan, which shed more light on its cloud solution and the partnership with Microsoft. For its target group, it became easier to go online with their business. And according to Enthoven, the new CaaS solution has made it easier to start a project without high investment costs.

“The pricing model makes the costs very predictable. And combined with the extended standard features and the faster setup, the return on investment is faster in reach now. Aside from this, companies can now scale more easily in terms of features of capacity, whenever they need to. Replatforming, because you’ve reached your limits, is now a thing from the past.”

‘Soon at our old revenue level’

The revenue Intershop has generated with its cloud solution has increased already with 200 percent during the first half of this year, compared to the situation one year earlier. The total revenue did decrease a little, but Enthoven says that’s totally understandable, because customers now pay a fixed fee per month instead of paying a serious amount of money all at once. But the sales director thinks Intershop, which set out a three-year plan for its cloud-first transition, will soon be at its old revenue level.

“With the commerce-as-a-service solution we focus on medium-sized companies at first, but there’s also a lot of interest from the big players”, Enthoven tells us. The last sales interviews of Intershop were with market leaders who generate billions of euros every year. “The thing these players like the most, are the scalability of the software and the fact that our platform can process huge amounts of products and transactions.”

Ineo and Lyreco open doors to growth market of France

He drops the names of French company Ineo, a subsidiary of multinational electric utility company Engie, and Lyreco, a big distributor of office supplies that has millions of products in its database and recently switched to Intershop. It could have something to do with the fact research agency Forrester said Intershop is a leader in b2b commerce suites, but Enthoven thinks it’s mostly the platform’s stability and flexibility that score points.

Although Intershop is very busy with its cloud-first strategy, this doesn’t mean its gets rid of existing solutions. “We serve a serious number of customers who don’t feel the need (yet) to use a cloud solution.” As an example, he mentions France. This is an important growth market for Intershop, but cloud isn’t something that’s on everyone’s radar there. In France, it’s more about setting up (b2b) marketplaces.