Wholesale Knowledge
1800 Radiator, one of the largest auto part dealers in North America, urgently needed to upgrade their Customer Service and Inventory modules to accommodate the company’s growth.
1800 Radiator is one of the leading online auto part dealers in North America, serving both retail and wholesale customers. In only three years, from 2005 to 2008, the company grew from about twenty to more than 300 franchises; thus, they believed that technological advancements were crucial to support this growth. The challenge involved changing to a Web-oriented system that provided Web Services and that could be used in the same way by all franchises.
In the end and after a thorough assessment of the company's needs, it was decided to gradually migrate different modules of the legacy application, starting from Customer Service to later work on the Inventory module. GeneXus was the tool selected to carry out this task. “In the past, we had considered using PHP and .NET, as well as other application development tools available on the market. But, after knowing the various options, GeneXus was selected as the most suitable tool for meeting the company’s growth requirements, due to the rapid development and low maintenance costs of the developed software," explained Gabriel Gramajo, Project Leader at 1800 Radiator
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Even though the solution was created completely in-house, GeneXus USA was responsible for developing the new Franchise Billing System for the company.
As for the process itself, it involved a first stage where two systems were developed: a Web system and a Win system. The first one improves the quality and usability of information in the Web environment. The second system interacts with the company’s legacy system to take over billing and generate the post sales process that includes printing invoices, sending mail and faxes, generating reports, controlling stock, and so on.
GXportal, the GeneXus tool that facilitates development of Internet portals, is also part of the solution. It is used for creating the resource website for franchises, which contains support and audio visual reference material.
“One of the main challenges that we faced was finding the way to print invoices in the more than 300 agencies distributed in the United States and Canada. GeneXus has delivered excellent results, and currently it supports an average load of 25,000 objects printed daily," affirmed Gramajo.
Rapid development, easy maintenance, and the ability to evolve with business requirements were key factors that enabled the addition of process tracking and end-user empowerment through the provision of information necessary for decision making. For these same reasons, GeneXus enabled us to develop, in only 6 months, an application that we had tried on three occasions to migrate, while at the same time “considerably reducing product maintenance costs and providing unprecedented continuity and stability of business-critical processes,” said Gramajo.
In the end and after a thorough assessment of the company's needs, it was decided to gradually migrate different modules of the legacy application, starting from Customer Service to later work on the Inventory module. GeneXus was the tool selected to carry out this task. “In the past, we had considered using PHP and .NET, as well as other application development tools available on the market. But, after knowing the various options, GeneXus was selected as the most suitable tool for meeting the company’s growth requirements, due to the rapid development and low maintenance costs of the developed software," explained Gabriel Gramajo, Project Leader at 1800 Radiator
..
Even though the solution was created completely in-house, GeneXus USA was responsible for developing the new Franchise Billing System for the company.
As for the process itself, it involved a first stage where two systems were developed: a Web system and a Win system. The first one improves the quality and usability of information in the Web environment. The second system interacts with the company’s legacy system to take over billing and generate the post sales process that includes printing invoices, sending mail and faxes, generating reports, controlling stock, and so on.
GXportal, the GeneXus tool that facilitates development of Internet portals, is also part of the solution. It is used for creating the resource website for franchises, which contains support and audio visual reference material.
“One of the main challenges that we faced was finding the way to print invoices in the more than 300 agencies distributed in the United States and Canada. GeneXus has delivered excellent results, and currently it supports an average load of 25,000 objects printed daily," affirmed Gramajo.
Rapid development, easy maintenance, and the ability to evolve with business requirements were key factors that enabled the addition of process tracking and end-user empowerment through the provision of information necessary for decision making. For these same reasons, GeneXus enabled us to develop, in only 6 months, an application that we had tried on three occasions to migrate, while at the same time “considerably reducing product maintenance costs and providing unprecedented continuity and stability of business-critical processes,” said Gramajo.