Solomon commercials e-commerce website
New e-commerce solution for Solomon Commercials.
The Problem
Solomon Commercial required an e-commerce presence where their existing customers could easily order spare parts for their vehicle builds.
The e-commerce had to interact with their ERP system so the product pricing and orders were automatically synchronised.
The product synchronisation had to have the ability to automatically create new products as well as update existing ones.
The order synchronisation had to automatically invoice and despatch the orders so that the sales team only had to interact with the order if there was an issue allocating stock.
As a B2B offering, the pricing and the ability to purchase had to be for approved customers only.
We created a custom module which would allow their customers to search by their order number, which the system then cross referenced with the available products to show the parts which were on their vehicle build.
This reduced errors in placing orders as customers could visually see the parts before ordering.
We created a proxy API service, build in .NET core, which acted an an API layer on top of their SQL stored procedures in the ERP.
The API & Task Runner services perform the following tasks:
- Order number lookup – to return all the parts which were on a vehicle at the time of build
- Product synchronisation – a push based system which created / updates products on a schedule
- Order synchronisation – a pull / push based system for processing and despatching orders and updating the orders in Magento
We implemented a multi-source inventory system to enable in-store pickups from their depot
A custom module was built which ensures a customer needs to create an account and be approved before they can view pricing and place orders.
The module also restricts the customer’s payment methods to credit / debit cards until their account has approval for purchase orders.
The Solution
Magento frontend and a .NET Core API and task runner service
The frontend was delivered in Magento as it’s tried-and-tested and an industry standard in e-commerce builds.
The backend was delivered in .NET as a proxy API service between Magento and their ERP (Supply Chain). This service is also responsible for order collection and fulfilment.
End-to-end Solution
Our end-to-end solution meant that the sales team would have no interaction with the website orders, unless there was an issue placing / despatching, or invoicing an order.
Despatch and invoice notes were replicated in the task runner system to ensure continuity on placing orders on the website and over the phone.
As the sales team have no interaction with the website orders, they’re free to handle an increased amount of phone orders and handle other customer enquiries.
