Stockpile – Building Materials & Supplies Marketplace Curated for Sri Lankan Construction Industry Professionals
Stockpile is a complete procurement platform that caters to Sri Lanka’s construction companies and industry professionals by providing an interface to get bulk pricing, view product specifications and place orders for construction materials and supplies.
It is a construction marketplace that includes items related to kitchen, sanitary, and plumbing, hardware, waterproofing, admixtures, roofing, flooring, electrical fixtures, and other departments.
It benefits contractors, developers, architects, and consultants by providing them with access to the best selections of construction material available in the market along with price negotiation.
This, in turn, will help buyers to do comparisons and decision-making process much simpler and faster to procure the supplies and materials.
The Stockpile B2B marketplace is especially available for bulk purchases and equips construction professionals to find items needed from the point of laying the foundation to completing the interiors of a building.
Stockpile is a venture of Construction Trade Technologies (Pvt) Ltd., established in 2021. The company combines its experience in the construction industry with its foundations in automation and information technology.
Their collaboration with the Young Constructors’ Forum (YCF), a forum established to voice and discuss the concerns of the next generation of engineers and constructors of Sri Lanka, gave them insights into the critical concerns and practical problems faced in the construction industry.
Subsequently, they analyzed the entire life cycle of material procurement and developed Stockpile to reduce inefficiencies and solve problems by making incremental improvements in each step in the process of finding stock, liaising with vendors, and purchasing material for construction.
Now, construction industry workers can save time and build efficiently by discovering, comparing, and purchasing all supplies on a single platform.
Looking for the Best Ecommerce Dev Agency
Charith Perera, owner and director at Construction Trade Technologies (Pvt.) Ltd envisioned to develop a procurement platform specifically designed for construction-related materials.
He collaborated with the Webkul and our team of developers to build a custom B2B service platform on Adobe Commerce and further set a goal to launch Stockpile in the market within a short span of time.
But prior to selecting Webkul, the client explored for many other e-commerce development agencies for this project.
Despite that, none of them came close to offering the set of pre-developed modules that fulfilled most of the project requirements, and the ability to have them customized to the required specifications.
This also became the key deciding factor to go ahead and work with the Webkul team. Also being an official Adobe Solution partner and proven success in the B2B e-commerce space, choosing Webkul was the right decision.
Read B2B case study: Honeywell GoDirect Trade, LabX and Prologis Essentials.
Scope of Work – Key Deliverables and Technologies
The project work involved replicating the standard B2B quotation procedure to match the industry standard practices found in the construction field in Sri Lanka.
To begin with, first, we had to decide which e-commerce platform (Bagisto, Magento, WooCommerce) to select for building this B2B commerce site. Our business team recommended adopting Adobe Commerce.
Formerly known as Magento, it is the most popular open-source e-commerce platform for delivering the best commerce experiences to both B2B and B2C buyers.
So presently, the Adobe Commerce platform is powering and running the whole Stockpile B2B commerce system.
Single Quotation for Multiple Items
In the default flow of the Webkul B2B Marketplace, a single quotation restricts to only one product, which means the buyer has to send multiple quotation requests for multiple items.
Whereas in the Stockpile construction marketplace, we customized the whole quotation procedure to help buyers create a single quotation to enquire for multiple products, that can be sent to all the suppliers.
With a multi-vendor RFQ or tender, a buyer can create a single request for required items and then submit it. After that, all the suppliers who are from the relevant categories will receive that quotation document.
Further, once the buyer receives quotes from different suppliers, he can compare, select, and negotiate the sale with each supplier. The comparison window shows the products on each row, and each vendor as a column, with the corresponding price and a link to the product on each cell.
Category Tree Selection
For improving the user experience, the category tree selection is available to both buyers and suppliers. So whenever, someone creates a new quotation, the buyer can easily search for a category and view its subcategories for the desired product.
Correspondingly, at the suppliers’ end, while selecting the categories in their profile to receive the relevant quotation queries, the category tree selection feature is provided.
Contact Listed Supplier
Apart from sending a quotation document, there is another way how buyers can reach out to any listed supplier on the Stockpile construction marketplace.
On the supplier page and product page, a registered customer can send a simple text message with an attachment file. Moreover, the buyer can also view the response rate and time of the particular supplier.
Customer Sub-Account and Approval
Generally in the B2B buying process, multiple individuals take part in the activity to simplify the complex task. Therefore, while building the Stockpile construction marketplace, sub-account user creation functionality became the required part of it.
The Magento 2 Customer Sub-Account enables buyers to create and add multiple users under the main customer account and authorises them to perform various tasks in the marketplace.
Additionally, to limit the creation of spam user accounts on the Stockpile, every new signup is monitored with Magento 2 B2B Customer Approval. This means only after the administrator approves the registration, new buyers can make any purchases or contact suppliers on the platform.
Final Outcome – Result
To achieve the desired objectives of the Stockpile marketplace multiple tasks were created and assigned to the developers. All the work progress were communicated effectively through our UVdesk service portal and ERP system.
In the span of three months of starting the project, the client was able to demonstrate the prototype to a sample set of their target buyers. And, once he obtained the users’ feedback we were able to fine-tune the product to meet their needs within a total of six months.
Challenging Times Ahead
With the ongoing political and economic crisis in Sri Lanka, the entire construction industry is suffering from it. Reasons such as the restriction on the import of building materials, debt on the government and devaluation of its currency.
Many infrastructure projects are either delayed or put on hold until the country’s financial condition improves.
However, through the Stockpile construction marketplace, it has now made an easy-to-use digital platform to onboard suppliers, contractors, and traders to connect and negotiate for the building and construction materials.
Stockpile commits itself to continuously improving its experience onsite and contributing toward efficient project management, time-saving, and better profits.