About the project
UAB Herba Humana is a retail and wholesale company of pharmaceutical, cosmetic products and proprietary teas established in 1995. Herba Humana is the official distributor of Uriage, Apivita, Tepe, KIN, Dr. Browns brand representative in Lithuania.
Problem
The then herba.lt e-shop was developed using the old and unsupported version 1 of the e-commerce platform Magento, which, due to incompatibility with newer versions of the server infrastructure required for Magento’s operation, limited the willingness to develop the functionality of the e-shop, implement third-party integrations and optimise important business processes.
Solution
After talking to the Herba team and finding out the needs for the updated e-shop, we decided to build a new e-shop using Magento version 2. Taking into account the scope of the project and the desired deadline for implementation, we formed a team of one project manager and several programmers dedicated to it. The working principle of a dedicated team made it possible to work more smoothly, efficiently and implement the project faster.
Services provided
With the involvement of a professional design team, the client’s needs were clarified and a prototype of the new design was drawn. After customers approved the prototype, applying colours, elements and fonts reflecting the renewed brand, the design itself was also drawn. After receiving the final version of the new design, we dedicated 2-3 programmers’ resource to the implementation of the individual design of the e-shop.
Apart from retail, Herba is also involved in wholesale trade, so to automate their wholesale trade processes, a B2B trading platform was created alongside the B2C platform. A total of 3 different sales channels have been created – B2C, B2B and private label, all of which can be managed in one environment. Herba sells not only on the Lithuanian market, so the latter sales channels are available in four different languages.
The B2B platform has implemented functionality that facilitates the work of company managers. An opportunity was created for the company’s managers to manage their customers in an administrative environment, to show only the products that are relevant to them, to apply individual discounts. In order to simplify the registration process, automatic filling of the data of business customers provided in the accounting system during registration has been implemented.
In response to the need to automate the management of product balances and prices, we implemented a two-way integration between Magento and the accounting system (ERP). We have implemented a constant update of balances and prices from the ERP to the transfer of the order placed in the Magento and Magento environment to the accounting system. The information and data of the legal customer who has made a purchase on the B2B platform is transferred to the ERP. We have created the logic that if the order status changes to the default, the accounting system would transfer the formed VAT invoice to Magento.
In order to avoid additional work in re-editing product information on different platforms, it was decided to integrate the external product information management system Akeneo into Magento and use it as a source of truth for product information. Akeneo is used for catalogue management – administrators manage the category tree, attributes and products on the Akeneo side. We have implemented the logic that the Akeneo system would check for new products during the continuous call to the accounting system. When new products are created in the accounting system, the products are automatically created in the Akeneo environment with the basic product information already entered in the accounting system. Thanks to automation, the product administrator only has to fill in the remaining information, assign photos, additional attributes and mark the product as fully filled.
In order to free up the human resources of the e-shop from the order fulfillment process, the order processing process has been optimized. After the customer has paid for the order and the order has been dispatched, an email is sent to the customer with the tracking number of the consignment (with the possibility to monitor the status of the consignment in real time on the carrier’s website), and a link to download the invoice is attached.
One of the priorities was to make the shopping process smooth and convenient. In order to offer buyers a wider choice of payment or delivery method acceptable to them, Paysera and SEB payment methods were introduced, both of which allow them to pay with the most popular banks in Lithuania. The wide choice of delivery methods is ensured by the installation of Omniva, LP Express, Venipak and DPD carrier modules.
Results
A modern, functional, attractive e-shop that reflects the renewed brand identity. After the e-shop was relaunched to free human resources from repetitive and time-consuming manual work, many administrative and sales processes were automated thanks to integrations: order processing, product promotions, price updates, etc.
