Digital Portal: Optimizing Business Relationship
Agri-Marché
Overview
Goals of the collaboration
As a leader in the animal feed sector, Agri-Marché wished to optimize its relationship with its farmer customers by tapping into technology. To embark on this major shift, the first step was to put a new tool in place for communications and online order intake to improve the client experience.
The nventive solution
Our team developed ‘’Portail Agri-Accès’’, a simple and efficient web app that eases the exchange of information as well as saves precious time to Agri-Marché’s clients. Always at hand, this app centralizes the management of orders, of invoices and communication tools.
In order to combine efficiency and flexibility, nventive and Agri-Marché opted for a Progressive Web App (PWA). This type of solution not only meets the client’s strict requirements, but it also allows for the development of a single app that works both on mobile phones and computers.
"The portal allows our customers to experience all the technological innovations that we will be implementing in the coming years. It is the key element that allows our customers to experience the technological changes we are making in our processes" - Frederick Pouliot, Senior Director of Information Technology at Agri-Marché
Game Plan
- Technological discovery
- Business logic analysis
- CX research
- Prototype creation
- UX and UI design
- Web development
- Optimization and support
Key Technologies
- Front-end development: React
- Back-end development: .NET Core
- Web development: Microsoft Azure, Terraform
Collaborate to Create
Concretely, we carried out a vast discovery and strategy planning phase to grasp every particularity in Agri-Marché’s business sector, as well as its existing processes and its extensive product and service offer. Simultaneously, the audit of existing technological tools enabled us to correlate them to business needs and to create a roadmap for the deployment of the portal.
Managing Documents
Our close partnership with the client allowed us to concentrate an important and constant volume of orders, invoices, news, and messages all in one place.
To conform to the complexity of the farms’ organizational structure, we implemented a perfected model enabling account creation, flexible data structure and secure management of access to increase customization and safety.
Customizing Online Orders
This versatile functionality enables Agri-Marché to personalize the most relevant products for each client based on their last order, their representative’s recommendations, and the availability of products. As for clients, they can now place orders and plan the delivery date according to their needs.
«Order personalization reduces the number of clicks required in the ordering process as information is entered based on the customer's habits. In our industry, this is a priority because our customers are asked to do a lot of things. In addition, this function minimizes the risk of error during the ordering process.»
Daniel St-Onge
Senior Business Analyst at Agri-Marché
Business and User Access Management
Listing and grouping all the companies allowed to get a global picture of the company structure, as well as to manage Agri-Marché’s multiple divisions while giving access to the portal to each representative. To do so, we developed a notification system that makes it easy to share information with customers and company representatives.
The web app also allows to manage and to organize each employee and representative by distinctive farm. The employees and representatives can manage their orders individually and the owner can have an overview of all the transactions made on the portal.
«Our customers are business owners who need to monitor their supply daily. Our site allows us to modulate the delivery of documentation according to the structure or management method. Both small and large companies get a solution tailored to their needs. In a small business, the owner can receive notifications on his mobile phone related to the operation of his business, while documents related to the administration can be sent to him by e-mail. For a larger business, it is possible for the owner to provide customized access to the various employees. Thus, he can manage the information and privileges granted to his staff as he sees fit.»
Vincent Thibault
Customer Experience Project Manager at Agri-Marché
Processing Large Volumes of Third-Party Data
Because we need to process an important quantity of data provided by a third party ERP, followed by research and filter applications, this type of project represents a real challenge. We started by analyzing the ERP’s architecture to determine how to transform this data and store it in the client portal. In parallel and in collaboration with the Agri-Marché IT team, we validated and integrated hundreds of users, whom all received access to the portal as soon as it was online.
Results
‘’Portail Agri-Accès’’ is the product of a rigorous labour and is very appreciated by its users, as evidenced by its intended use by 50% of users achieved as soon as it was launched. There was also an increase in the number of daily orders placed using this app.
Concerned about continuous improvement, nventive pursues its collaboration with Agri-Marché to expand the portal’s functionalities.
