A Success story: Angst + Pfister with DirectUP

The start of a successful relationship

Angst + Pfister and Sly have a long-standing business relationship. Angst + Pfister and APSOparts have been our customers since the day Sly AG was founded. However, the relationship between the founders of Sly and Angst + Pfister started more than 15 years ago when they implemented their first webshop. We look back on a successful cooperation, many successful projects and countless releases. But today we want to focus on one of our most recent projects, which perfectly demonstrates why long-term relationships with our customers are so important to us. Let's take a look back at the beginning of this exciting story.

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CSV order out of an ERP? Not always possible…

As APSOparts customers know, CEO Ralf Werder is doing everything he can to optimize the shopping experience and his processes. For example, the easiest way for a B2B customer to order is directly from ERP to ERP. These connections are known as EDI, SAP Ariba, OCI or e-procurement solutions. Those are expensive approaches and usually too costly and resource-intensive for small and medium-sized companies to implement.

For Ralf Werder, it was clear that something had to happen for smaller companies as well. As an alternative, most webshops offer the option of uploading orders in CSV or Excel format. This was confirmed by a study commissioned by APSOparts. However, the same study concluded that not every ERP can handle a CSV or Excel export. So what data format can an ERP export in most cases? A PDF file.

With these findings and Ralf Werder's way of thinking, the idea of a PDF parser for orders was born. After some research, it was clear that such an interface did not yet exist. The decision to ask long-time partner Sly for a solution was obvious.

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From “PDF order reader” to DirectUP

Sly immediately believed in this idea and was interested in collaborating with APSOparts to implement this useful webshop feature. Soon after, Sly started the DirectUP project together with APSOparts.

It took many refinements and iterations to build the first MVP based on an intelligent algorithm to parse various PDFs. After a few iterations, the tests showed that the solution is accurate and efficient, and so far it has been a complete success.

After a lot of fine-tuning, the first version of DirectUP was made available in the APSOparts webshop in 2020. After the deployment in production, APSOparts launched a marketing campaign to introduce the new webshop feature to its customers, with a high success rate. Today, several hundred PDFs are processed every month through DirectUP.

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DirectUP as SaaS

As the adoption rate shows, DirectUP is a successful, customer-friendly tool. What should the next steps look like? For APSOparts, the project was complete. They had a working solution and satisfied customers with improved ordering processes. But for Sly, that wasn't "the end." For Sly, as a B2B e-commerce specialist, this feature was going to be a product in its portfolio, offering the benefits it had identified to other webshop operators and their customers.

One meeting later, thanks to Ralf Werder, Sly got the permission to continue developing the application into a separate product. From then on, Sly worked on an easy-to-implement Software-as-a-Service solution that could be offered to every B2B webshop owner. This was the birth of Sly Connect.

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Sly Connect

To make the new SaaS solution, Sly Connect, available to other customers, some customization options of the service were required. The implementation was adapted so that Sly Connect can be integrated into any webshop as a widget with just a few lines of code. Sly Connect is a white-label solution and can be fully customized during the integration into a webshop to allow a flawless design integration as well.

Over time and with more and more customers, Sly gathered feedback about Sly Connect. Based on this feedback, Sly Connect has been continuously improved and is now able to process PDFs even faster and with higher accuracy. Today, we provide version 2.0 with many improvements. All details about the algorithm update can be found in our blog post about version 2.0: https://sly.ch/post/sly-connect-v2

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Custom features and premium VELOX module

Not only is Sly constantly improving the algorithm, there are also special customer requests to be satisfied when the standard solution does not quite meet the needs. Sly is open to implementing custom projects based on Sly Connect. As a good example, we can come back to our valued partner, APSOparts. They needed scanner integration in addition to the standard DirectUP features. This was developed for them by Sly and is available as an enterprise feature for all Sly Connect customers.

Another recently developed feature is custom fields. If Sly Connect's standard fields are not enough, we offer a custom field solution with eight fully customizable fields. In addition, email integration is planned. If you have other needs, don't hesitate to contact us. We are sure we will find a way to make Sly Connect work for your business as well.

Sly Connect is also integrated as a premium VELOX module. VELOX is an open-source headless e-commerce solution developed by Sly. It is a powerful foundation for all e-commerce scenarios: very flexible and customizable. You can read more about it here:
https://www.velox.swiss/

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‍A toast to the next 15 years

We at Sly are looking forward to hopefully the next 15 years with Angst + Pfister and many more success stories. We'll let you know when we have new material for the next story! Until then, thank you Angst + Pfister and APSOparts.

And dear reader, if we can also spark your interest in a collaboration, the groundbreaking PDF parser solution Sly Connect or our powerful e-commerce foundation, please don't hesitate to contact us. We are here for you and your concerns. If you are looking for a technical product rather than an e-commerce solution, APSOparts is looking forward to your visit to their webshop. And don't forget to try DirectUP while you are there!

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Contact Sly AG: info@sly.ch

Book a non-binding Sly Connect demo: https://sly.ch/products/slyconnect-free-consultation

Book a non-binding VELOX demo: https://www.velox.swiss/contact/get-a-demo

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Visit the APSOparts webshop: https://www.apsoparts.com/

Visit Angst + Pfister: https://www.angst-pfister.com/