How Retail Distributor SAVSERVICE Increased Sales and Order Frequency with a New B2B Marketplace
Distribution business in search of operational efficiency through digital solutions
When SAVSERVICE wanted a tool to digitalise the distribution process, they already had multiple warehouses, thousands of retailers as customers and an army of sales representatives. The envisaged online ordering marketplace had to streamline the ordering from a distributor, assist sales representatives with their work and automate the tracking of sales and promo campaigns.
Among the main concerns that SAVSERVICE wanted to address were inefficient distribution routes, limited ordering channels and human-factor errors that persisted with manual orders. Moreover, the B2B marketplace had to be flexible enough to serve not only SAVSERVICE’s needs but the needs of other FMCG distributors, manufacturers and importers, too.
SAVSERVICE’s internal IT department created a working prototype of an ordering platform and tested the idea on the first users. To go beyond the prototype, SAVSERVICE needed an experienced vendor. In ELEKS, they found a team that understood their business and was ready to implement a minimum viable product against their demanding timeline.
Changing the way distributors communicate with retailers
Our team started with a four-week product discovery phase to confirm the product assumptions and find out what the users want. We also conducted a series of in-depth interviews with SAVSERVICE and their customers. Our business analytics and software architects outlined the optimal architecture of the marketplace, refined the functional requirements and developed a complete product vision and its development roadmap.
Less than four months after the discovery phase, SAVSERVICE received a ready product: their web-based iOrder platform. We built the architecture and user experience of the marketplace according to the needs of both retailers and distributors. The platform is fully flexible so that every
distributor can make their separate marketplace within the system with their own product hierarchy and promotion rules.
With iOrder, retailers are not limited by the visits of sales representatives to make product selections and place orders; this means that retailers can replenish their stock more often, while sales representatives can optimise their routes and save operational costs. The marketplace supports regular synchronisation to display only the most accurate information on product availability and active promotions. Additionally, the platform meets all the security and performance requirements and can scale to accommodate the accelerated growth of users.
