Phone-and-Email Orders to a B2B Portal, 3x Faster in 14 Weeks

With over 1,200 active SKUs and hundreds of B2B customers, the volume of order-related communication was overwhelming.

Every order came in by phone or email. A customer would call to ask if a product was available. The sales team would check a shared spreadsheet or call the warehouse to confirm stock. If it was available, an order was raised manually. Then the customer would call again the next day to ask when it was shipping. Then again to ask for their invoice.

Sales was spending 60% of their time answering stock and order status questions by phone. None of that time was spent on finding new customers or growing existing accounts.

On the warehouse side, picking was done from printed order sheets. Barcode scanning was not used, so picking errors were common. Dispatch confirmations were logged manually at end of day, so live shipment status was never available when customers asked. The business was growing but was close to the operational limit of what the current system could handle.

• All orders were received by phone or email, entered into a spreadsheet, then transferred to the warehouse by hand, each step introducing delays and errors.
• There was no customer self-service: every availability check, order status update and invoice request needed a phone call to the sales team.
• Warehouse picking was from printed sheets with no barcode scanning, causing picking errors averaging 3 to 4 per day across 1,200+ SKUs.
• Customer-specific pricing existed only in a sales rep's head or a private spreadsheet, so incorrect pricing on invoices happened regularly.
• There was no real-time inventory, so overselling on fast-moving items caused cancellations and damaged customer relationships.

• Odoo B2B eCommerce portal: a customer-specific portal showing live stock, order history, delivery status and downloadable invoices, with no phone call needed.
• Sales and customer pricing: customer-specific price lists and discount tiers locked into the system, so correct pricing applies automatically on every order.
• Inventory and warehouse operations: barcode-driven pick, pack and ship workflows replacing manual order sheets and reducing picking errors to near zero.
• Delivery and shipment tracking: live dispatch status visible to both warehouse and customer, with delivery confirmation triggering invoice generation.
• Sales analytics and reporting: sales rep dashboards, customer order frequency analysis and slow-mover alerts replacing end-of-month spreadsheet reviews.

1. Product catalogue and pricing data build (weeks 1 to 3). All 1,200+ SKUs were structured into the Odoo product catalogue with images, specifications and customer-specific pricing tiers for the top 100 accounts. Opening stock was counted and validated.
2. B2B portal and warehouse workflow build (weeks 4 to 9). The portal was configured with customer-specific visibility, pricing and order workflows. Barcode scanning hardware was installed and pick, pack and ship flows were tested with the warehouse team using real orders in a staging environment.
3. Pilot with 20 key accounts (weeks 10 to 12). The portal was opened to 20 selected B2B customers in a controlled pilot. Their feedback shaped the final configuration. The warehouse barcode workflow ran in parallel with existing sheets to catch edge cases before full cutover.
4. Full launch, all customers and full warehouse (weeks 13 to 14). All customers were onboarded to the portal. The warehouse completed its transition to fully barcode-driven operations and paper order sheets were retired. A 30-day hyper-care period followed.

All 1,200+ SKUs have live stock visibility.