Installation trade.
For a wholesaler in the installation trade we built a fast Hyvä webshop on Magento Open Source with the ERP at its core: customer-specific net prices, real-time stock and ordering by length.
Overview
This wholesaler serves the installation trade: installers and fitters who need materials every day, from cable and pipework to complete installation components. The challenge is not the webshop alone, but the link with the physical business: customer-specific net prices, stock per branch and fixed contract agreements.
We built a fast Hyvä storefront on Magento Open Source and put the ERP at the centre, so that prices, stock and orders stay in sync in real time.
Challenges & goals
Installers work with their own net prices and contract agreements. Online, those have to be exactly right, not approximate: a wrong price is immediately a wrong order.
Prices, stock and invoices live in the ERP. The webshop had to stay in sync with it in real time, not via a nightly export that always lags behind.
The trade has its own ordering habits: ordering by length (cable by the metre), using up remaining lengths, fast reordering, and working with blanket orders and call-off contracts.
And one installation company often has several fitters who each place orders from the same account.
Solution & implementation
We set up a fast, stable storefront on Magento Open Source with Hyvä, and solved the real complexity by putting the ERP at the centre and translating the trade's ordering habits into the shop.
Fast Hyvä storefront
We built the shop on Magento Open Source with Hyvä. That delivers a lightweight front-end with short load times, also for fitters ordering on the road or on site.
ERP at the core of the shop
We connected Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central via OData, with an asynchronous queue that absorbs peak load. Orders go to the ERP in near real time, and customer-specific net prices, current stock and invoice history come back into the shop. This way each customer sees their own contractually agreed prices and the correct stock per branch.
Ordering by length, and using up remaining lengths
For products sold by the metre from a reel, such as cable, we built industry-specific custom work. Customers order exact lengths, and the shop shows and uses up remaining lengths: leftover pieces per branch. That reduces waste and helps the installer get exactly what they need, faster.
Business accounts and contracts
With company accounts, several employees of one installation company work from the same account. A VAT incl./excl. toggle adapts the display to the tradesperson, and with blanket orders and call-off contracts we serve customers with fixed agreements.
Product data and search
A PIM connection with Skwirrel feeds technical product data, filterable attributes and datasheets, so installers quickly find the right item in a large, technical assortment. Smile ElasticSuite provides fast, relevant search results and filtering.
Payments, content and monitoring
Payments run through Mollie, content management via a headless CMS, and with Sentry we keep error monitoring sharp.
By putting the ERP at the centre and translating the trade's ordering habits into the shop, the wholesaler gained a self-service environment as reliable as the trade counter: correct prices, current stock and orders that land directly in the ERP.
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