The situation
Construction companies order from many different wholesalers and hold stock in places that move all day: the main warehouse, the work van, the site. Who has what where usually lives in one person’s head.
Bartrack wanted one platform for all of it: ordering, counting and finding things again from the same environment, including with gloves on in an aisle between the racks.
What we built
A SaaS platform that manages more than 20 million products, with real-time insight into stock levels per location, from head office to work van. Ordering from connected wholesalers runs through one environment instead of separate portals.
A minimum stock level can be set per item. Drop below it and the system prepares the order itself. NFC tags identify a product in one tap, and connected weighing cabinets count stock without anyone scanning.
Alongside the web platform we built native Android and iOS apps with the full functionality for teams in the field. Scanning, ordering and sharing stock locations with colleagues stay in sync in real time. Item data comes in through 2BA, and materials flow on to the books through Exact voor Bouw.
The hard part: 20 million items that have to stay fast
A catalogue this size is only usable if search answers instantly, including on a phone with patchy reception on site. Searches, prices and availability therefore had to sit as close to the user as possible, without the data going stale.
The second challenge was the number of connections: every wholesaler does it slightly differently. The platform translates all of that into one model, so the user always sees the same screen, whoever they order from.
Connections in this project
- 2BA
- Exact voor Bouw
- NFC tags
- Weighing cabinets
- Connected wholesalers
What it delivers
- 20+ million products with real-time locations
- Ordering from connected wholesalers in one environment
- Automatic ordering at a minimum stock level
- NFC for fast product identification
- Weighing cabinets for automatic counting
- Native apps for Android and iOS
Sector
Construction and installation, SaaS
Build period
Q1 2020 to Q3 2021, extended continuously since
Team
1 part-time developer, 1 architect and a project manager, alongside the Bartrack team
The app in hand, between the racks
What happened next
After the first release the platform has been extended continuously with new features and additional connections.
Inventory management that works on site.
Bartrack runs as a SaaS product for construction and installation companies, with web and mobile on the same data. New functionality is added on the same platform, without rebuilding the connections that already exist.
More customer cases
Other operations running on our platform every day.
Bringing your own SaaS product to market?
From first release to native apps and integrations: we build it and we stay with it.