Project snapshot
City Plumbing — a B2B supplier of plumbing and bathroom parts and accessories to trade professionals — wanted to stop taking customer orders manually and automate their fulfillment process. To do this, the company needed to update many of their backend and customer-facing systems. They sought help from an experienced software developer and chose Intellias for our extensive background in creating retail solutions. We designed a B2B application programming interface (API) that gives large-volume customers instant, 24/7 access to search the product catalog, place orders, and more.
The API also served as the foundation for the company’s new digital systems. Because 80% of orders are now placed through the API, it has significantly reduced the need to process stacks of paper orders and cut the time that store associates spend on the phone. The API has also helped City Plumbing retain enterprise customers that use digital fulfilment.
Based in Crick, Northamptonshire, City Plumbing employs over 4,500 associates at 360 locations across nine different businesses throughout the UK and Ireland. Part of the Highbourne Group, the plumbing, heating, and bathroom retailer uses many digital technologies to offer expert advice and supply products to plumbing professionals and DIYers.
Business challenge
City Plumbing has a complex digital infrastructure. It includes Rocket Software’s UniVerse platform, which powers the company’s enterprise resource planning (ERP) system and has point of sale (POS) capabilities, and a separate eCommerce solution. Yet, the fulfillment process at City Plumbing was manual and created many business challenges. Among them:
- Orders came through phone calls, faxes, and email
- Level 1 customer service associates spent hours on the phone or answering long email chains
- Fax orders led to stacks of paper that had to be processed manually
- Many of City Plumbing’s largest customers disliked the fulfillment process
- Improper packing and inefficient packing material resulted in broken products and higher-than-expected returns
B2B customers represent 95% of City Plumbing’s revenue. As the company began their digital transformation, they realized enterprise clients needed a digital method of processing orders and locating stock. Developing this digital service was part of a larger system modernization project for the company’s frontend, backend, and eCommerce systems.
The new solution needed to be robust and capable of managing heavy traffic: City Plumbing has 2,600 users across 360 locations, the website serves 30,000 product views per minute, and the company processes up to 250 orders per minute, or about 5 million orders annually.
City Plumbing decided to design a custom system that would work with its existing digital infrastructure. They chose Intellias to assess the technology because we have extensive experience developing retail solutions. We decided that resolving the fulfillment issue would kickstart our creation of a new eCommerce and data exchange platform that could eventually replace most of the existing digital infrastructure.
Solution
We created a B2B API for City Plumbing’s external customers to provide digital fulfillment. The API is a bridge between City Plumbing’s ERP system and customers’ procurement platforms. Customers can connect directly to City Plumbing’s backend systems without human interaction.
The API offers several benefits:
- Simplified development: The B2B API uses existing systems and functions, which reduces the time needed to design and build new applications.
- Increased flexibility: Developers can easily integrate the API into a customer’s existing platform.
- Improved interoperability: Different systems with different types of data can communicate with City Plumbing’s API.
- Smarter innovation: The API creates an opportunity to build new applications or services.
Using UniVerse as the order management system, the API allows customers to query the product catalog, check stock availability, and place bulk orders directly, without a shopping cart or checkout flow. Built with a scalable Kubernetes platform on AWS, the B2B API can grow as needs change. A Spring Boot application exposes the GraphQL API with Kafka providing fast, real-time data transfer between mobile applications, the web, UniVerse, and other microservices. This ensures that stock availability and order information stay current.
Once connected, customers use the integrated Algolia search engine to find products by name, SKU, or category. Business data is stored in PostgreSQL for fast querying.
With the B2B API, customers can:
- Initiate a one-time package within their IT ecosystem using a pair of standard credentials
- Check stock availability, including at local branch locations
- Place orders for pickup or delivery
Business outcomes
The B2B API was a success. City Plumbing quickly saw improvements from the digital fulfillment process:
- Customers could build larger orders faster
- Associates could spend more time with customers instead of taking orders
- The amount of paper used to place an order was significantly reduced
Additionally, City Plumbing started using more efficient packing materials to improve the shipping process and reduce the number of returns. Because of the improved packaging, the company regained space in their returns department.
Technologies used: AWS, Java (Spring Boot), GraphQL, Kafka, PostgreSQL, UniVerse, Algolia, Kubernetes
KPIs 80% of orders placed through API 3 months to delivery 20 enterprise customers retained