B2B Collaboration Platform For a Retail Service Provider
One of the prominent Retail Management System provider for baby items in Belgium was looking to have a collaboration platform for its retail customers and suppliers. Without such a platform, the services were fragmented as well inefficient.
Solution Description
- Developed a B2B platform using Microservices architecture and acts as a global data store and mediator between suppliers and the retail stores
- The intuitive UI enabled suppliers, shops and administrators to collaborate quickly and efficiently
- Microservices architecture enabled scalability, flexibility, and agility in providing different services to different users
- Integration with their ERP system enabled functionalities such as centralized inventory & order management, customer and supplier administration, financial management, and store operations, etc.
Outcome and Benefits Delivered
- B2B Platform enabled the information being available to all stakeholders in near real-time
- The integration helped to get daily insights into the stock and sales of individual stores, and thus providing a better forecast
The Business Context and Challenges of the Customer
Our client is a retail ERP solution provider for baby products within retail stores.
As the business at stores grew, workload to communicate with the suppliers also grew exponentially. The ERP system has e-collaboration mechanism with the suppliers, such as using email and sharing spreadsheets etc. However, the system could not share information in ""real-time”. Several manual steps were involved, making the operations time-consuming, error-prone, and inefficient.
Client was looking to provide a complete solution to its customers (retail shops) that will enable near real-time collaboration with their suppliers. The solution should eliminate manual operations, automate the order management, and provide real time visibility to the supplier’s inventory.
The customer was looking for a very short time-to-market so that they can deploy the solution on or before the festival and holiday seasons ahead.
Overall System Architecture
The System Description
B2B Platform
- B2B Platform acting as a global data store and mediator between suppliers and the retail stores
- It provides multiple interfaces for the customer
- The Web UI
- API interfaces
- FTP Interface
Retail Store ERP System
- Integrate all the functionalities like Centralized inventory and order management, Customer and supplier administration, Financial management, Store operations, etc. for a retail store
- Third Party API integration support
- Electron.js based desktop application for physical stores
- Webshops
FTP Server
- Centralized FTP server for the Retail stores and Suppliers for the interacting to the B2B platform
Technology Stacks
- Microservice Architecture
- BitBucket
- Maven
- Eclipse/Intellij
- Jenkins
- Java 1.8
- Spring Boot
- Spring Data JPA
- Hibernate
- NGINX
- MySQL
- REST
- JWT
- Angular
- Ember.js
- Electron.js
Sample Dashboard
