DXP
Mobile App & eCommerce Design and Development
Creating a eCommerce platform for over four million different items in stock to speed up its product request rates
DXP is a Houston-based enterprise in the oil and gas industry. Within its offer, it provides pumps and industrial supplies. Moreover, it has many subsidiaries and a presence across several US cities.
Nowadays, it’s a publicly-traded professional distribution management company, providing services to various industries. It achieves this through Innovative Pumping Solutions (IPS), Supply Chain Services, and MROP Products and Services.
The venture didn’t have an eCommerce platform, even though its main competitor had a good one. Since they wanted to enhance their request rates, they requested an app for their clients. Also, they needed a complex ERP to maintain an optimal business flow.
The main aim was to become the best solution for its customers. To do so, it needed to speed up its product request rates by updating its tech resources.
The company was born as Southern Engine and Pump Company in 1908. They re-chartered as Sepco Industries in 1979 and renamed DXP Enterprises, Inc. in 1996. Through the years, it has strengthened its customer-supporting abilities. As a result, it has acquired diverse companies, focusing on product expertise and technical services. On top of that, it is specialists in Industrial MRO supply chain management.
DXP remains on the leading edge of technology, training, and products. On top of that, they manage to attract and retain high-level employees. The core of their strategy relies on being the industrial customer’s best choice.
Capicua’s challenges were mainly divided into three areas. Those were maintaining their business rules, developing a transparent process, and improving the custom client experience.
Their previous eCommerce provider was extremely outdated and unintuitive for regular users. However, DXP executives didn’t want to migrate their core business flow from Prophet 21. Due to the business’ nature, they couldn’t use uniform pricing. As a result of this condition, a simple eCommerce was not enough for their products. Furthermore, since the previous eCommerce platform had an antiquated architecture, redesigning it was extremely complex. This happened because Epicor doesn't provide a mobile app that connects to Prophet21, and Prophet 21 doesn’t have an API that interacts with ERPs.
In sum, the challenge was building a warehouse custom solution that allowed them to keep growing. For this, we had to improve their technology and apply a user-focused approach.
A vast differential is that DXP offers over four million different items. Because of this, the warehouse’ design needed to contemplate every detail. Nowadays, with our custom solution, companies like Shell can buy from a single screw to 10 million dollar oil pumps.
The eCommerce core platform was B2BCommerce, with the ASP.NET Web API on Microsoft Azure. Also, we combined SQLServer 2012 as the eCommerce database with SQLServer 2014 as the Web API database. Furthermore, we used JQUERY and ASP.NET for the custom code layer and Swift for the iOS app development.
Since B2BCommerce doesn’t have content management functions, we created content configuration files that store customer-specific info. To achieve this, we created an API that runs on Azure to provide information to the mobile app. As a result, this API communicates with our custom code layer to retrieve and send data to B2BCommerce.
Capicua defined the look and feel of the new site and its eCommerce. To do so, our Design Team applied market trends to create a pleasant user experience. On top of that, we made our code layer to connect B2BCommerce with our custom front-end and mobile app. Furthermore, we developed and designed the iOS app interface to enhance the purchase experience.
Customers can easily find products in DXP’s enormous stock within the app. The options include browsing products, creating purchase lists, and scanning desired items’ barcodes.
