Panasonic taps Singapore-based Anchanto for e-commerce expansion across Asia Pacific

• Unify & streamline its e-commerce backend in Malaysia, across Southeast Asia
• Panasonic aims to bring coherence to business ops across different countries, models & systems

Panasonic, a multinational electronics conglomerate, announced its partnership with global software-as-a-service (SaaS) product company Anchanto to streamline, and expand its e-commerce operations across the Asia-Pacific region. Through the partnership, Panasonic will leverage Anchanto’s omnichannel Order Management System (OMS), SelluSeller, to improve its e-commerce capabilities and have a single source of truth for real-time sales, inventory, and product information for all online channels.

As part of its growth plan for 2021, Panasonic will be deploying its omnichannel retail strategy and rely on Anchanto's technology to drive consumer engagement and enable the development of a unique experience for its customers, across multiple touchpoints, and along the whole customer journey. The implementation of the SaaS system is aimed at bringing coherence to Panasonic’s business operations across different countries, models, and systems. In the longer term, the company is aiming at a 4x growth of its e-commerce revenue through this move.

As the retail space is going through profound changes, brands' relationships with their customers are also constantly evolving. Hence, Panasonic felt the need to get closer to them, through a more Direct-To-consumer (D2C) approach. The electronics conglomerate plans to achieve this through strong multi-channel content distribution management, upgraded promotion and pricing management, safe and seamless data reconciliation, and by offering customers high-quality pre- and post-purchase services. The Panasonic IT team was on the lookout for a technology partner that could offer in-depth industry knowledge and these pre-existing core capabilities to shorten their time-to-market.

Jiro Nakami, Marketing Director at Panasonic Appliances Marketing Asia Pacific, said, “A prerequisite for us at Panasonic is to keep fascinating our customers with a unique experience. Therefore, we are adopting and optimizing an omnichannel strategy to not only drive sales, but also consumer engagement. E-commerce in particular is a window for all of our product categories, and we understand that consumers are becoming increasingly tech-savvy. But given the fragmentation of the e-commerce landscape in Southeast Asia, we needed an OMS (Order Management System) solution with the ability to integrate online and offline touchpoints with proven scalability and future expandability. This is what Anchanto provides.”

Besides, Panasonic aims to unify its backend operations across countries, teams, and business units, and consolidate their inventory control. Anchanto helped identify Panasonic’s pain points and integrated all critical systems of the brand with the rich and customizable capabilities of its multichannel eCommerce management system SelluSeller. The company also offered an adapted solution by improving Panasonic’s order and delivery tracking visibility, inventory management, invoice management, and an integration with their SAP system for seamless execution and record of operations.

Jake Hirose, Managing Director at Panasonic Appliances Marketing Asia Pacific, said “Our infrastructure and priorities vary from one country to another. Anchanto’s ready-made and powerful solutions with most web stores and marketplaces pre-integrated added to their ability to implement a customised solution integrated with SAP at lightspeed, and their unique strong presence within the APAC region were driving factors for us to select them to accompany Panasonic in the long term. Panasonic enters this new decade with great objectives and ambition. We want to be at the forefront of the growing e-commerce trend with every part of our business.

Vaibhav Dabhade (pic, right), founder and Chief Executive Officer of Anchanto added, “Our objective has always been to accompany ambitious companies on their e-commerce journey through the development of powerful and agile technology, and strong expertise. We are honored and humbled to be working with Panasonic and enabling their long term omnichannel strategy. With the help of our platform, our strong local presence in the APAC region, and our network of integrated partners, we will support Panasonic’s ambitious digital commerce plan across markets.”