Client
The CIS division of one of the world's largest chemical and industrial companies, a producer of cleaning and detergent products, adhesive materials, cosmetics, and personal care products. It has 12 offices and 11 factories in different regions of the country. The company's CIS division generated revenue of more than RUB 91.5 billion in 2022.
The project client is one of the company's business segments, which produces professional cosmetics for beauty salons and specialty stores.
Problem: order entry errors and high workloads for sales representatives due to routine operations
Working with professional cosmetics requires the proper qualifications, so the client's professional cosmetics are distributed only by distributors that operate through sales representatives. Only beauty salons, cosmetology clinics, professional cosmetics stores, and independent specialists with verified qualifications can buy from a sales representative.
At the time the client approached KT.Team, the product distribution scheme looked like this.
As a result, a buyer could place an order only through the nearest available sales representative, and could review current offers, discount programs, order statuses, and their own order history only by contacting their sales representative or the distributor's customer support team.
This way of distributing products became a business problem for several reasons.
The client wanted to automate the order placement process to eliminate the listed obstacles to the desired growth in the professional cosmetics segment and came to KT.Team with this request.
- A manufacturer's sales representative assigned to a specific territory would find potential buyers, provide catalogs, talk about the cosmetics, and invite them to place an order.
- The buyer could choose products during the first meeting or place the order later - during a sales representative's visit or remotely, by emailing them or dictating the order by phone.
- Then the sales representative manually entered the order into the manufacturer's internal Distributor Management System (DMS), from which the order was sent to the CRM system of the distributor operating in that region.
- The order placement and tracking process was difficult for both the buyer and the distributor. All communication took place by email or phone, and any data had to be found and shared manually.
- Higher risk of errors as order volume increased. Each additional item increased the risk that human error would affect the accuracy of the order: the buyer could confuse the product name or specify a different quantity than planned, while the distributor could mishear, write down, or transfer something incorrectly. All these mistakes were discovered only when the buyer received the completed order.
- Up to 80% of a sales representative's time was spent on manual order processing instead of finding new buyers and increasing sales volume. As a result, the growth of the customer base slowed significantly.
- Low promotion effectiveness. Buyers could only learn about current offers by requesting them through a sales representative, and explaining the terms of each promotion took a lot of time.
- Incomplete realization of sales potential. If the company had no sales representatives in a region, either permanently or temporarily, it lost the local market.
Task: digitize B2B deal processing while minimizing the process's dependence on human factors
The KT.Team team needed to create a responsive mobile app and web portal for convenient handling of B2B deals: the buyer had to be able to independently place and submit orders to the distributor through a dedicated storefront with a request collection feature.
In addition, the planned platform functionality included convenient tools that made it possible to:
At the same time, the application had to be integrated with the client's systems and with all 40 distributors, each with its own CRM, payment schemes, and business process logic.
- track order statuses;
- view the full order history and repeat any order, including those placed offline through a sales representative;
- learn about active distributor promotions and personal product prices;
- get information about stock levels of the required items.
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The KT.Team team created a single platform for online handling of B2B orders without requiring sales representatives
Together with the client, we developed a B2B portal and mobile app for placing and tracking online orders.
After the B2B portal was implemented, sales representatives focused on finding new buyers, while the clients they had already brought in remained assigned to their distributors, and the familiar bonus and reward system continued to apply to the distributors themselves.
Buyers, in turn, gained the ability to add the needed items to the cart themselves, place orders, and track their status online without involving sales representatives. The app gives users seamless access to current prices for professional cosmetics, active promotions, and actual warehouse stock.
To create the B2B portal, KT.Team used the Saleor e-commerce platform, written in Python. This platform is a set of tools and an admin panel for configuring an online store. During the project, we adapted Saleor to the client's business needs. The store's frontend logic was implemented as a PWA (short for progressive web application), built with React.
To distribute orders between distributors, we integrated the application with the DMS, using the WSO2 data bus with the RabbitMQ message broker and thereby ensuring reliable information delivery. Under the new logic, orders from the application go into the DMS and from there are redistributed to the distributors' internal systems.
In addition, the KT.Team team set up integration with the company's training platform, where certified industry specialists are registered. Only registered users of the training platform can log in to the app and place an order. When a user attempts to log in, the app queries this platform via API to approve or reject access.
Each buyer gets access to personalized offers based on delivery terms, price, and item quantity
Product prices differ for new and returning buyers and also depend on the volume of previous purchases. This logic is brought into the B2B portal: it automatically shows the client a personal price based on their past activity. Data on all orders is saved in the system and displayed in the user's account.
The KT.Team team also built from scratch the logic for automatically applying multi-level promotions tailored to the client's business specifics. For example, promotions can be centralized, for all buyers across all distributors, or apply only to buyers of one specific distributor. Distributors gained the ability to launch different scenarios for complex campaigns and discount programs with many nuances - the new price or updated purchase terms are automatically reflected in the cart.
The app allows each user to see the available quantity of items in warehouses located in the settlements nearest to them. Buyers can adjust their orders themselves based on stock information.
For example, a client wants to include 15 bottles of a certain shampoo in an order, but only 12 are in stock. Previously, they would send the order to a sales representative, who would check stock levels, call the buyer back to clarify what to substitute for the missing items, and so on - during this time, the order was still in the checkout stage and its fulfillment was delayed.
Now the buyer also sees stock information and can independently remove items from the order or reduce the quantity in the cart, placing the order right away without any later corrections.
In the Saleor platform dashboard, the KT.Team team implemented delivery condition logic configurable through the admin panel, which makes it possible to calculate delivery cost and time based on the buyer's location. For example, if goods need to be delivered to Murmansk, but the nearest warehouse does not have the required items and they are available, for example, in Saint Petersburg, the system will automatically take this into account and calculate the actual delivery time and cost.
- Price
- Warehouse stock
- Product delivery
Purchasing companies gained the ability to set access permissions for employees and automate internal order approval
The new B2B platform makes it possible to create user accounts with different access levels within a single legal entity.
For example, the salon administrator and owner can see individual prices, stock levels, and previous orders, and can place and track new orders. A stylist at the same salon sees only the products and base prices (or no prices at all) and can add items to the cart. After finishing the order, the employee sends it to the administrator for approval, and only then is the order registered and sent to the distributor.
Thanks to fast order features, filling the cart took much less time.
Large buyers work with high volumes of products and therefore had to dictate by phone or retype in an email the full list of required items every time they placed an order, which made the process more difficult for both distributors and the buyers themselves, especially since order compositions are usually similar.
We equipped the B2B portal with automated cart filling features.
- Fast ordering via an external file. The buyer can upload their own Excel spreadsheet to the system, and the data is automatically converted into the required set of items in the cart, eliminating the need to create the order manually.
- Repeat any previous order in one click. The new platform made it possible to save the buyer's full order history in their account, including orders placed through the portal and with the help of a sales representative. Any previously placed order can be repeated in one click.
