Developing a B2B Marketplace for Saudi-based eCommerce company

The pre-sales and business analysts at Daffodil Software initiated this project with thorough market research, competitor study, and gap analysis. This entire process of research & development is performed under Daffodil’s Discover & Frame (D&F) program. D&F is a proprietary workshop wherein a client’s business is analyzed along with factors such as scope, competition, time-to-market, cost, technology utilization, resources on work, etc. A mobile app for B2B selling was developed using React Native as the core technology with the following user roles:

• Customers: For retailers/merchants who come to the B2B platform to purchase items in order to fulfill their stocks.
• Drivers/Collectors: For drivers who deliver consignments to merchants or do collections from the market.
• Vendors: For vendors to manage their network of merchants and outsource the collection activities to the eCommerce team.

Team Daffodil worked on some of the major problems linked with the B2B business model. For example, it ensured that the vendors meet the merchant that offers them goods at the best price. To do this, a rule engine was created at the backend that checks out a few metrics (stock availability, Estimated Time of Arrival, distance between vendor & merchant, rating/number of orders processed by the merchant, etc.) to connect the vendor with the best merchant.

Another problem, of optimizing the logistics cost, was resolved by integrating a third-party enterprise delivery management system. This solution helped in route optimization, proof of delivery, agent capacity management, geofencing, behavior monitoring, etc. Also, for optimizing the logistics cost, the concept of cross-docking was introduced in the system.

The system was introduced with several payment modes which include Cash on Delivery, Buy Now Pay Later, internal wallet payment, online payment, POS, etc.

For the application to have the best of functionalities, several third-party integrations were done. Logistics management, POS collection, CRM integration for sales, virtual account collection, online payment, marketing, etc. were some of the services for which third-party integrations were done.

Along with the mobile app, a web-based admin panel for the vendor and merchant was created. The vendor admin panel allows users to view the onboarded users with their details, view list of all warehouses, list of all collection requests, order invoices, etc. The merchant panel, on the other hand, allows viewing the current orders, their status, a master list of all the warehouses, organizations/vendors, etc.