The Russian special equipment market is currently going through a difficult period due to the departure of many foreign companies. The issue of import substitution and provision of already purchas equipment with high-quality components and spare parts is becoming acute. Russian manufacturers (Galichanin, DST-Ural, Road Machinery Plant, KDM, ChTZ and others) cannot meet the increas demand in a short time, because they themselves are partly dependent on supplies from abroad. Empty niches are being develop by Chinese manufacturers, who are not only intensifying sales of their products, but also buying up vacat industrial sites where equipment of European and Japanese brands was previously manufactur.
The most active are Chinese companies includ in the TOP-50 manufacturers, developing the Russian market with the help of local distributors. One of them increas sales of equipment and spare parts of a leading Chinese brand almost 5 times in three years. Equipment already suppli to Russian consumers nes to be servic, so the volume of deliveries will only increase over time. In order to make the purchasing process convenient and transparent for the entire supply chain, the distributor is introducing an online sales platform with a personal account for buyers of road construction, special equipment, components and spare parts.
The situation on the special equipment market
The road construction and special equipment market in Russia is heavily dependent on imports. In 2021, the volume of supplies from abroad exce domestic production by almost three times. In 2022, the market fell for the first time since 2016, and dependence on imports of European equipment was replac by dependence on supplies from friendly countries. Primarily from China.
The largest manufacturers of special equipment in China are Sany, XCMG and Zoomlion, which account for about 20% of imports . They are gradually replacing John Deere, Caterpillar, Komatsu, JCB and others.
Top three of the TOP-50 manufacturers of road construction equipment
The issue of providing domestically produc special equipment is being resolv slowly. Previously, production volumes were support by government orders and investment programs, but now expenses have been greatly ruc. Ensuring a competitive price level has become more difficult. Chinese equipment is still cheaper than Russian equipment due to the availability of a resource base, production scale and new production technologies.
Chinese politicians and manufacturers have telemarketing data long master the art of “soft power”, so the trend of squeezing out and replacing Western and, within reasonable limits, Russian-made equipment will continue. And if foreign brands were able to leave quite easily, then Chinese companies will stay for a long time, given China’s foreign policy course. You will draw your own conclusions about whether this is good or bad. At least, while Russia is restoring the DST and special equipment sector, we will have normal equipment from normal competitive brands.
Customer’s strategic goals
The distributor in question has been operating on the Russian market since the early 2000s, supplying Russia with the most complete range of products from one of the world’s leading manufacturers of DST and special from theme options menu equipment from China.
In addition to deliveries of equipment, spare parts and components to Russia, it offers services for service (warranty and post-warranty) maintenance of products. In addition, the distributor monitors the compliance of vehicles with the requirements of industry norms and standards. The supplier’s dealerships are present in more than 50 cities in Russia, and technical support for customers and service maintenance are provid by more than 100 authoriz service partners.
The company plans to further increase sales gambler data of equipment and spare parts. An important step towards the goal is the automation of interaction with contractors through the creation of an online trading platform. The distributor already had a set of business applications, it was necessary to design their integration with our development.
A set of applications that ne to be integrat with the Personal Account on the B2B platform.
The introduction of such a platform is another step towards ensuring that Russian users receive only original products from the manufacturer, and not “analogues” through “gray” imports. The distributor’s future plans include automation of service support with maintenance history of equipment, development of the dealer’s personal account functionality, building an online customer support system, and other improvements.
How distributor strategy is support by IT solutions
Before the departure of major Western players, the Russian company-supplier of special equipment from China did not have many opportunities to push aside its competitors, given the strength of their dealer networks and marketing budgets. Now it has a real opportunity to significantly expand its market share. For this purpose, it is necessary to seriously restructure the system of relations with clients, automate sales and service.
To learn more about the benefits of automating your distribution processes, read our articles on the benefits of digital distribution and the new features of the wholesale platform .
Personal account of a special equipment dealer and its basic capabilities
The personal account resembles a familiar online store, but with a more ascetic design.
It includes the following: a catalog, baskets, work with orders, choice of delivery method, the ability to create an order for the company’s clients from the dealer network.
The personal account stores detail information about the composition of each order and general order statistics.
For the convenience of users, when they already know the part numbers, the ability to upload a request as a simple list has been add. This saves time on searching for a part in the catalog.
In the product card you can find its characteristics, delivery conditions, and replacement options.
The dealer’s personal account interacts with other information systems of the company through the standard exchange module that we have modifi.
Integration with 1C and WMS
Creating personal accounts (PA) for partners is an effective replacement for direct work of company managers with 1C. Integration settings make it easy to do without manual entry of customer order data. Prices and warehouse balances are transferr from 1C to the clients’ PA, and orders are transferr in the opposite direction. 1C:Accounting combines data from both databases (with special equipment and spare parts) for financial and tax accounting.
Application integration scheme in the customer’s IT system
The spare parts segment is integrat with the warehouse program of the Russian developer EME.WMS. This is a modern professional warehouse management system (WMS – Warehouse Management System). According to the developers, the system architecture allows achieving greater productivity than similar systems on the 1C platform on identical hardware. Unlike the accounting system, WMS uses tasks for personnel bas on the business processes embd in it. The system automatically assigns tasks depending on the roles of employees. This level of automation removes the ne for personnel to know warehouse accounting, business processes, goods and address storage. The training time for warehouse personnel is ruc to 1 day.
The concept of an integrat, scalable solution, which is the wholesale sales platform, can be adapt to any scenarios and technical implementations.
Results of the first stage and plans for the second
The MVP (Minimum Viable Product) implements scenarios for:
- automatic and manual creation of orders by distributor and dealer managers;
- search for parts through the catalog and by article number;
- control of changes in orders by the dealer;
- view order history.
In the near future, improvements are plann with the following goals:
- development of personal account interfaces (increasing the convenience of sales, purchases, and movement);
- creation of APIs for dealer information systems;
- development of management reports;
- setting sales plans and providing marketing support to dealers.
Our experience in transferring businesses from foreign software to Bitrix shows that the import substitution process is not simple or mechanical. It doesn’t matter what we are replacing, Salesforce with Bitrix24 or Komatsu with Sany, the work must be plann and well organiz.
INTERVOLGA projects are always bas on proven methods, best industry practices, scenario development and project management experience in IT systems integration. If you are ready to take advantage of the favorable situation and earn money on import substitution or are developing your own wholesale sales area, tell us about your plans. Our analysts will suggest solutions and evaluate the implementation. The feback form is at the bottom of the page.
