Overview
Designed and delivered a connected digital service platform for a building-materials distributor's professional customers, embedding estimating, tendering, ordering and project documentation into their everyday workflow, integrated across CMS, PIM, ERP and industry data systems.
Who This Is For
Distributors, wholesalers and B2B suppliers whose professional customers buy on price and convenience. This case is most useful if:
- customer loyalty is low and purchasing is decentralised and ad hoc
- you want to compete on usefulness rather than price
- your customers' work (estimating, tendering, ordering, documentation) happens outside your systems
- the data you need sits across ERP, PIM, product data and CMS
The Challenge
Professional builders bought from whichever distributor was most convenient or cheapest at the time, with low loyalty and often decentralised, ad hoc purchasing.
The client wanted to compete on usefulness rather than price, giving customers tools to run their projects more professionally, from estimating and tendering to ordering and documentation. Delivering that meant connecting workflows across several existing systems, not building another standalone shop.
Our Approach
As part of a Making Waves and NoA team, the people now behind ECM.DEV helped design and deliver a service concept for professional customers.
- Customer research: professional segments and their real workflows.
- Estimating calculators: for roofs, terraces and garages.
- Tender management: a module for managing tenders.
- Project documentation app: a photo app for iOS and Android.
- Professional content: roughly 40 pages reworked for professional customers.
- Connected delivery: the client's ERP, industry product data, specialist calculators, a PIM and the CMS behind two of its sites, brought together through an iterative, MVP-led release model.
Impact
Beyond the transaction. Purchasing connected to estimating, tendering and documentation, extending the relationship past a single sale.
One service, many systems. ERP, PIM, industry data and CMS behind a single customer-facing service rather than separate silos.
Built to learn. An MVP and Lean delivery model let the platform improve from observed customer behaviour instead of shipping once and stopping.
When customers can buy the same product anywhere, the tools around the purchase become the reason to stay.
Delivered while employed at Making Waves (later NoA Ignite), as part of a multidisciplinary delivery team. Any public information referenced here is used for identification and does not imply endorsement.
Topics
Built a CRM-connected advertising sales platform for a leading Nordic digital marketplace. Connected audience data, targeting options, advertising formats, pricing and sales contacts into a single self-service portal for advertisers and media agencies, replacing a fragmented sales experience with a repeatable path from research to qualified inquiry.
Developed a B2B and B2C concept, Thon-X, for one of Norway's largest real estate, retail and hotel groups, exploring how a shared digital layer could support tenants and shoppers across its properties.
Content strategy and a WordPress-to-EPiServer migration for Tekna, the 70,000-member Norwegian association for engineers and technologists.
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