Creating an Inventory Management Platform for B2B Company: A Case Study

About The Client

In a bid to streamline the inventory and retail management process, a leading B2B company wanted to create a centralized inventory management platform to manage and retrieve essential data pertaining to sales orders, stock, sales, and finance. The client was handling inventory across various sales channels, such as Shopify, Zanui, and dropshipping sites like B2B Wave and Temple & Webster, and hence required a platform that simplified the tracking of inventory and efficiently managed the retail orders for business owners.

To bring this vision to life, the client approached our team at APPWRK and collaborated with us to create a robust platform. With our expertise in creating an inventory management system with multi-channel inventory management system using technologies like Next.js, Node.js, React, Shopify, Xero, Jira and My SQL.

Industry

Inventory & Retail Management
Services

Design, Development, Deployment, Maintenance & Support
Business Type

B2B
The Team

UI/UX Designer, Lead Developer and Web Developers
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Project Overview: Engineering an IMS Platform for Efficient Inventory and Sales Data Management

Inventory Management System

Aiming to develop a unified inventory management application where the users could manage stocks, handle purchase orders, and track financial data, the client required our team at APPWRK to create a feature-rich IMS platform that had seamless UX and real-time updation capabilities like automated inventory updates and multi-channel order tracking. The major challenge that was posed in the development of this application was the retrieval of sales and order details due to the absence of APIs for certain sales channels and updating the data in a timely manner.

Despite the challenges that arose during the development, our team navigated them skillfully with their expertise and delivered a feature-rich and state-of-the-art IMS platform that helped the client to efficiently manage inventory across multiple sales channels and automatically update and fetch purchase details in real-time in just 8 months.

Technologies Used

Next.js
React.js
Node.js
Express.js
MYSQL
Xero
Highcharts
Shopify
B2B Wave
Temple & Webster
JIRA
SSL Certificate

Challenges that Arose when Developing a Centralized, Multi-Channel Inventory Management System

1. Inconsistency and Confusion in Inventory Management

The client was struggling with managing large quantities of stock across multiple sales channels like Shopify, Zanui, Temple & Webster, and B2B wave, which led to a lot of discrepancies in stock levels. To solve this, our team developed an inventory management system that not only provided real-time inventory tracking but also ensured accurate stock updates.

2. Lack of a Centralized Financial Insight

Tracking financial data like the number of units sold, profit/loss, and sales with date, month, and quarter filters was extremely difficult for the client and led to inefficient resource allocation and the analysis of key business metrics. Our team came up with a solution of presenting these data in comprehensive graphical representations using bar charts and pie charts so that the business stakeholders and retailers could easily review their sales overview and inventory status.

3. Facilitating Real-Time Data Updating through APIs

In order to retrieve the purchase order and sales details for the sales channels, our developers required APIs that could receive live updates without delays. However, ensuring that the data was updated instantly in real time was challenging as the platform had to stay continuously connected with these APIs.

4. Fetching Data from Zanui and Temple & Webster

When developing the inventory management system, our team faced struggles in fetching the order details and inventory data from Zanui, a wholesale order management system, and Temple & Webster, a dropshipping site, as these platforms did not possess APIs. To navigate this challenge, our development team had to retrieve the purchase order details from users’ Gmail inboxes.

5. Integrating Xero API

Implementing a feature that allowed users to gain insights into their order status, showing information like the canceled, unfulfilled, fulfilled, and invoiced orders, required integration of an API that would fetch the required details from respective channels accordingly. With some sales channels lacking APIs, our development team needed to create Xero API from scratch to present these details in real time.

What We Built: An Innovate Inventory Management System that Drastically Increased Operational Efficiency

01

Our development team implemented the DevOps methodology to create an inventory management system that retrieved order and financial details from multiple sales channels. Since Temple & Webster and Zanui lacked APIs, our team had to create Xero API, which allowed the platform to analyze Gmail inboxes to fetch purchase and sales information and update them in real time.
02

By employing the latest technologies like React.js, Node.js, and JIRA, we engineered the platform with advanced features like seamless integration with multiple sales channels, real-time stock availability insights, and automated low-stock alerts so that users could fully benefit from it and efficiently manage their operations with ease.
03

In order for the platform to be easily operated by users of varying technical expertise, we ensured that the interface was intuitive and the navigation was seamless. Along with that, our developers put a great deal of thought into making sure that the order and finance data represented to the users was easy to understand with real-time data synchronization.
04

Considering the extensive number of product and order listings within the platform, our developers added a search button for users to easily draw up specific results. In addition to this, the platform allowed users to easily modify the inventory through bulk edits, update their dashboard view according to their requirements, and conveniently transfer inventory from one channel to another with just a single click of a button.

The Outcome

By implementing a real-time stock tracking system, the client was able to gain clear visibility into the stock levels, which allowed them to track the different stock types accurately and receive instant low-stock alerts, preventing shortages and overstocking.
With a centralized platform, the client could easily add and update their purchase details into the application, which led to a reduction in manual work and minimized errors in inventory management.
The inventory management system provided visually comprehensive reports on sales and inventory, which enabled the client to make better business decisions with greater speed and accuracy.
Designed with an intuitive interface, the platform allowed users of all skill levels to manage inventory effortlessly, boosting productivity and reducing operational errors.