Boomlab.nl

Shopware 6

Boom has been a leading laboratory wholesaler since 1895. With more than 60,000 different products, you can always contact Boom for your laboratory supplies. From basic laboratory equipment and chemicals to supplies and disposables, Boom serves customers throughout the Netherlands and parts of Belgium and Luxembourg. A large part of the customers that Boom serves are active in the food and water industry companies with a production or control function. However, hospitals and pharmacies also purchase products from Boom. The ambition of Boom: To create a sustainable world in which you, as a lab employee, can spend all your valuable time on important matters such as research and control. Boom was in the middle of this challenging project when we came their way. The partner they worked with ran into several problems, and communication did not go smoothly. That is why it was desired that there would be a new partner that wanted to proceed immediately and that the communication would be very direct. But also, that the new partner would not be afraid to step into this project halfway through.

The Goal

There was a big desire to build a clear webshop where customers can easily navigate between products through their customer portal and then order without facing any problems. They needed their customers to be able to assign Shopware orders to specific cost centers (cost places).

The Challenges

To achieve this goal, we had to overcome several obstacles in the field of Alumio and Shopware. Both had their own challenges and solutions. Let’s walk through these challenges and the solutions we applied to achieve the goal.

Alumio

For Boom, we had the privilege of working on a project that involved different distinct data integration routes. In this article, we’ll dive into the intricacies of these routes, highlighting the hurdles we overcame and the innovations we introduced along the way.

The data integration routes we faced:

BusinessCentral to Shopware: Stock
BusinessCentral to Shopware: Customers
Stibo to Shopware: Products
Stibo to Shopware: Categories
Shopware to BC: Customers
Shopware to BC: Cart – Quote – Orders

One of the most significant challenges we encountered during this project was working with Stibo’s API endpoints. These limitations forced us to think outside the box and develop creative solutions to ensure data integrity and flow. We would like to take you through this process and discuss the Alumio challenges and solutions we encountered on the way to our goal.

Alumio iPaaS for e-commerce integrations

Dynamic category tree handling

Challenge: In the Stibo to Shopware – Categories route, we faced the issue of not having a dedicated endpoint to fetch all category information.

Solution: To overcome this, we devised a unique approach. We utilized a webhook as the outgoing component of the route, with the incoming part set to read from the same endpoint. This effectively created a recursive-like process, allowing us to navigate the category tree node by node.

This ingenious solution involved initiating the webhook call with the first node of the tree and then dynamically traversing through all subsequent nodes in the order of grandparent, parent, and children. While a native recursive function or transformer in our integration tool, Alumio, would have been ideal, our custom approach proved effective and versatile.

Products update route

Challenge: Similarly, when dealing with Stibo to Shopware – Products, we encountered the challenge of lacking an endpoint for fetching all products.

Solution: To address this, we devised a two-route strategy: The first route started from BC and collected all product data. The second route started from Stibo and obtained product information for updating records in Shopware. By splitting the process into two routes, we ensured that data was accurately synchronized, and Shopware’s product catalog remained up to date.

BC to Shopware – Stock

Not all routes presented equal challenges. BC to Shopware – Stock was notably straightforward, as it primarily involved reading data from BC, mapping it appropriately, and seamlessly syncing it with Shopware. This route served as a reminder that sometimes simplicity is key in data integration.

Shopware

As mentioned, the challenge lay mainly in picking up this project halfway through and making it our own. We started to get all the insights into the things that had already been done and to see what we encountered. We built LivePricing within 2 weeks. For performance, we chose a direct connection between Shopware and Business Central. We also set up an integration with customer.io, a messaging platform that allows marketers to take an idea and turn it into a message campaign.

Cost Centers

Challenge: The customers of Boomlab needed to be able to assign Shopware orders to specific cost centers (cost places). We needed to add 2 types of management permissions for cost centers: User-based permissions and Role-based permissions.

Solution: We developed this by adding the entity, and this was made manageable for the customer. To do that, we created a config file containing the controller name, action name, and privilege for cost centers. This config file gets processed when the plugin is activated. AclRoutingUpdateService, available from the b2b plugin, is called to add the configuration data to the database.

To make the cost centers selectable on the order confirmation page, we extended the checkout confirmation template and added a new block for the cost center select.

The Experience

While overcoming these challenges was undoubtedly rewarding, our project also introduced us to new horizons. We had the opportunity to work with Shopware B2B for the first time, expanding our expertise in e-commerce data integration. Specifically, we leveraged Shopware B2B to create and update customer information, streamlining the customer management process between Shopware and BC.

We’re about to go live, so keep an eye on this page for an update on the experience from the customer’s point of view!

Martijn Jakobs – Boom BV

After only 10 minutes in the conversation with Memo ICT, we knew enough. Straight to the point, friendly service, and the urge to continue. This was exactly what we needed right now,” according to Martijn Jakobs, Manager at Boom BV.