Dealer Portal and CRM

The distributor had run its dealer portal and its staff CRM for years as two separate ColdFusion apps on an ageing Windows server. Both still worked, but they were hard to change, and the business ran on Sage 100, which the portal and CRM only half knew about.

The rebuild makes them one system in two parts, sharing a single database.

The dealer portal is for bike shops. A shop signs in and sees the catalog with its own pricing and the brands it carries, orders what it needs or saves an order for later, books its next season's stock ahead, and keeps an eye on items it's waiting for. Returns and warranty claims go in from the portal too, and the shop's invoices, statement, purchases and backorders are always there to check or print.

The CRM is for the distributor's staff. Each shop's page brings its Sage account together with the team's notes, logged emails and tasks, so anyone can see where things stand with a customer. Orders placed in the portal arrive here for review; once a staff member approves one, it goes to Sage 100 as a sales order. The season bookings grid, call lists and reports, such as backorders, run from the same data.

Sage 100 stays the source of truth. Customers, items, prices, invoices and sales orders come in from Sage, so the portal and CRM always show what the ERP knows, and approved orders go straight back into it, so nothing is keyed in twice.