Our clients provide us with complex software problems. By using our knowledge of both eCommerce development and the unique needs of the business we formulate solutions that allow the software to succeed with business objectives.
10 Minute read September 2021
A UK-based manufacturer of bespoke plastic packaging, with factories in the North West and China, around 40 employees and a turnover of around £25m.
To keep their large corporate customers in an ever more competitive market, our client realised that technology could help sell their plastic packaging products more effectively. With this in mind, they had to find a way to create a quicker, easier experience for customers, and also for staff.
To make it even harder, their brand new stock control system did not have a built in ability to connect to a website.
The challenge: reduce manual work for the sales team, and provide customers with a simpler, quicker ordering experience.
To design and build a portal that automatically pulls in product, customer and order data from the in-house system. It allows staff to decide which customers are given access, and which products they can see. Customers can quickly place orders which are automatically downloaded into the stock control system.
Within a year, our client was able to have their flagship customers using the system, placing orders worth over £10m using the new system. Within three years the majority of their sales went through the system, and it had been enhanced to include new “user stories” that were based on the real experience of using the system. Over time, with ongoing work done in the right way, the stability of the system became so good that the maintenance costs became almost zero.
The first step is always discovery – we find out the details about what is needed, and what is possible. We interviewed staff, customers and the management team to understand what would provide the most value. Value can be in various forms, such as saving staff time or making complex processes less error-prone. In this case, the value was in saving sales staff
