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Complete eCommerce From Scratch With Over 7,000 Products
Industry
Coating
Scope
Development, Design
Duration
3.5 years of partnership + Ongoing development
Solution
eCommerce Platform
Platform
Web, Android and iOS
Introduction
Kambu automated sales orders via an eCommerce platform tailored to the protective coatings industry. Suppliers can now browse and order protective coatings, including variations, in several languages.
Buying is a complex process in the coating industry, as it involves numerous factors. Moreso when many steps are still done offline and by phone – browsing products, negotiating, invoicing.
Kambu created a one-stop portal where prospective clients can pick from thousands of offers, talk to reps live, place orders, and much more.
Challenge
Moving to eCommerce
The customer required a streamlined, modern approach to sales to meet the high demand of the market.
At the same time, it was necessary to maintain the ERP used internally. The result was a highly customized tailored eCommerce solution integrated into the ERP.
Solution
Tailored eCommerce Portal
The eCommerce portal holds thousands of products and variants. Customers interested in ordering paints can register via the web or Android and iOS apps.
Customer accounts can hold additional subaccounts – sales, accountant, supply chain, and even custom profiles. Each has limited access to specific parts of the platforms, improving safety. For example, a collaborator with the marketing role won’t see orders, but freely download advertisement material from the marketing hub.
The product catalog fetched information from the database, including datasheet, safety, and instruction manual for each product.
As a result, most of the information shown on the platform and website can be easily updated from one place.
Advanced Features
Live Chat Support With Sales Reps
Accounts With Custom Permissions
Email, SMS and In-App Notifications
User flow
Complete eCommerce experience
Technology
No Framework, Allowing Advanced Features
The platform started in uCommerce, but now its code is totally written and maintained by Kambu. It uses .NET Core (with C#), React.JS, NodeJS, ASP.NET Core, and Azure SQL Database.
This helped to create and optimize advanced features, such as document storage similar to Google Drive, reports system, sub-user management, a marketing hub, and integrations with other tools.
The coating painting industry offered interesting challenges. The catalog must factor color combinations, the temperature of storage, batch certification, conversion of colors, and more. As a result, there’s a lot of hard logic involved even in basic features.
One feature Kambu is proud of: baskets are stored in the database, instead of in sessions. In practice, it means the user’s basket will not be wiped even after days or if they access the platform through a different machine
Highlight
Upgrade: Microservices and Cloud
The platform originally ran on-premise but has since moved to the cloud via Microsoft Azure Cloud Services.
It also went from a monolithic to a microservices solution. Some microservices include assortment, which handles baskets and product information, and order services, which controls ordering and order status.
These migrations were not trivial, but granted benefits.
Benefits of Moving to The Cloud
Deployment
Before, it took 4 to 5 hours to deploy a new functionality. Now it is seamless and takes a few minutes
Performance
Every action now takes up to 4 seconds, drastically improving user experience
Scalability
It’s possible to configure each microservice separately, preventing conflicts
Availability
The cloud offers redundancy options, minimizing downtimes
Infrastructure as a Service
The customer does not have to take care about infrastructure. Whenever any change is required (for instance, adding more disk space, more power to servers), it can be done in minutes from the Azure platform
Ease of use
Changes that required complex code modification, such as server load, can now be adjusted quickly via a visual interface
Long-standing partnership
Timeline
The project has been active for over three and a half years. Before launching the first version, Kambu and the client held daily stand-ups with key personnel to ensure the project was on track.
The partnership continues with migration to the cloud, additional features, and other improvements.
7k+
Products amount
122k+
Products variants
7,5k
Customer accounts
100
Staff accounts
30+
Languages & currencies
