A seamless integration of an e-commerce system and accounting package

Nijhuis Bouw is an all-round construction company with its own carpentry factory and web shop. The underlying software was not not interconnected and the different components required manual activities to exchange data. As a result, more than 2 FTE’s were needed for the manual entry of e-commerce activities in the accounting solution, until recently. It was time for an automation move!

Nijhuis Bouw requested Intercept to help with the integration of the current software. Curious how we handled this? Then read on.

The situation

Nijhuis Bouw is a construction company that focuses on three main segments; serial housing construction, renovation of major projects and maintenance of existing properties belonging to housing corporations. Nijhuis Bouw has three locations with around 450 colleagues. Nijhuis Bouw also has its own carpentry factory and the webshop “Toelevering Online”, where they offer customized frames.

These different companies overlap and reinforce each other. Due to the growth of the company, the administrative activities are increasingly demanding. Currently, there are 2 FTE’s required for processing e-commere activities in the accounting solution. Due to the increase in orders, Nijhuis Bouw would have to hire even more staff. This proved to be a costly solution and a waste of time from the employees. A business case was formulated that was submitted to the IT department of Nijhuis Bouw.

The challenge

Marco Bosveld, ICT project manager at Nijhuis bouw, says: ‘’As an IT department in the construction industry, you will be confronted with automation at some point. In this case the integration of software applications. There are many major players in the IT industry who sell a complete integration solution, but we were looking for a partner who could help us build an integration of our existing software. Microsoft provided us a shortlist of suitable IT partners who could help us with this. Intercept felt best for us.’’

The solution

After two conversations and a Proof of Concept, we got the green light to integrate the current software.

We linked the e-commerce system to the accounting solution through Azure Service Bus. A cloud messaging system that interconnects various systems. Messages from the web shop are directly forwarded to the accounting solution.

To ensure that data is always processed correctly in the accounting package, we have made the right translation with Azure Functions. Manuel processing of orders and invoices is no longer necessary.

To unburden Nijhuis Bouw as much as possible, we worked with the e-commerce and accounting software suppliersprocess.

The results

The satisfaction of both sides was expressed in an interim evaluation. The new solution will be released in January 2020.

• Due to the integration between the systems there is no additional staff needed. Moreover, the solution will completely replace 1-2 FTEs, allowing these employees to take on other tasks. This results in a major cost benefit.
• Entering manual actions is very prone to error compared to automatic processing. With the new solution the chance of errors is considerably smaller.
• The financial department now has a complete and up-to-date overview with all information about purchases and sales

‘’Intercept is extremely professional. They were very flexible with our requirements. It is a party that can participate at various levels, from strategic to operational. An accessible party for every layer in the organization.’’ Marco Bosveld Nijhuis Bouw