Development of Ecommerce Progressive Web App to Streamline Salesman-Retailer Engagement

Our customer is the Asian subsidiary of a global manufacturer of consumer goods, managing hundreds of brands.

The customer faced a unique impediment in supply chain management.

• The products are usually transported from depots to distributors and then to retailers. These products are eventually ordered by end consumers and shipped to them.
• While distributing products to retailers, salesmen played a crucial role in updating the retailers about ongoing offers, new products, etc. However, the salesmen inevitably spent a lot of time in physically taking the orders from retailers. This hampered the progress of their primary activities related to account management.
• The retailers were also highly dependent on the salesmen visiting their stores to record orders.

Our ecommerce consultants analysed the problem and identified a solution to improve the efficiency of the process by streamlining salesman-retailer engagement.

• We designed and developed a Progressive Web App (PWA) that can be easily used by salesmen and retailers.
• The app could be effortlessly installed on the mobile phones of the users and would help them in placing/fulfilling orders.

Key Features:

• The Magento instance we developed for this project supports multiple stores and each store supports multiple languages.
• A salesman can open the app from the home screen of his mobile phone and log in to the app. He will be able to select retailers mapped to him and view order details, cart and requisition lists.
• The salesman can add/modify items in the cart/requisition list of the retailer and checkout these items on behalf of the retailer.
• The retailer can login to his account, browse the catalog, view offers, add items to cart and checkout the items, just like an ecommerce store.
• The app is also integrated with the SAP ECC ERP system for customer, products and order data. This rendered catalogue data and tracking seamless and real-time.
• Two carts were available for each retailer based on specific categories.
• Bar code scanning was available to search for a product.
• Bulk addition of items to cart is possible.

• Our solution helped retailers in tracking purchases and maintaining purchase data. It also increased the RFM of purchases.
• Since the retailers and salesmen were both empowered to add items to cart and checkout, the order logging process became more seamless and independent.
• Our solution also enabled the salesmen to focus on more important account management activities.

• Magento EE Cloud
• Mobile App: Customised PWA
• PM Tool: JIRA and Confluence