Industrial Parts Wholesaler - From Phone-Calling Customers to 24/7 B2B Portal

The company has existed since 1998, distributing industrial parts (bearings, chains, specialty bolts) to manufacturers across Poland. 320 regular B2B clients, most ordering 2-5 times weekly. Before deployment, all handling went through 4 office staff — customer calls/emails order, office checks Subiekt availability, issues invoice, calls warehouse.

Pain: sales reps spent 4-5 hours daily typing orders instead of acquiring new clients. Customers called after hours (next-day orders), office only responded 8-16. Individual price lists for 320 clients lived in 12 Excel sheets — 'what price did you give in March?'.

Challenge: add a B2B portal with individual pricing without dropping Subiekt GT (accountant has worked on it for 10 years, chart of accounts synced with accounting office). We also had to keep BaseLinker integration (company sells surplus on Allegro) without disrupting current flows.

Additional problem: clients aren't tech-savvy — 70% are manufacturing companies where 'Wojtek from the warehouse' orders, not the 'IT manager'. The portal had to be simpler than a marketplace — otherwise nobody would use it.

8-week implementation: Week 1 audit of price lists and service processes, Weeks 2-3 B2B portal design (UX for 'Wojtek' — large buttons, few fields, one-click reorder), Weeks 4-6 build (portal, individual pricing, Subiekt GT integration via ODBC, BaseLinker integration), Week 7 testing with 5 selected clients, Week 8 rollout to all 320 clients.

Key rollout element: each client received a personalised login email ('Wojtek, here your price for bearing X is EUR 33'). 220 of 320 clients logged in within first 2 weeks. After a month portal generated 60% of orders. After 4 months — 71%.

After 4 months: portal generates 71% of orders (target: 60%). Order handling time dropped from 12 minutes to 3.5 minutes (-71%) — office only approves exceptions (orders above credit limit, custom products). Order count rose 52% — mainly via 24/7 self-service and less friction.

Average order value rose 18% — customer sees full offer, system suggests related products (cross-sell). Invoice errors dropped 94% — no manual tax ID and item re-entry. 'Wrong tax ID' complaints practically disappeared.

Most important business effect: two of four office staff reassigned to new client acquisition (prospecting). New B2B clients grew from 3-5/month to 12-15. Implementation payback: 11 weeks.