Case Study · Retail & E-commerce
One inventory, every channel: a distributor's path to 3× online growth
A regional distributor connected its new B2B e-commerce platform to ERP, warehouses and accounting - tripling online revenue while cutting order-processing labor by 70%.
Regional consumer goods distributor · 4 warehouses
- 0x
- Online revenue growth in the first year
- 0%
- Reduction in order-processing labor
- 0%
- Drop in order errors versus manual entry
- 0%
- Of all orders now placed digitally, up from 9%
Client Overview
The situation
A regional distributor serving 1,100 retail customers took orders by phone, WhatsApp messages and emailed spreadsheets. Every order was retyped into the ERP by an order-entry team of five, with a 2 to 3% error rate that turned into returns, credit notes and strained relationships. An earlier attempt at a webshop had failed because its stock levels were unreliable and customers went back to phoning.
The Problem
What was breaking, specifically
Five staff spent their days retyping orders from phone calls, WhatsApp and spreadsheets into the ERP, with predictable transcription errors.
The previous webshop showed stale stock levels, so customers ordered items that weren't available - and quickly stopped trusting it.
Pricing was customer-specific and maintained manually, so quoted, ordered and invoiced prices frequently disagreed.
Warehouse picking worked from printed orders, with no systematic link between what was sold, picked and invoiced.
The Solution
What we designed and delivered
We built a B2B e-commerce platform with customer-specific pricing, credit limits and order history, designed around how buyers actually reorder - repeat orders, quick lists and barcode-based reordering.
An integration layer connects the storefront, ERP, four warehouse locations and accounting in near real time: stock levels update within seconds, orders flow straight to warehouse picking queues, and invoices post automatically on dispatch.
WhatsApp ordering was kept - but automated: an AI agent parses order messages from smaller customers, confirms items and quantities against live stock, and places the order into the same pipeline.
The order-entry team was redeployed to account management and exception handling, with the integration monitored around the clock under a support agreement.
Technology
The stack behind the result
- Next.js
- Custom ERP Suite
- REST APIs
- WhatsApp Business API
- PostgreSQL
- AWS
“The last webshop failed because nobody trusted it. This one shows the same stock number our warehouse sees, so customers order at ten at night and the goods are on the truck by morning. Our best salespeople now spend their time selling, not typing.”
- Managing Director, distribution client
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