Putting a wholesaler's entire catalogue and pricing logic into the field

Context

A nationwide pet-supplies wholesaler serving thousands of retail shops. Revenue was driven by a van-sales field team: reps loaded fast-moving stock into vehicles, ran two-to-three-day regional routes, took orders on site, and relayed them to head office for either courier shipment or delivery on the following route — 10 to 15 days later.

A three-person delivery team worked alongside the client’s in-house staff.

Problem

Two structural problems capped growth, and neither was a software bug.

No product or stock visibility in the field. The catalogue spanned every pet category — cats, dogs, birds, fish, reptiles — across food, toys, accessories and equipment. No single representative could master the full range. Every order required a manual stock check with head office, and reps could not reliably recommend better, cheaper or higher-margin alternatives.

No customer intelligence at the point of sale. Representatives had no dependable view of a retailer’s purchase volume, order frequency or product mix, which made customer-specific pricing and rebates impractical to define, apply or audit.

Approach

One platform, three audiences

We architected and built the full platform from scratch on Laravel: a responsive self-service B2B ordering portal for retailers, an order-entry interface for field representatives placing orders on a customer’s behalf, and the internal back-office management system. Fully usable on mobile browsers, so field reps worked from the same live system on the road rather than a copy of it.

A discount engine the reps could not have replaced

We designed and implemented a rule-based discount and promotion engine supporting a wide combination of conditions: per-customer, per-product, per-category and per-product-group discounts; buy-X-get-Y-free; volume thresholds unlocking percentage discounts on a target product group; additional discounts for cash payment; and purchase-history-driven rules — if the customer bought Y units of product X in the last 12 months, apply a T% discount across product group Z.

These are offers no representative could have calculated face to face, which is exactly why they had never been offered.

Recommendations instead of product knowledge

A product recommendation layer surfaced better, lower-cost and higher-margin alternatives as a basket was assembled — letting any representative sell competently across the entire catalogue, rather than only the part they happened to know.

Live ERP integration

Two-way integration with the client’s accounting system provided real-time stock availability and exposed customers’ current-account balances, supporting open-account trading terms. Online card payment was integrated alongside open-account ordering.

Handover

We mentored the junior developer, led code review and owned technical direction — then delivered end-user training for the client’s sales and back-office teams and provided long-term maintenance after go-live.

Outcome

• The platform ran in production for seven to eight years, serving both retail customers and the field sales organisation.
• Ordering errors from the field sales process were eliminated, where previously they came from manual stock checks and ad-hoc pricing.
• Field representatives all but stopped calling head office for stock, pricing and discount queries, freeing route time for selling.
• Fewer stops were required per route as retailers moved to self-service ordering, cutting field cost per order.
• Every applied discount became fully auditable — which customer received which promotion and when — for the first time.
• Unlocked loyalty and volume-based pricing strategies that had been operationally impossible under the previous manual process.