Praxisdienst

The decision for Shopware had already been made when Praxisdienst came to us. The starting point: the shop was to move from its legacy OXID system to a modern platform. Praxisdienst also runs an equipment rental shop that was already on Shopware 6. That experience certainly played a part in choosing Shopware 6 for the main Praxisdienst shop as well.

At Praxisdienst, technology is central. The company relies heavily on modern functionality and AI features, and that is exactly what Shopware delivers. At the same time, customers were not supposed to lose the features they were used to. What was still missing was the right Shopware agency to implement it. That’s how Praxisdienst came to us.

Shopware has a modern tech stack and scales very well. For a retailer like Praxisdienst that is essential, because the business needs many industry-specific features. The system doesn’t carry unnecessary functionality around. It has a lean core, and with extensions and custom features you build the shop exactly the way the retailer needs it.

Then there is the Shopware API. It lets you connect ERP, PIM or DAM with manageable effort. Another advantage: Shopware is headquartered in Germany. Legal requirements for retailers keep growing, and Shopware addresses EU regulations early, with its own features that help retailers meet new requirements on time.

Usability matters too. The administration is clear and quick to learn. Many configurations can be handled in Shopware by admins, customer service and content teams themselves, without a developer. That makes retailers more independent. And it gives us, as a Shopware agency, room to focus on developing the shop further and driving growth.

Technically, there are few reasons. Shopware’s plans are transparent, and you can see exactly which features are included. You should check in advance which plan you need. And if you have very specific features with complex logic, make sure they can be implemented. With the large range of extensions and the option to build your own plugins, though, the limits are far away.

What you shouldn’t underestimate is cost. Pricing for Rise and Evolve is published on the Shopware website. Beyond is an enterprise solution, where the price depends on scope, the level of service and the revenue the merchant processes through the platform. At Praxisdienst, we use Evolve. We support our clients in their discussions with Shopware so they choose the right edition and plan, with no nasty surprises later.

You also need to budget for extensions. You won’t get by without them in Shopware, and they cost money. At the start of the project, get an overview of recurring costs and maintenance costs.

The task was not to rebuild the OXID shop one-to-one, but to reimagine it. Certain features had to remain available to customers. At the same time, a lot of data had to be migrated: customer history, order history, shopping lists and a large amount of content.

That made data migration a major part of the relaunch. Shopware comes with a migration assistant. For very large or complex data sets, you add your own scripts. Our challenge was to transfer the data as completely as possible and with the correct assignments, while the old shop kept running until just before the relaunch. We only switched it off at the last moment and kept the cut-over window as small as possible. During that window, a substantial delta migration was still running.

We also migrated content pages and mapped them to new templates. Praxisdienst’s content team then finalised them.

Coordination is not to be underestimated either. As the Shopware agency, we worked in close alignment with the ERP provider, the PIM provider, an SEO agency and a design agency until every piece of the puzzle fit.

The Praxisdienst shop is part of a wider system landscape. We connected the ERP and the PIM (Pimcore). Later we connected Praxisdienst’s own tools, also via API. We also implemented OCI punch-out, which is widespread in B2B, and integrated Praxisdienst’s Easy Order app, which works together with the shop.

First, bringing all the features from the OXID shop to Shopware. Not because of the technology, but because of the dependencies. Praxisdienst’s customers are used to certain features, and many of them build on each other. So we had to rebuild them in a fixed order, which took careful planning and concept work.

Second, the ERP integration. Praxisdienst operates internationally, which creates many tax edge cases. A product may have the standard VAT rate in one country and a special rate in another. When orders are handed over to the ERP, tax numbers, VAT IDs and certain formats have to match exactly. Implementing that in Shopware wasn’t the problem. The hard part was covering the exception to the exception, so that every order reaches the ERP without errors.

Shopware’s concept is a lean core that you dock components onto. That’s exactly what we did, using extensions from the Shopware Store and plugins we built ourselves. On top of that came many small adjustments that extend Shopware’s standard behaviour in a targeted way via plugins. There was never a point where we, as a Shopware agency, had to say “that can’t be done.”

B2C targets consumers: gross prices, straightforward taxation and hardly any restrictions on who can buy what. B2B is different, especially in the medical sector:

• Country-specific assortment: Certain devices and materials may not be sold in some countries, so they don’t appear there.

• Tax by country: A product has 19% VAT in Germany and a special rate in another country.

• VAT ID validation: VAT IDs are validated live across Europe via an interface.

• Delivery terms: For pallet shipments overseas, shipping costs can hardly be calculated in the shop upfront. They are charged afterwards, and the shop makes this clear.

• Practice supplies billed via health insurance (SSB): Clinics and medical practices can buy SSB products billed through statutory health insurance. For eligible customers the price drops to zero, and the buyer then initiates billing with the insurer.

With its B2B Components, Shopware covers a lot already: gross and net prices per customer group, individual order lists, quick orders via upload, role-based budget limits and permissions with approval workflows. There is an admin on the customer side and roles that can buy directly or must wait for approval. Customers can request quotes, which are priced, accepted or declined in Shopware. Subscription and leasing models are possible too. Much of this is available out of the box, and all of it can be extended.

We stay by our clients’ side. We keep the system up to date, monitor performance and develop the platform in a targeted way. Together with the client we decide which features are needed next to hit the KPIs. And we measure whether the changes delivered what we expected.

How we continue depends on the client. Smaller shops stay in maintenance mode with updates and bug fixing. With larger clients we have maintenance contracts and SLAs with guaranteed system availability. With them we continuously develop and scale the shop.

At Praxisdienst, the wish for a dedicated B2C shop came up soon after the relaunch. We quickly started on concept and design, moved into implementation and launched the B2C shop four months after implementation began.