B2B commerce: Students from the Saxony Cooperative State University visit Netresearch

Once again this year, a course from the Saxony Cooperative State University (DHSN) was hosted by Netresearch to provide practical insights into the world of digital commerce.

As part of an event organised by the Business Administration Service Management - Retail Management and E-Commerce course, a day-long excursion was dedicated to practical project experience, agile working and real e-commerce scenarios.

With this commitment, Netresearch aims to inspire young people for topics such as digitalisation, e-commerce and project management - Enable & Connect.

Practical insight into everyday B2B commerce agency life

To begin with, the Netresearch team presented how e-commerce projects are created and implemented in practice. The focus was on project management in the digital environment, agile working methods, real-life collaboration tools and the typical challenges in day-to-day project work - from changing requirements to complex coordination between development, system technology, sales and marketing.

This was followed by practical and concrete insights into current e-commerce projects from the agency's day-to-day work. It was shown how extensive B2B platforms and individual B2B features can be discussed, planned, developed and finally successfully put into operation in reality.

The role that the application of agile methods such as Scrum and/or Kanban can play in a project and what keywords such as focussing and the MVP approach actually mean was another point of discussion during the morning. Together with the study course, experiences were exchanged on how an agile approach can be flexible, transparent and focussed on a specific goal for the desired project success with a customer.

Workshop: e-commerce as a team task

In the afternoon, a joint workshop was on the programme.

Typical individual tasks based on real practical use cases were to be implemented in an Oro Commerce B2B online shop system with the help of Netresearch as an agency partner.

The tasks included updating stocks and sales backlogs of the existing product range, creating new customers, their group assignment and individual price conditions, implementing a completely new product line and its products, designing a promotional discount and adapting content on home pages and within categories.

The participants took on different perspectives of a typical functional department of an e-commerce company in an interactive role play. In small teams, areas such as product management, account & customer management, sales and marketing were mapped and only received the authorisations for their respective typical area of responsibility in the system.

The intention was to make the approach to individual tasks tangible. The groups had to coordinate with each other in order to recognise and achieve the overall goal as a team. Some tasks could be solved independently, while other tasks that built on each other had to be organised in a logical sequence first. Handover points had to be communicated. As an agency partner, Netresearch was always available for consultation on possible solutions for working with the back office of the Oro Commerce B2B system and could also be actively consulted.

This short role play quickly made it clear how important communication, planning and coordination are between all those involved in the departments - an experience that is also reflected in real project practice on a daily basis.

More understanding through practical experience

The day at Netresearch offered lively insights into the day-to-day work of a digital agency. The event made it clear how complex e-commerce projects are - and how planning, communication and technical realisation are intertwined.

Netresearch would like to thank DHSN and the Business Administration Service Management - Retail Management and E-Commerce course with its lecturer Prof Olaf Reinhold for their interest, active participation and lively exchange. We are already looking forward to the coming semester.

Such formats show how valuable the direct link between education and practice is - and how mutual knowledge transfer provides new perspectives, true to our mission Enable & Connect.