How Azelis Scaled A B2B Customer Portal Program Across 150 Markets with OroCommerce

Azelis is the global reference innovation service provider in the specialty chemicals and food ingredients industry. With an annual turnover of €4,1 billion, Azelis has transitioned from a traditional distribution model to a digital-first leader, setting the benchmark for technical expertise and customer experience in the chemical industry.

Live Website

Customer Success by the Numbers

65,000

Customers

150

portals live, serving over 200 markets

€4.B

annual turnover (2025)

The Challenge

Azelis operates in an industry where technical discovery drives the sales cycle. Customers require regulatory documents, formulation guidance, and safety data sheets long before they consider a purchase. Historically, local teams handled these requests manually, burying technical experts in administrative email chains.

Delivering this information at scale is difficult because the product catalog changes at every border. Supplier mandates restrict availability based on geography and market segment, meaning a customer in Spain Personal Care requires a completely different product view than one in China for Coatings, Adhesives, Sealants & Elastomers.

This complexity multiplies as the company expands. Continuous global growth adds new teams and legal entities to the organizational structure. Azelis needed a digital architecture flexible enough to absorb these new business units immediately, without requiring a platform rebuild.

Azelis needed a B2B portal capable of:

Giving customers a faster way to research and validate products without calling sales
Protecting specialized content while ensuring findability
Providing local teams with visibility into customer interest signals
Expanding quickly across markets using a repeatable deployment pattern

Tim Lemmens

Product Manager Digital Platforms, Azelis

The true test of a platform is how it performs in year five, not year one. What keeps us on OroCommerce is that we never felt locked into a legacy decision. Instead of hitting a technical wall as we scaled to 150 markets, the platform grew with us, handling every new layer of complexity we threw at it.

The Solution

Azelis selected OroCommerce to build a framework capable of managing regional complexity at scale. Partnering with Smile, an implementation partner with deep expertise in the platform, Azelis built a centralized backbone that connects with ERP, CRM, PIM, and a cloud data platform.

OroCommerce serves as the central engagement layer for customers, while data and approvals sync back to the core stack:

A native multi-site structure manages 150 unique portals from one platform, ensuring every country and segment has a dedicated localized experience.
Trade agreement logic controls visibility, ensuring each account sees only their specific negotiated pricing and approved product catalog after login.
Core integrations with ERP and CRM keep customer records and order workflows aligned with the global operating model.
A centralized data lake publishes market-specific portfolios into OroCommerce, managing a massive global catalog.

Scaling To 150 Portals

With this blueprint established, Azelis can add portals as new markets and segments come online. Launch timelines vary based on local readiness, but the deployment model is always the same: publish the correct portfolio, apply customer trade agreements, and run adoption locally.

This repeatability allows Azelis to expand its digital footprint rapidly without reinventing the technical architecture for every new country.

Self-Service For Buyers, Time Back For Teams

The shift to digital moved the clerical weight of smaller accounts to a self-service model. Customers now retrieve technical specifications and invoices independently, so technical experts have returned to their primary roles as consultants.

The platform also acts as a digital window into the company’s 70+ innovation labs. Lab technicians use the system to publish technical formulations that show buyers exactly how to use specific chemicals. Because technical content and commerce are linked, buyers can request a sample of every ingredient in a formulation with a single click. This turns static R&D knowledge into a 24/7 lead-generation tool.

The portal also provides a data-rich environment for sales teams. Reps use dashboards to track customer research patterns before a meeting starts. By seeing which chemical ingredients a customer has researched, reps can enter meetings with specific technical solutions.

The Impact: Repeatable Global Growth

The digital portal layer has become a core channel for high-value customer interactions. The public catalog and access workflow also bring in a steady stream of new digital relationships. Prospects find Azelis online, request access, and move into a clear onboarding path with the right regional team and portal.

Azelis now runs on a global framework built to handle ongoing expansion. Whether entering a new market or acquiring a local distributor, the company can stand up a compliant portal in as little as a week. This infrastructure ensures that no matter how fast Azelis expands, their customers always have access to the laboratory expertise and products that drive their business.

How Azelis Scaled A B2B Customer Portal Program Across 150 Markets with OroCommerce