Case description
On a normal day on average 1.1 million parcels are sent by courier in The Netherlands.The transport of these packages is often not (yet) sustainable enough. One of the reasons being is that standard cardboard, with fixed dimensions, is used to package products. Resulting in a way to big packaging box for that product.
By transporting products in a custom (size) cardboard box, in theory, more packages can be transported in a courier's truck, in that way a courier transports less "air". The courier therefore has to drive less and is able to deliver more packages on the same route. This automatically means a reduction of fuel emissions and/or other harmful substances.
DoosOpMaat has been producing custom cardboard packaging for 16 years.
And with selling custom packaging boxes comes a custom website.
SWIS helps DoosOpMaat in their mission to sell less air.
The scope of this project (roughly) consisted of:
- Being able to calculate the price of custom-made cardboard packaging based on variable product characteristics;
- Be able to place and process an order for a custom-made cardboard packaging box;
The website had to be able to communicate with external tools such as a workflow automation tool, ERP and other external tooling using the {JSON:API} standard.
Case goals and results
Each custom cardboard packaging box is unique, one of a kind. And therein lies the challenge.At first glance, www.doosopmaat.nl seems like an ordinary Drupal (e-commerce) website, but appearances can be deceiving. Various complex mathematical calculations are performed to calculate and show the price of a custom-made cardboard packaging box.
A custom price is calculated for a box based on various product variables (such as dimensions, quality, finishing and quantity).
The box can then be ordered directly, online, via the website or via JouwDoosopmaat (self-service portal).
Doosopmaat doesn't work, on purpose, with a product catalog with, for example, standard predefined dimensions. Each box is truly unique, which makes the “software” also unique but quite complex.
The goal was for customers to get a quote for your custom-made cardboard packaging box, completely to your liking and to be able to place an order for that box or re-order a box via JouwDoosopmaat.
Challenges
The old website had way too many responsibilities. In the old situation, one system was responsible for almost all processes, from calculation to order processing. The system could handle all these processes, but was quite sensitive to errors. So our software architect made the decision to not build one system to rule them all, but use different tools that are specially designed en developed in what they do.For example; we used Workflow Automation (N8N) extensively for the workflow between online, ERP and transactional e-mails.
At doosopmaat.nl every tool works "standalone" and these tools communicate using the {JSON:API} standard.
Explosive computing power with the “BOM”
Any size box can be ordered through the website. Because each box has/can have a unique size, a tool had to be developed that could quickly calculate prices based on custom product characteristics.
For this, SWIS developed a calculation tool with which, using a complex calculation method, boxes can be ordered based on dimensions, quality, color and even printing. This is the BOM (Berekening Op Maat).
BOM is stateless, which means that the webshop is solely responsible for your shopping cart. This allows customers to easily switch devices, for example. You put a product in your shopping cart on your desktop and you can then continue on your mobile, with the same products that are still in your shopping cart.
Because of the fact Doosopmaat is stateless the Doosopmaat customer service can easily monitor and adjust orders of the customer in real-time. It also immediately gives Doosopmaat the freedom and complete control needed to respond to a rapidly changing packaging market.
Community contributions
Commerce Google Tag Manager - PatchMakes it possible to alter data for a Enhanced Commerce Product even if the purchased entity is not a Product Variant
Webform - Patch
Fixes an issue where the cache of a Webform is not cleared when using an Entity Reference field
BEM - New feature
Adds support for Site Settings module
Categories
E-commerce
Date when website went live
1 year 4 months ago
© Splash Awards Nederland 2023 - Terms of use - Privacy policy