Solution:
B2B E‑Commerce
Industry:
Furniture Industry
Fully Integrated Furniture Sales and Distribution in B2B Channels
The Challenge
Fabryki Mebli "FORTE" SA has been present on the furniture market for over 30 years. It has 6 production plants in Poland and one in India, which is focused on Asian markets. The company sells its products in 45 countries and has its own representative offices in 6 countries. Exports represent 80% of sales. The company operates on a B2B model and sells its products through partner furniture stores.
Due to the changing needs of B2B contractors, Fabryki Mebli "FORTE" SA decided to strengthen its activities in the online channel. The previous tool, a closed purchasing panel for contractors, no longer plays its role. As a result, "FORTE" asked Univio to implement a new, flexible and future-proof solution to meet the company's growing needs.
- The goal of Fabryki Mebli "FORTE" SA was to implement a B2B trading platform and a new website with a product catalog and a complete set of information for retail customers.
- It was important to optimize the existing PIM tool by creating a data model, adapting the PIM to the new e-commerce platform, and streamlining the management and distribution of product information.
- It was also important for the customer to have a scalable e-commerce system and to prepare the platform for future development. The solution needed to support the addition of other systems without having to rebuild the entire integration layer.
- The company wanted to reduce the need for manual work to update data in different systems to save time and minimize the risk of potential errors and data inconsistencies.
The Solution
- The first step of the project was to analyze the needs and situation of Fabryki Mebli "FORTE" SA. Through an in-depth process consisting of consultations and workshops, we identified the main challenges, developed ways to solve them and identified best practices for information management.
- As a result, we implemented a new B2B e-commerce platform based on our proprietary Univio.Commerce system, equipped with functionalities necessary for the B2B sector. These include an advanced sales panel, a promotions module for managing pricing policies, and the ability to send messages to selected customer segments.
- Intuitive B2B contractor accounts enable customers to view orders, file complaints, check order status, and view invoices. We also added a convenient product comparison engine and the ability to create wish lists for future purchases.
- Different order types are available for customer, stock and display. It is also possible to split orders into two deliveries.
- The existing PIM system, Pimcore, has been optimized for faster data entry, quality product descriptions and the ability to efficiently distribute information to all partner stores.
- Advanced product grouping (divided by interior type, collections, and a very extensive filter module) and the ability to save attributes to an account make it easy to search for a specific assortment.
- As an integration layer, we used MuleSoft, which connects the ERP, PIM, and B2B systems, while enabling the fast and efficient integration of future solutions. In addition, updated data is automatically transferred between systems, eliminating repetitive or redundant tasks that could impact system performance.
- To ensure scalability, all systems were run on high-performance AWS and Azure cloud environments. A range of managed services were used, and the servers themselves were run as auto-scaling groups, ensuring not only automatic scaling with load, but also self-healing in the event of failure.
- In addition to the B2B platform itself, we also implemented a website for customers - FORTE's business partners for the Polish market, along with a supported product catalog. This allows customers to browse Mebli Forte’s offer, compare prices, search for showrooms or use a convenient calculator.
- We also implemented tools for efficient collection of logs and metrics, including data visualization, monitoring, and automatic alerts in case of anomalies. These tools help Mebli Forte ensure business continuity by enabling us to respond quickly to potential problems and prevent critical incidents from occurring.
The Result
The Technologies
/ Behind Solutions
B2B E-commerce Application for Presenting Products During Virtual Fairs
For an industry leader in the production of high quality furniture, we developed an application to present all available products on virtual fairs.