Case study · Manufacturing & wholesale
Customers who order, track and pay without calling
B2B customers still order by email and phone because the supplier has no portal, or a portal that doesn't know their prices. This is how we built a customer portal connected to the ERP, with account-specific pricing, quick reordering, order tracking and invoices.
Project overview
A trade portal with live ERP data.
- Industry
- Manufacturing & wholesale
- Client
- Confidential
- Solution
- B2B ordering portal
- Platform
- Web + ERP integration
- Timeline
- 12–18 weeks
- Team
- 5 people
- Pricing
- Customer-specific
- Integration
- Business Central, F&O or other ERP
- Users
- Trade customers, sales team
Expected business outcomes
What the client set out to achieve
Order entry time and customer service calls are the measures.
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30–60%
Of orders placed online
Customers reorder in the portal instead of emailing.
Target range after the first year
-
Fewer
'Where is my order?' calls
Order status and tracking visible to customers.
Measured in customer service call logs
-
Zero
Retyped web orders
Portal orders flow straight into the ERP.
Where integration is live
Business challenges
Where the client started
Orders arrive in every format and are keyed by hand.
Ordering
Customers email spreadsheets or phone orders.
Pricing
Customer-specific prices only visible to the sales team.
Status
Customers call to ask about deliveries.
Invoices
Copies of invoices requested by email.
Sales team
Account managers spend time on admin instead of selling.
Proposed solution
What the portal covers
Built around how trade customers actually buy.
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Catalogue
Products with specifications, stock availability and documents.
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Account pricing
Each customer sees their own prices and terms from the ERP.
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Quick reorder
Order history, favourites and upload of order spreadsheets.
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Order tracking
Status and delivery tracking for every order.
-
Invoices and statements
Documents and balances available to download.
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Multiple users
Several buyers per account with approval limits.
Project requirements
What the client asked us for
The request was online ordering. The deciding factor is pricing: customers only use a portal that shows their negotiated prices and stock correctly.
Reordering is designed for speed, because most B2B orders repeat previous ones.
What the project had to deliver
- 01Customer-specific prices
- 02Fast reordering
- 03Order tracking
- 04Self-service documents
Key challenges & considerations
What made it harder, and what we did
-
Complex pricing agreements
What we did
Pricing was read live from the ERP, so every customer saw their own agreed prices.
-
ERP APIs and performance
What we did
ERP calls were cached and queued to keep the portal fast.
-
Large catalogues
What we did
Search and filters were tuned for a large catalogue.
-
Customers used to emailing
What we did
The sales team introduced the portal to their accounts, and reordering was made the fastest path.
What we watched for
- Get pricing right first
- Make reorder the fastest path
- Involve the sales team in launch
- Keep the ERP as source of truth
Development process
ERP integration first
Prices and stock have to be right before anyone logs in.
-
Discovery
Customer ordering habits and pricing rules mapped.
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Integration
ERP integration for prices, stock, orders and documents.
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Portal build
Catalogue, ordering and account pages built.
-
Pilot customers
A group of friendly customers uses the portal.
-
Launch
All customers invited with sales team support.
Technology stack
Web portal on top of the ERP
The ERP stays the source of truth.
Front end
- React or Next.js
- TypeScript
- Accessible design system
Back end
- Node.js or .NET
- PostgreSQL or SQL Server
- REST / GraphQL APIs
Cloud
- Azure or AWS
- Managed databases
- CDN
Quality
- Automated tests
- CI/CD
- Monitoring and alerts
Quality assurance & deployment
Tested every sprint, released without drama
Testing ran alongside the build, not after it. Every feature was checked against its acceptance criteria in the sprint it was built in, and releases went through an automated pipeline.
- Automated unit and API tests, run on every change
- Code review by a second engineer before anything was merged
- Feature testing against written acceptance criteria
- Cross-browser and responsive checks on the agreed devices
- Security checks on access, sessions and data handling
Deployment
- 01Pilot customersA group of friendly customers uses the portal.
- 02LaunchAll customers invited with sales team support.
- 03Automated release pipelineThe same build moved from staging to production, with a tested rollback.
- 04Monitoring and warrantyError and uptime monitoring from day one, and six months of free bug fixing.
Final deliverables
Customers served around the clock
Trade customers order at their prices, track deliveries and download invoices themselves, and orders arrive in the ERP without retyping.
Account managers spend their time on relationships instead of admin.
- Online ordering
- Account pricing
- Order tracking
- Self-service invoices
Handed over to the client
- 01Production applicationDeployed and monitored
- 02Source codeIn a repository the client can access
- 03Technical documentationArchitecture, setup and deployment
- 04Test suite and pipelineSo later changes stay safe
- 05Six-month warrantyFree bug fixing after delivery
Success metrics
How success is measured
| Measure | Outcome | How it is measured |
|---|---|---|
| Of orders placed online | 30–60% | Target range after the first year |
| 'Where is my order?' calls | Fewer | Measured in customer service call logs |
| Retyped web orders | Zero | Where integration is live |
Verified reviews
What clients say about our web development work
Verified reviews from our clients on the same kind of work, published on Clutch.
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Web Development
Custom Web Development for a Software Solutions Company
We can rely on them to handle almost any task with confidence, as they consistently deliver good results.
Casper Hougaard Jensen
CEO & Co-Founder, Iterator IT Jul 2021 – Sep 2022
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Web Development
Web & Mobile App Development for a Software Development Company
They efficiently organized tasks and deliverables while promptly addressing questions.
Damien Retzinger
Founder, Graycore Jun 2021 – Feb 2023
-
Web Development
Website Development for a Software Engineering Company
They have a broad understanding of different technologies.
Eugene Bosikov CEO, Ezibeline LLC Mar 2022 – Ongoing Verified review on Clutch (Eugene Bosikov, opens in a new tab)
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