SUCCESS STORY

Transforming B2B Ordering for a Food Industry Distributor

A national distributor serving food and meat processors had built a strong B2B operation powered by AS400. They managed complex pricing, enterprise accounts, and repeat purchasing at scale.

They had a website. But it functioned as a catalog — not as an operational ordering system.

 

Executive Summary

This project was not about launching a new website. It was about reducing operational drag in a business that had outgrown manual order workflows.

Pricing, SKUs, and payment terms lived inside AS400. Customers could browse online, but most orders still required phone calls. Sales and service teams acted as the bridge between customers and the ERP.

Groove partnered with leadership to design a B2B eCommerce experience that extended AS400 to customers — without disrupting how the business already worked.

IBM AS400 Logo

Where Groove Came In

Groove began with ERP alignment. Before building anything, we worked with operations to understand:

  • How AS400 handled pricing and customer records
  • How customer-specific SKUs were structured
  • How payment terms and credit were managed
  • How product data flowed from the PIM

Groove owned both consulting and implementation. The objective was not to replace AS400. It was to extend it to customers through a structured B2B experience that matched real workflows.

What We Built

The new B2B portal reflected business rules directly from AS400, including:

  • Real-time, customer-specific pricing
  • Support for Net 30 and approved payment terms
  • Inventory visibility tied to ERP data
  • Company accounts with multi-buyer roles and permissions
  • Custom account registration validated against AS400
  • Enterprise order guides tied to customer-specific SKUs
  • Search prioritization based on enterprise product IDs
  • Restricted quote workflows for built-to-order products
  • Buyer portal with saved shopping lists for repeat ordering
  • Customer service “masquerade” functionality for assisted ordering

Product content continued flowing from the external PIM. Pricing and order logic remained grounded in AS400.

Customers saw the same structure the business operated on internally.

 

What Changed

After launch:

  • Routine orders shifted from phone and email to self-service
  • Enterprise customers reordered faster using their own SKU structure
  • Procurement teams managed buyers and permissions directly
  • Pricing updates in AS400 appeared online automatically

Internally:

  • Customer service moved from manual order entry to account support
  • Administrative workload tied to online ordering dropped significantly
  • Quote turnaround times improved

The portal became part of operations — not an additional system to manage.

Why This Worked

The project did not begin with features.

It began with sequence:

  • ERP structure
  • Operational workflows
  • Adoption risk

Execution followed alignment.

Because the experience was designed around AS400 — not layered on top of it — adoption was steady and operational disruption was minimal.

Operational Impact

Within months, the business saw:

  • Higher online adoption
  • Reduced manual order handling
  • Faster enterprise reordering
  • Greater internal confidence in the system

Most importantly, the platform reflected how the company already worked. And that made it scalable.

Where to Go Next

If you’d like to explore what that would look like inside your organization, start by requesting a complimentary copy of the book — or schedule a consultation to review your current ERP and digital readiness.
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