Custom customer portal for an industrial SME
Replacing spreadsheet-and-email order tracking with a customer portal offering authentication, live order status and downloadable documents.
Exemple illustratif — ce projet n’est pas une référence client réelle.
- admin hours saved
- 12h/week
- inbound status emails
- −68%
- time to production
- 7 weeks
Time previously spent answering order status questions by hand.
Measured over three months after go-live.
From the first workshop to real-world use.
Context
An industrial SME of around sixty staff tracked customer orders in a shared spreadsheet. Customers phoned or emailed to ask about progress, and two people in sales admin spent much of their day answering.
The company initially planned a full ERP. Scoping showed the real irritant came down to one gap — visibility on the customer side — and that it could be solved for a fraction of the cost.
Our approach
We deliberately ruled out the ERP. The scope was cut to a customer portal answering exactly one question: "where is my order?"
The first version, delivered in four weeks, contained authentication, the order list and its status. It was put in front of three willing customers before anything else was built.
That test changed the rest of the project: the most requested feature was not the detailed tracking planned during scoping, but downloading delivery notes and invoices. It moved to the top of the list, and part of the detailed tracking was dropped for lack of use.
Results
Inbound status emails dropped 68% over three months, roughly twelve hours a week handed back to sales admin. The portal was rolled out to all customers over two months.
The project cost considerably less than the first ERP quote, and the company keeps the option to migrate later — the portal reads order data through an interface that can be repointed at another system.
Got a project in mind?
Tell us what you need in a few lines. You will get a considered reply within one business day, including a first estimate of timeline and budget.