TradeTools lays the digital foundation for success
TradeTools: Breaking new ground with business agility and online customer experience
CLIENT TradeTools
SERVICES Design, Development, Bigcommerce
INDUSTRIES Construction, Industrial, B2B, B2C
The Brief:
TradeTools is a leading Australian supplier of industrial tools and equipment. Since first opening doors back in 1987, TradeTools has provided Australia’s tradespeople and the trade industry with the widest range of top-quality industrial air, hand, power and cordless tools and industrial equipment. These same tools have been used to build roads, businesses, schools, hospitals, homes & many other projects.
With such an important role to play in helping build Australia, TradeTools demanded an outstanding online experience to continue leading the industry. Aligent’s ongoing partnership with TradeTools (first established during the challenges of COVID) has delivered significant growth for the key channel to market.
In late 2023, TradeTools partnered with Aligent to transition their backend eCommerce technology to BigCommerce while preserving the existing front-end experience (previously built by Aligent as a Headless PWA), dramatically cutting down on development time compared to a full rebuild. This project truly embodies the essence of the MACH movement.
The Solution:
- Website is tightly integrated to ERP (Pronto) so that customers can view live inventory, pricing, customer account information and loyalty program status.
- Complex shipping calculations to fulfill products ranging from “Big and Bulky” (e.g. air compressors weighing up to 800kg) through to lightweight consumables, also dangerous goods and indent/pre-orders.
- Website is built using Progressive Web App technology ensuring lightning fast user experience, future flexibility, SEO benefits and underpinned by Aligent TakeFlight's accelerator.
- Full visibility of order history online and in-store.
- Utilising BigCommerce hosting frees Aligent from regular security and maintenance tasks, allowing a focused delivery of enhancements.
Our B2B customers make up a considerable component of our total business. In a very competitive environment, we are often competing against significantly larger businesses so our service and knowledge of the customer can be a differentiating factor in our success. In this context, creating a seamless buying experience was essential for our B2B buyers. Our website sales are a substantial % of our overall business, continues to grow and works in parallel with our store success.
Mark Vourlides
,Marketing Manager
-at TradeTools
The Value:
Ensuring the successful integration between our ERP and eCommerce platform was integral to the success of the overall project. Product pricing, stock levels, order information (online and offline) and customer data were all functionality which need to be integrated. Product pricing complexities stands out as an area of particular challenge. TradeTools have a number of rules that are affected by numerous variables. Aligent worked with us to create a customised rule set that works exactly how we need online, as it does through our ERP.
The microservice-based integration approach is highly scalable, cost-effective and extensible, providing a welcome alternative to vendor lock-in associated with the legacy "ERP plug-and play" ecommerce solution before Aligent's engagement, or to expensive iPaaS solutions.
