4D Wand ERP integration and partner discount system for B2B online store

Fom d.o.o. is one of the largest door fittings and accessories distributor in Croatia and surrounded countries, as well as manufacturer and designer of furnishing interior or exterior glass products. The company has already had a website but did not have a web shop.

Challenge

Fom needed to build a webshop with the complete range of products that they manufacture and also a standalone online store for selling only glass products, in addition to the main corporate website. Both websites should be built from scratch.

The main requirements for this project were:

• Build a B2B online store with complete integration with 4D Wand ERP system;
• Import and synchronize all products and stock quantity;
• Synchronize all company partners with the store;
• Create a discount logic to calculate discounts for each partner - partner discount policy;
• Export orders from store back to ERP system;
• Check stock quantity before adding product to basket;
• Make the store multi-language (English and Croatian);

Both websites should be done within a single installation. After the advice of nopCommerce Solution partner Sistemi, the client decided to launch his online stores on the nopCommerce platform, as its functionality allowed the client to realize all the requirements.

Solution

After analyzing the requirements and ERP documentation, the Sistemi team has realized that it was impossible to connect the store directly with the 4D Wand ERP system. They found out that ERP company made another web application called 4D IMC catalog (web application) and 4D Wand ERP system is communicating with this web application through web socket channel. The task for Sistemi was to read and write data from/in SQL tables from 4D IMC catalog web application.

Sistemi development team made a data mapping model and all products were imported from the ERP system to the store. To automate this process they created a scheduled task for importing and updating products. With that, Sistemi started to work on nopCommerce plugin for 4D Wand discount policy.

The biggest challenge was to make all prices accurate for all products based on discount partner policy where each discount rule overwrites another one. The discount policy should consider all possible discount conditions for each particular partner, for example:

• to provide a general discount for a partner;
• to provide a separate discount on some product groups for a partner;
• to exclude the particular products from the discount;
• to consider a special overridden price for some products.

Sistemi made new price importance values logic, based on discount policy and rules for price calculation written in SQL tables from 4D IMC application. First, they analyzed tables from 4D IMC application database to know data meaning and relations. The team made few new tables, where the most important one was dbo.Rebate.

The discount percentage, fixed price, Priority, ProductID, PartnerID, ProductClassification are stored, imported and updated based on the 4 possible price calculations (depending on rebate/discount importance policy). When storing the data, the value is stored inside the Priority column (from 1 to 4), so the higher number is the higher priority.

For example:

• If the Priority is 1 for ProductID 4 and for Partner ID 10, then show price without any discounts.
• If the Priority is 2 for ProductID 4 and for Partner ID 20, then show price and calculate discount from discount percentage column.
• If the Priority is 4 for ProductID 4 and for Partner ID 30, then show price from ProductPrice column.

In this example, due to the calculation rules, Priority 4 is overwriting all other discounts. This complicated logic helped Sistemi to calculate and display price individually for each partner.

Every price for each product is shown with the full price and with discount partner price (or any other price possibility), inside every view (cart, checkout, my orders, email) within nopCommerce application.

The Sistemi team updated the plugin to send orders back to ERP system. After the order is finished, 4D IMC web application SQL tables are updated, and then the API request is called to alert the appearance of the new order. After that, it is pushed back to ERP system within web socket channel.

Another thing to develop was a stock quantity check before adding product to basket. It is API request for stock quantity of specific product, called by clicking on Update stock quantity button.

One of the client’s requirement was to implement initial check of partner before they can join to the website, so that partners could register on the B2B shop, were unable to start making orders until they are confirmed by the store owner. The process is the following: after the registration, the store owner checks if the company is already his client. If not, the store owner contacts him and arrange the partner and discount agreement. Anyway, when store owner assures to allow this user to start using web shop, he must enter the company VAT number within the nopCommerce customer form. After submitting, the plugin checks if this VAT number exists inside the dbo.Partner table, and connects Customer and Partner and sends a confirmation email to this user.

Result

The website was launched with the help of our furniture eCommerce software at the end of January 2020. Fom d.o.o. got two B2B online store with full synchronization with ERP system so their partners do not have to use phone for making orders, what made their business process much easier and convenient. The Managing Director of Fom, Vladimir Dijan, highlights: “Our customers are totally satisfied with ordering our products online, as they say, this is the most convenient way to make orders, especially within our web shop.”

The website maintenance became more convenient for the client. “We are absolutely satisfied with our web shop and amazed with the nopCommerce platform. The admin area is so simple and easy to use, it has many out-of-the-box features and solutions, as email notifications, multistore options, and also a huge number of plugins that we, nopCommerce users, can use”, - Vladimir says.

Online payment is still not connected because client wanted only orders, until they make some changes in their ERP System, so Sistemi is looking forward doing this in next iteration. According to Vladimir Dijan, they saw an order number increase after launching their new online store: next year Fom expects that 60% of all their orders will be made within their web shop.

The client was totally satisfied with the Sistemi work. “They are truly professionals”, - Vladimir noted, - and did a great job”.

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Sistemi.hr is digital web and mobile developing company from town Split in Croatia, specializing in building large eCommerce solutions, news or government websites (web portals/web or mobile applications), intranet solutions, with integrations and connecting to other systems, ERP, CRM, Editorials CMS, HR applications, etc.