Effective Price Management in Retail for Enhanced Customer Experience

The client is a major distributor of office supplies and furniture, with over 1,500 employees. The company operates in nearly half of all European countries and provides consulting services in a variety of domains, from food and catering to new technology and business interiors. As the business was growing and expanding into new markets, they were facing challenges in managing the varying product prices efficiently. Their existing system was no longer meeting the speed, accuracy, and efficiency requirements necessary for the company’s growth.

The client, a major distributor of office supplies and furniture operating in nearly half of all European countries, was facing challenges in managing product prices as their business expanded into new markets. Their existing monolithic solution was no longer efficient enough to meet the speed, accuracy, and efficiency requirements necessary for the company’s growth. The existing pricing management involved the use of several separate systems and Excel spreadsheets, as well as a significant amount of manual work. This required increasing time and effort from the client’s employees as the product inventory was expanding and the prices were changing frequently. The company needed to streamline the price management process and gain the ability to instantly handle pricing updates.

N-iX conducted a trade-off analysis to help the client improve their strategy and understand the requirements and project scope better. They outlined several technical options and documented the complexity, risks, benefits, and development time of each one. This helped the client prioritize tasks and understand the value of each product feature. N-iX then developed a minimal viable product (MVP) of the price management system. They assisted the client with the development of a unified price management system hosted on MS Azure. The system handles different prices that are rendered on multiple e-commerce websites and can vary based on the customer type, such as B2B or B2C. The system was built using the microservices architecture, which allowed to easily substitute six legacy systems with a unified platform for managing product prices. The architecture also made the platform highly customizable, facilitated the customer onboarding process, and improved load management.

• The unified pricing management system developed by N-iX has helped the client boost their operational efficiency, optimize costs and reduce manual work. It has also improved the shopping experience by allowing the client to provide customers with exclusive pricing offerings that match their needs. The system has ensured that prices stay up-to-date at all times, significantly accelerating the sales process as there were no longer price discrepancies. The microservices architecture has played an important role in making the platform available 24/7. The system also generates a unique sales contract based on various parameters when a customer signs into their personal account, allowing customers to receive better prices for products compared to the prices on e-commerce websites.

• Boosted business efficiency by unifying several pricing systems into one and streamlining many manual processes

• Increased the efficiency of the sales process by maintaining accurate and up-to-date pricing information about all products

• Accelerated the software development life cycle from 4 weeks to 1 day by setting up a CI/CD pipeline