Customer Success: SmartB2B
What is SmartB2B?
SmartB2B is a cloud based web application (built using Isomorphic Software’s SmartClient) which resulted from years of experience in online retail, wholesale and distribution. It streamlines the B2B eCommerce process:
- Increases sales: Fast and simple for customers to find the right product and place orders.
- Improves communication: Cuts down up to 90% of unproductive emails (“do you have it on stock“, “could you send me a photo“, “the item is back on stock“)
- Reduces the sales cycle: A single, up-to-date source for information like orders, payments, product images, manuals etc.
It does all this by providing the following capabilities:
- Online product catalogue & ordering system: Manage all info related to each product. Setup pricelists and discounts. Place and manage orders.
- Media & files library: Single location where customers can find stock photos, product certificates, manuals, banners for their web sites, etc.
- Self-service portal: Lets company’s customers understand their account status by viewing placed orders, back ordered products, issued invoices, etc.
- Email Marketing: Combine info like products, customers, and price lists to quickly create compelling e-mail campaigns.
SmartB2B Solution Details
Back in 2007, Janusz Szczypka (now SmartB2B Founder and CEO) was looking for a framework to create an admin interface for his ERP and backend of his online shop FIDE.pl.
He selected SmartClient as “even 11 years ago, SmartClient was already a very complete system for creating forms and managing tabular data. I liked very much the idea of datasources, implementation of paging in grids, and the ability to create complex interfaces in browser.”
Some time later, Janusz created a customer portal for his distribution company where cooperating retailers could place orders, fetch invoices, etc. It was just a side project developed only for his company. However, last year, one of his suppliers saw it by accident and asked to use it in their company. SmartB2B was born and has been gaining momentum ever since. To meet requirements across Europe, SmartB2B is now multi-lingual (English, German, Polish and Italian at the moment, with more languages to come) and multi-currency.
As the number of clients has grown, Janusz team continue to find reasons for doubling down on SmartClient. For example, he said: “Another nice outcome of using SmartClient is it’s modularity- creating new classes and subclasses. When we have customers with special needs, we can create base version of – for example – a PlaceOrderDialog used to place new orders – and extend it for those customers with extra form fields by loading extra script that extends PlaceOrderDialog or create new subclass based on it. This way when we want to make changes (improve or fix something) in base dialog, all customers using custom dialogs inherit those changes.”.
As you can see below, Janusz’ team created their own skin mimicking Google’s Material Design (before our new Tahoe, Obsidian and Stratus skins were released). It looks terrific!
SmartB2B was developed for the desktop, but it was found to also work very well on tablets and smartphones. In fact, with a couple of small tweaks, the SmartB2B team made available a tablet version to be used on the go, and a specific solution for warehouses, to be used on mobile terminals (like Symbol TC8000).
What’s next for SmartB2B?
Janusz and his team are rapidly broadening the product footprint by adding new capabilities like complaints & issues tracking, planogram designer, and email marketing … of course, using SmartClient!
Check it out at https://www.smartb2b.eu
