The challenge
A regional distribution company was managing orders, inventory, and team performance across four separate spreadsheets and two legacy tools that did not communicate with each other. Each day began with manual data reconciliation, and management reports required hours of manual compilation. Out-of-stock situations were discovered late, and no single view of daily operations existed.
Objectives
- 01Unify order management, inventory tracking, and reporting into one platform
- 02Eliminate manual data entry and daily reconciliation workflows
- 03Provide real-time inventory visibility with low-stock alerts
- 04Enable management reporting without spreadsheet compilation
- 05Ensure the platform could scale with the business without rewrites
The solution
We designed and built a custom web-based operations platform with role-based access control, real-time order tracking, automated inventory management, and a reporting engine that generates daily management reports automatically.
Next.js
Node.js
PostgreSQL- Chart.js
Docker
AWS ECS
GitHub Actions
How we approached it
- Step 01
Conducted stakeholder workshops with operations, sales, and management teams to map existing workflows
- Step 02
Defined a unified data model covering orders, products, suppliers, and team users
- Step 03
Designed role-specific dashboards — operations, management, and warehouse — each showing relevant information without clutter
- Step 04
Built an API-first backend enabling future mobile access for field teams
- Step 05
Implemented automated report generation with PDF export and email delivery
- Step 06
Deployed to AWS with a CI/CD pipeline enabling fast, reliable updates
Key features
- Real-time order lifecycle management
- Automated inventory tracking with threshold alerts
- Role-based access (operations, warehouse, management)
- Automated daily and weekly PDF reports
- Dashboard with KPI widgets and trend charts
- Audit trail for all order and inventory changes
Outcomes
This is a sample scenario illustrating the type of outcomes achievable with a project of this nature. Illustrative results are shown below for demonstration purposes only.
- Eliminated daily data reconciliation from the operations morning routine
- Out-of-stock situations identified proactively rather than reactively
- Management reporting time reduced from several hours to minutes
- All team members working from a single source of truth for the first time
