What I love about what we do at BarkWeb is being able to take a simple client enquiry and ultimately delivering a new highly effective web driven software solution.
Over the past 16 years we have delivered some exceedingly effective bespoke software solutions for a range of clients. For example; online childcare voucher systems; dynamically programmable application and enquiry systems, highly tailored survey software, second hand vehicle sales and event entry systems to name just a few.
Whilst we try to find common elements for re-use both to speed up future software development and to deliver higher value to new clients this is not always possible as is the very nature of bespoke software.
I call this type of service a ‘sell once, write once’.
With the advent of us building our own Content Management System (WordPress is rubbish, remember?) we have a lot of high value, complex common elements.
In this case we were initially asked if we could build a gateway between an existing clients (D.B. Domestics of Eastbourne) already large CMS ecommerce website (containing thousands of products) with an off the shelf EPoS (Electronic Point of Sale) solution.
At first it seemed like an obvious solution as the website has up to date stock data (product information, MPN, GTiN, stock levels etc.) which could feed directly into the EPoS solution. But as anyone who has developed any form of gateway API solutions will attest to, the time required to deliver this in the real world (irrespective of the quality of the API documentation) means that quoting for this type of work can involve a large degree of guesswork.
Internally we examined the possibility of creating the EPoS retail solution on top of our existing eCommerce software. After an initial assessment of what the client was expecting from the retail assistants’ perspective we decided that offering this as an alternative should be part of our quotation and we were confident that we were able to quote more accurately.
After consultation the client agreed to our proposal and we rolled up our sleeves.
Ultimately the main focus was to enable sales floor personnel to quickly and efficiently enter client sales whilst being aware of stock levels and stock location. We also built a delivery management system that further simplifies the sales process by enabling the client to choose a day for delivery and a delivery slot.
The system, being browser based, is also accessible via all terminals in the showroom and as an added bonus the sales person can also wander around the showroom with the customer using an iPad and adding items to their order as they go. This also speeds and the sales process up and makes it more accurate.
Our EPoS also allows for different types of customer sales, normal sale client (such as you or I paying in full), part payment client (where there is an element of cash on delivery) and an on account payment which is useful when dealing with local councils or distant landlords who require an invoice to be produced prior to payment being released. Full reporting on sales that require additional payment are available to make sure drivers collect the cash on delivery.
Some of the features that have been integrated into our ecommerce platform are:
- Pin number log-in locked down by IP address (static IP address at the client’s locations)
- Simplified search process to speed up sales agents finding products
- Special order products (non-stock items) can be added quickly
- Delivery management (multiple vehicles)
- Postcode address look up
If you are both trading online via an ecommerce system and have a retail or warehouse outlet selling directly to clients and these two systems are not joined at the hip, I would suggest that you are probably struggling with your systems, not being as efficient as you deserve to be and are definitely missing a trick.
If you are ready to add efficiency into your operation, spend less time comparing spreadsheets and data sets, want more time to do really useful things then we would love to talk to you either online or in-person.
What are you waiting for?