Riddle me this:
How puzzlemaker Ravensburger cracked B2B Complexity
“We saved 2,000 hours on 20,000 orders.” That was how Ravensburger Team Lead, Platform Management, Maximilian Maucher summed up the shift to B2B self-service – powered by Sana Commerce.
Do the math: 2,000 hours is 83 days – nearly three months.
Think about what you and your business could do with 83 extra days in a year.
At Emerce 2025, Ravensburger and Sana Commerce partnered up to deliver a session on digital transformation in practice.
Ravensburger: from manual headaches to major savings
Ravensburger, a major puzzle and toy manufacturer, was struggling under the load of manual processes like order entries, stock checks, and managing backorders. While their large clients automated most orders via EDI, their small and medium sized business segments placed most orders via email or phone, causing considerable delay.
Ravensburger needed a solution that would take the strain off their sales team. The solution they hit upon?
Self-service online sales portals. If implemented correctly, this would speed the order process by putting their buyers in charge of purchases – freeing up their sales teams.
The results: 20,000 hours saved on 2,000 orders.
This freed up time not just for Ravensburger’s sales teams, but for their buyers as well. B2B Commerce proved to be a win-win.
How did they roll out B2B Commerce across seven countries in seven months?
Ravensburger: 6 lessons for scaling e-commerce
Figure out major pain points
Approach the challenge by asking "What problems are we looking to solve?" and "What solution can solve those problems?"
Get internal buy-in
Have support from leaders and decision-makers early; this will mitigate employee pushback.
Start Small
Pilot online commerce in one region, then use that success as a springboard.
Scale while standardizing
Keep your core processes, tech stack, and implementations the same.
Use carrots... and sticks
Encourage early adoption with discounts, and sparingly use fees with stubborn holdouts.
Embrace agile development
Start execution while continuing to develop future plans.
Figure out your major pain points first
For Ravensburger, their major pain points were manual processes – particularly order processing and stock checks. Additionally, their customers demanded access to real-time data for pricing and stock.
Ravensburger approached their challenge by asking, “what solution could automate manual processes while giving customers the real-time data they demanded?”
That’s when they came up with the idea of an online sales portal.
Sana Commerce Cloud stood out thanks to direct ERP-integration, which allowed real-time stock and pricing – no matter how complex or nuanced the pricing arrangement.
This B2B-specific functionality, absent in platforms like Magento, made Sana Commerce Cloud the ideal partner for Ravensburger in their digital transformation journey.
Get internal buy-in
For Ravensburger, there was initial sales team hesitancy they needed to overcome.
Their sales team was worried about how moving to e-commerce would affect commission. To put these concerns to rest, Ravensburger clarified that commission would be “customer-based, not channel-based.” This encouraged sales agents to find the right channel for their customer without worrying about impacting their compensation.
Start small
“When you do international roll outs, what works best is success stories.”
Maximilian Maucher explained that after successfully launching their first e-commerce platform in Germany, other subsidiaries and territories requested e-commerce expansion. Eventually, the different regions developed a bit of healthy competition over who could use the new online portal more successfully.
In short: the success of one web store became an internal marketing tool.
Scale while standardizing
Arno Ham had advice for businesses struggling with international roll-out.
“Every region has its wish list and reasons why standardization won’t work. One way around this is to just start: roll out e-commerce with one region. Then you can say, “it worked successfully here, why won’t it work successfully there? 9 times out of 10, it will work – with minimal changes.”
Sana Commerce Cloud makes international roll-out standard and simple: all international web stores are connected in real-time to the ERP via a single install, meaning that each store always displays accurate pricing and stock levels. Automatic content and pricing localization — along with region-specific shipping solutions – make crossing international borders as simple as clicking “choose your region.”
Use carrots…and sticks (sometimes)
Getting buyers to adopt a new e-commerce solution takes creativity. A tried-and-tested solution is discount codes – particularly for new sign-ups.
Ravensburger found a great solution: they have a discount code good for three purchases.
This makes it likely that a customer will purchase at least three times through the e-commerce platform. By that point, they’re already habituated to online ordering.
The stick? To discourage time-sucking manual orders, companies can include a manual order surcharge.
It’s not the most popular solution, but it can be very effective at getting holdovers to finally migrate.
Embrace agile development
You can make plans for years, but at some point, you just need to start.”
Maximilian Maucher emphasized that you’re never going to be fully prepared for digital transformation. In fact, trying to plan for every contingency can actually hold you back from a successful e-commerce implementation.
His solution: get internal buy-in, particularly from leadership and decision-makers. With this support, start the process. Things will change, the scope will shift, and pushback will happen. But with the support of top-level colleagues and an agile development process, you will be able to launch an effective B2B e-commerce channel.
What would you do with 2,000 extra hours?
Before Sana Commerce, Ravensburger’s sales team would field constant emails and questions: Where is my order? Is this in stock? When will my backorder ship?
After implementing an sales portal with Sana Commerce — where buyers could track orders in real-time – these queries plummeted.
“Now, our sales department can focus on the important part of their job: developing the customer relationship,” Maximilian Maucher said.
The backbone of customer self-service: Sana Commerce Cloud. Our B2B-first platform puts buyers in the driver’s seat by giving them the tools to pay invoices, amend orders, track deliveries, and see stock levels all in real-time.
As Arno Ham and Maximilian Maucher explained: this digital acceleration saves a mountain of time: 2,000 hours.
What would you do with 2,000 hours back?
Let’s solve that puzzle together.
Solve the B2B buying puzzle with Sana Commerce
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