Customer Portal v2

The customer's service division supports dealers and end users who order parts and manage service-related transactions. With product, pricing, and order data living in their BPCS (DB2) ERP, the company wanted a modern way to put that information directly into customers' hands.

The existing Java-based customer portal had some issues. It had a very old look and feel, it was unstable and required frequent server reboots, and it had synchronization issues with the BPCS ERP system. It focused on orders, but offered very little additional automation.

The customer wanted to add FedEx integration, the ability to create and manage pro forma invoices for large shipments to Latin America, reminder emails for abandoned shopping carts, and a way for customers to view and pay invoices online. They also wanted a system that was more stable and secure than their previous system.

Sembit built a new website using .NET with a responsive design, distinct visual themes for the heavy-duty and aftermarket lines, a mockable data-access layer for DB2, staging tables with nightly flat-file loads, and real-time calls to BPCS for price and stock checks, and graceful fallback to snapshots when the ERP was offline. During the transition from the old website, Sembit created token-based SSO to allow users to move seamlessly between the old and new system.

The new ordering process supported multiple product lines with unified competitor part number lookups, multi-cart shopping, UPS and FedEx freight estimation, Authorize.net credit-card authorization and capture, Excel bulk-order uploads, employee-order adjustments, a promotions engine, HTML order confirmations, PDF order attachments, and an abandoned-cart reminder service. A dedicated Latin America pro-forma workflow batched back-ordered lines, generates Spanish-language PDFs, and supports pre-payment by credit card.

Account and administration tools included an invoice module with search, online payment, and credit application, plus user administration covering login, password resets, impersonation, and employee data uploads.

When the new version of the customer portal went live, greater adoption meant more of the company's order volume flowed through the automated system, reducing phone and email volume. Customer-service workload dropped markedly and customer satisfaction rose.

This project shows how a thoughtfully updated portal can transform routine service into a fast, self-directed experience for customers worldwide. By addressing current customer-facing pain points and gaps, along with a stronger backend synchronization architecture, Sembit enabled the customer to reduce costs and positioned them for continued growth.