From Excel Sheets to Fully Customized Solution Prepared for Years to Come

Client’s Challenges

The client had no central system to handle their daily operations. In addition, a large part of the company's agenda was still handled in Excel sheets. Excel can handle a lot, but as the agenda grows, errors start to increase, data is getting lost and other negative aspects start to appear, which has an impact on the whole company. Some of their biggest problems were:

• No single platform to manage all tasks, orders, client information, etc. 
• Data was spread across different tools, making it hard to track and manage.
• No automated connection to third-party services (typically billing).
• No multilingual support, which made collaboration harder for international teams.
• Manual data entry -> partners had to fill out forms, and employees had to re-enter the information, leading to errors and wasted time which could be productively used elsewhere.

They needed a custom-built solution that would bring everything together.

Our Solution

Since different employees use different processes, we designed a system that adapts to their daily tasks while being easy to scale in the future.

• User-Friendly Interface: The app is built around the needs of different roles, making it easy to use for everyone.
• Scalable Structure: The system is ready for future features like warehouse integration, invoice tracking, and multilingual support.
• Less Manual Work: We got rid of a lot of the manual steps that had to be done before the implementation of the new custom solution. All-in-One Dashboard: The client can now track invoice statuses, compare provider prices, and check stock levels, all in one place.

By using Next.js and Vercel, we built a fast, secure, and flexible system that meets the client’s needs today and can grow with their business.

Here are some real changes we did

No more manually writing data in several places

One example here. Each partner of the company now receives a unique link where they fill in all the information the company needs. This way, all the data is immediately in the system and there is no need to manually transcribe it in several places. In addition, we have also achieved a significant reduction in error rates.

Orders, orders everywhere

The client specializes mostly in distribution of large quantities of different hardware across multiple countries in CEE. As a result, the client acts as an intermediary between the end client and the hardware manufacturer. As a result, we actually have two types of enquiries and orders, namely orders to buy and sell products and offers to buy and sell products depending whether you talk to the manufacturer or the end client. Previously, this involved a lot of manual steps and processes. Thanks to this collaboration, the client is now able to prepare the enquiry or order much quicker and also send it to proper contact in a couple of minutes without actually using their own email and writing anything manually. Staff is also able to work around product categories much quicker or see if there are any previous or existing enquiries / orders for that particular client. In the same amount of people, the client is now able to service more companies. 

ITScope helps to stay competitive

ITScope is a service that primarily takes care of an updated database of products and their availability from different suppliers or manufacturers. Since the client wanted to stay on top and provide the best service and prices, it was necessary to connect to this service in an automated way. This gives the client an essentially instant overview of how many products are available, roughly at what prices and where they can be ordered from.

Automated creation and management of invoices

There is no longer a need to manually create invoices, send them manually to clients and then manually store them on internal storage or send them to other colleagues. The client now uses an automated connection to the Fakturoid service through their API layer. This again saves a lot of time and inefficient communication between departments and clients. Almost all of the workflow is now automated from creating the invoice, sending it to clients, monitoring due dates and matching payments received.

And what about historical data?

We took care of that too. Since the client has been on the market for quite a long time, they have a large amount of historical data, which for various reasons needed to be preserved and transferred to the new system. In the end, we created two complex data imports, one primarily for the purchase offers and the other one for the rest of the data. These imports allow the client to use the new system while also having access to all the legacy information they need within the system.

Challenges During Development & How We Solved Them

Since the client didn’t have an existing system, we had to gather all their requirements from scratch. It was difficult to visualize the final product because different roles had different needs.

To solve this, we:

• Held regular meetings with the client to go through their requirements and refine the plan.
• Used our experience to suggest better workflows and solutions.
• Leveraged a Starter Kit to speed up UI development, allowing us to focus on key features instead of building everything from scratch.

The Results

The new custom software helped the client:

• Automate manual tasks, reduce errors, get rid of manual steps and processes like rewriting orders data in multiple places.
• Make the whole ordering process much smoother and enjoyable to work with.
• Bring everything into one place, making work more efficient.
• Provide a scalable system, ready for future growth and new features.
• Improve team collaboration, thanks to a lot of changes under the hood, including multilingual-friendly interface.

With this project, we once again showed our ability to build custom software solutions that solve real business problems. We don’t just develop software. We create solutions that help companies work smarter and grow faster, which is getting increasingly important in today's world.

👉 Need a custom software solution? Contact us today!