Solution: B2B E‑Commerce Industry: Construction Core sector: Wholesale
Unique Price Management System for B2B Trading Platform
The Challenge
Grudnik Trading Group was established in 1989 in Kracow. Modern trade policy and efficient company management have made Grudnik one of the leaders in the installation, heating and sanitary industry in Poland. Currently, the organization has 11 branches located in Warsaw, Lodz, Cracow, Wroclaw, Poznan, Lublin and Rzeszow, among others. As a result, Grudnik is able to provide fast and efficient service to customers throughout the country. The company's main contractors are installers and wholesalers, which receive products from over 300 European manufacturers.
Previously, sales had only been conducted through stationary points. The company is focused on developing and optimizing its business model, a key part of which was to expand distribution to include online channels. Unity Group was asked to analyze the needs before selecting and then implementing the appropriate technological solution - a B2B platform that would effectively support the work of the sales team and enable automation and sales growth. One of the company’s most important requirements was the ability to assign individual quotes to contractors, in accordance with the discounts resulting from trade agreements.
- The main goal of implementing the B2B e-commerce platform was to make it faster and easier for customers to place orders 24/7, as well as to reduce the cost of servicing contractors.
- The platform was also intended as a way to reach new groups of customers - including acquiring new wholesale customers.
- It was important to increase the sales effectiveness of sales representatives by providing a useful tool to support their daily work. Each sales rep needed access to a dedicated panel.
- Due to the extensive base of trade agreements and the resulting discounts, the B2B platform had to have functionality allowing individual price management, including the ability to assign discounted prices for selected products or groups of products for individual contractors.
- It was similarly necessary for multiple accounts to place orders within a single contractor. The new system was to handle multiple orders from within a single company, as well as support the approval of purchases according to the hierarchy of positions on the contractor's side.
- The platform was to be a tool to support the sales activities of the Grudnik sales team and the customers themselves.
- The company wanted to avoid disruption to its services, so any proposed solution had to be integrated with its existing ERP (Microsoft Dynamic AX) and PIM (ETIM-Mapper) system.
- Another key challenge was to provide an efficient and scalable solution that would enable the above expectations to be met and ensure the smooth operation of an offer covering almost 90,000 products.
The Solution
- After analyzing Grudnik's needs and expectations, we proposed building a dedicated B2B platform based on our proprietary product Unity.Commerce 4.
- Grudnik can use the platform as a sales tool thanks to the trader's panel, wherein access is individually assigned.
- We have created a hierarchical structure of users within a given contractor, which has made it possible for multiple employees to place orders individually.
- For the presentation of individual pricing, we prepared an innovative solution, automatically taking into account the statuses of individual customers and products, as well as the current discounts, terms of trade and pricing policy.
- The use of the extensive product database has been facilitated by the implementation of a search engine with prompts, as well as advanced filtering and sorting capabilities for the assortment - while, of course, still maintaining individual prices for contractors.
- In order to support the commercial activities of Grudnik's contractors, we added the ability to create individual offers for their end customers.
- We have added functionalities to facilitate the entire purchasing process, including support for multiple baskets with the possibility of sending orders to different addresses, renewal of purchases from a given order, support for trade credit, and the automatic sending of purchase status notifications to the customer.
- We added customer segmentation, enabling marketing activities targeted at a group of customers from a given industry or location, such as a selected city.
- The implemented Unity.Commerce 4 system includes built-in CMS functions. Thanks to this, Grudnik can, among other things, freely manage widgets (such as for creating banners, articles or presentations of related products), as well as support landing pages for promotional activities.
- We integrated the B2B platform with the client's ERP system using the Mule ESB data bus, which ensures the real time flow of information, all while being a fully scalable solution.
The Result
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