Intershop Communications AG names "Business Partner of the Year 2020."

Jena, 25th February, 2021: Awarded - Smart Commerce SE is the "Business Partner of the Year" for Intershop Communications AG in the DACH region. The award was presented to the expert team of Smart Commerce SE on February 4th as part of the virtual event "Intershop Business Partner Event," and the award was handed over on February 25th at the new headquarters of Intershop. This coveted award is a recognition of Smart Commerce's ability to acquire several new customers in 2020 and its strong commitment to expanding Intershop. Starting from Q2 2021, the "Smart Search" will be offered to customers and partners on the website, an integration of the Intershop platform with the search software Elasticsearch.

Smart Commerce develops Smart Search for Intershop Expands the new Intershop PWA towards Search and SEO Receives the "Partner of the Year" award for the DACH region. "We are delighted that Smart Commerce has been awarded 'Partner of the Year' in the DACH region by Intershop and thank Intershop for the excellent cooperation and partnership," says Dr. Ludger Vogt, CEO of Smart Commerce.

Smart Commerce and Intershop have been jointly writing a long success story; both companies have been partners since 2013. In 2020, Smart Commerce invested in expanding the Intershop platform and will offer Intershop customers and partners the "Smart Search" from 2021. The "Smart Search" is an integration of Intershop with the search software Elasticsearch. It provides an alternative to the standard Intershop search based on Solr. The focus lies particularly on speed and scalability: it enables quick retrieval of the few relevant products from millions of products, result relevance: the best possible analysis of the data in advance, and optimization of search algorithms to ensure the relevance of search results, and premium filter function: units, such as meters, are normalized in the search index, and the filters are adjustable within these units. The search relies on REST interfaces of the Intershop platform and its search framework and extensions. The functionalities of "Smart Search," such as normalization into multiple languages, results highlighting, spell-checking, and faceted search, form the core of the premium search function that truly understands the buyer.

B2B buyers now expect the convenience and, above all, speed familiar from private purchases in digital procurement. The search in B2B webshops is usually much more complex and must, therefore, offer the necessary performance and withstand a data volume of several million products. Intershop customers can now achieve this with "Smart Search." This makes "Smart Search" an excellent solution for wholesalers of electronics, tools, or automotive parts with large inventories.

"Intershop not only provides a technologically leading e-commerce platform but also a reliable and trustworthy partnership at all levels. Together with Intershop, we have the expertise to deploy technology to meet demanding customer requirements, for example, in the field of search," commented Dr. Ludger Vogt, CEO of Smart Commerce.

We, Smart Commerce, look forward to continuing our excellent collaboration and a shared e-commerce journey with Intershop! Intershop's COO Markus Klahn confirms this: "Technical extensions, but especially joint customers, form the basis of our partnership. Last year, Bürklin Elektronik, a distributor specializing in high-quality electronic components, was among them. We look forward to more."