Snell Transforms B2B Operations and Elevates Customer Experience with BigCommerce

SOLUTION

Flexibility through integrations, apps, and design tools.

Snell needed a platform flexible enough to integrate with critical back-office systems, and customizable enough to support a modern, brand-forward site experience. BigCommerce delivered on both.

Using BigCommerce’s open APIs, Snell integrated directly with Microsoft Dynamics 365 Finance & Operations, enabling real-time syncs across pricing, inventory, and customer data. This eliminated the manual processes that had created bottlenecks and potential errors on their previous platform.

At the same time, the marketing team brought Snell’s updated brand identity to life using Shogun’s page builder for BigCommerce. Following the development of custom brand elements by Terabyte’s developers, Shogun’s visual editor gave them full control over layout and content — no further developer intervention required.

“We were drawing wireframes on paper of exactly how we wanted it to look, and Shogun gave us the flexibility to make that vision reality,” said Anna Parke, Marketing Coordinator at Snell.

Tackling complex pricing at scale.

For Snell, solving for complex, customer-specific pricing was the top technical priority. The team needed a solution capable of processing millions of unique price points across its 25,000+ SKUs and 1,500+ customer base without slowing down the business.

Working closely with BigCommerce Solutions Architects, implementation partner Terabyte, and Microsoft Dynamics 365 specialists, Snell developed a powerful pricing engine that could handle enterprise-scale logic. Using Azure Functions and Service Bus Queues, they engineered a system that now processes more than 3 million price changes in under an hour.

“We initially were grappling with 50 million price permutations,” said Charles Richards, ERP Manager at Snell. “We had to develop a way to compute unique prices for every product for every customer, then process and store that data efficiently. We turned out the solution about a week before go-live, and now we can handle 3.1 million price changes in under an hour."

Delivering a modern B2B experience.

Snell’s business isn’t just about moving product, it’s about creating long-term operational value for its customers. To support that, the team rolled out BigCommerce’s B2B Edition, giving buyers access to tools designed specifically for complex purchasing environments.

Through the buyer portal, customers can manage multi-user accounts with role-based permissions, create custom shopping lists, place bulk orders using CSV uploads, and set up approval workflows with spend limits — all without needing to contact a sales rep.

Snell also integrated TradeCentric to support punchout procurement systems, enabling large customers to connect directly with their internal purchasing platforms. The result is a streamlined, self-service experience that matches how modern B2B buyers want to shop.

By shifting repetitive tasks online and empowering customers to manage their own orders, Snell has freed up internal teams to focus on deeper customer relationships.

"Some customers said the new experience was slick, easy to use. Someone else said the noise has been taken out of the ordering process. My personal favorite: 'The overall experience is up there with the big players.' That's pretty impressive  for a 100-person, New Zealand company,” remarked Charlotte.