Groene Bouwmaterialen (Bio Bouw Heusden) sells biobased and ecological building materials through groenebouwmaterialen.nl: insulation, clay, boards and finishes for builders who want to build sustainably. An assortment of thousands of products, delivered from small parcel to full pallet.
The challenge
An Odoo was already running, but an outdated version 15 that no longer matched where the company was heading. Building materials are also difficult e-commerce: prices per square metre, per board and per packaging, shipping costs that differ per product, pallets next to parcels, and product data with technical specifications such as insulation values that have to be correct on the webshop. The wish: a fresh environment in which webshop, warehouse and accounting form one whole.
The approach
The kickstart method on a clean, current Odoo: fit-gap per process, then CRM, sales, purchasing, inventory with multiple warehouses and routes, e-commerce, shipping, accounting with opening balance and SEPA, and HR. Logistics received the attention building materials demand: Sendcloud for parcels with multiple packages, separate handling for pallet deliveries, shipping costs per product through custom development, and labels via Direct Print without a PDF detour. The centre of gravity was product data: a custom import module loads thousands of products including webshop copy and specifications from Excel and updates them in bulk, with an SEO-friendly webshop structure as the result.
The result
A webshop that is live and an organisation that runs along behind it: an order comes in, the right warehouse and route are selected, the label rolls out of the printer and accounting runs along live. Development is ongoing: gift cards via Mollie, a data connection for maintaining product data and further webshop improvements are lined up, and support is structurally covered with Odoo Heartbeat. That is how you build sustainably - including your own system.