Case study
SEDIS – E-commerce Website
The customer
SEDIS Group operates in the distribution of food products to professional clients as well as to its network of stores. Its activity is divided into two main categories.
On one hand, there’s the food clearance, which involves buying batches of food products with short shelf lives at discounted prices from manufacturers or distributors, and then reselling them by the package or pallet at discounted prices as well.
On the other hand, there’s the Range, which involves reselling food products in a more traditional manner through contracts negotiated with suppliers on a range of products, theoretically available continuously.
The issue
The world of food clearance is historically resistant to change, and old practices tend to persist. As a result, sales practices have changed little or not at all, and many transactions are still done directly or over the phone by browsing the very long list of available stock that the customer will choose from as they go along.
The disadvantage of these methods is, on one hand, that two sellers can potentially promise the same merchandise to two different customers, and only the first one to place the order will be able to honor it. On the other hand, the time spent by sellers simply listing available products is time-consuming and prevents them from having enough time to perform tasks with higher added value.
Summary of the proposed solution
Creation of an e-commerce website and a mobile application allowing customers to browse and order in real-time the products available for sale.
Catherine H. , Acheteuse
SEDIS
We worked with Nextaura to create our new internet distribution platform. Together, we built a B2B website for the sale of our fresh and dry food products to our clients.
The challenge was significant for our company, but also very complex given our needs, requests, and especially our imperatives. Our business entails significant constraints in terms of traceability, date tracking, logistics monitoring (cold chain), security... But Nextaura proved to be very patient and attentive, providing us with advice on planning, implementations, IT security, and offering solutions.
Nextaura was able to consider the requests of each department and coordinate them to create a single and beautiful project. A team of developers then joined us to address the new demands inherent to a website in constant evolution, with weekly follow-ups.
Available, serious, and always attentive, we recommend Nextaura for their professionalism, personalized support, and adaptability.
The details of the proposed solution and the approach adopted
Preamble: The specificities of the food clearance business are numerous, and SEDIS Group uses a highly customized ERP software to which it is imperative to be able to interconnect in order to properly address all the issues and specificities.
Exchange with the business teams to frame and define the need properly in order to propose a solution containing the expected functionalities.
Exchange with the ERP solution editor to study the possibilities of interconnection and validate the proposed solution.
Drafting the specifications of the API to be created on the ERP side.
Drafting the specifications of the tool for managing products to be published/on the internet.
Development of the solution following the Agile methodology.
The difficulties overcome
Interconnection with the customized ERP.
Understanding and implementing business functionalities and specificities, including but not limited to:
- Quick order page mimicking the previously communicated product list to customers.
- Management of cart timeout.
- Real-time stock reservation management upon adding to the cart.
- Management of price grids.
- Management of sales units (packs/pallets).
- Management of volume discount rules.
- Management of progressive product display (based on customer group).
- Management of pre-order products (display of arrival date, ability to order them like in-stock products).
- Management of variable weight products.
- Customer credit management.
- Management of the ERP API’s availability (or unavailability).
- Management of sales restrictions (certain clients do not have access to specific products due to the geographical location of their store).
- Supplier exclusions (certain clients do not have access to specific suppliers).
- Your Contact (Display of the commercial contact’s name and details).
- Order Tracking (Product has arrived at the warehouse, ready for pickup, etc.).
Our resources involved in the project
A project manager (Scrum Master)** adept at Agile practices, who acted as the interface between the client teams and the developers.
A frontend developer specialized in ReactJS.
A backend developer specialized in PHP-Symfony.
A designer
The tools and technologies used
Zoho Sprints (simplifies project management in Agile mode)
PHP-Symfony (Framework allowing for the rapid development of robust and easily maintainable applications, thanks to its native presence of a wide range of integrated functions)
ReactJS (Technology used on the frontend of the back-office and the simulator)
