Abe Janitorial Supply Case Study
About Abe Janitorial
Abe Janitorial Supply is a leading distributor of janitorial and cleaning products, serving contract customers such as government agencies, schools, and local authorities since 1989. They offer a wide range of supplies, including chemicals, cleaning tools, paper products, and food service essentials, at competitive prices with fast delivery. Headquartered in Sacramento, CA, Abe Janitorial is known for its broad product catalog, responsive service, and support for large-scale, custom orders.
The Problem
Abe Janitorial’s previous website was built on outdated technology, mainly Joomla CMS, basic PHP, and jQuery, which resulted in several user experience and operational challenges:
- Clunky and Unresponsive Experience: The interface often felt slow and laggy, failing to provide the fast, seamless experience modern customers expect.
- Slow Page Load Times: Extensive product catalogs and dynamic content took too long to load, frustrating users and discouraging large orders.
- Outdated Design: Lacked contemporary design, making the website appear old-fashioned and less trustworthy.
- No Mobile Optimization: The website was not responsive, making it difficult for users, especially B2B clients, to browse and order from smartphones or tablets.
- Manual Updates Required: Frequent manual interventions were necessary for even minor content or product catalog updates, increasing the risk of errors and delays.
- Challenging Real-Time Updates: It was difficult to display up-to-date inventory and pricing dynamically, leading to customer confusion and operational headaches.
“These challenges impacted the efficiency of customer experiences, limited overall satisfaction, and made it more difficult for Abe Janitorial to scale and stay competitive in the evolving janitorial supply market.”
The Solution
During the website transformation project for Abe Janitorial, two significant challenges were encountered and addressed:
- Unstructured Corporate Hierarchy
- Initial Issue: Abe Janitorial’s existing platform lacked a well-organized representation of its corporate structure. As the company supports a B2B clientele that often requires complex organizational account management, this gap created difficulties in managing diverse customer hierarchies, branch relationships, and user roles.
- Impact: Without a robust corporate structure, it was challenging to assign appropriate permissions, establish account hierarchies (such as Corporate Account), and enable streamlined approval workflows for larger clients. This led to inefficiencies in order processing and hampered the ability to provide customized solutions for enterprise customers.
- How we overcame it: To address this, we developed manual scripts to create a structured corporate hierarchy with appropriate company relationships and roles assigned to each user and account. The client was highly cooperative and open to reorganizing their existing system, which allowed us to align the new structure effectively with their operational needs.
- Real-Time Own ERP Data Synchronization
- Initial Issue: Connecting Abe Janitorial’s existing ERP system with the new website was essential to ensure that company data, user details, shipping and billing addresses, PO numbers, and pricing stayed accurate and consistent.
- Impact: The absence of real-time data synchronization increased the risk of errors, such as displaying out-of-stock items or incorrect pricing, which could negatively affect both sales and customer trust. Additionally, manual intervention increased the operational workload and delayed critical updates across the system.
How we overcame it: To solve this, we built a new tool called Connector, which enables real-time integration between their ERP system and the eCommerce platform. This ensured that all critical data, such as pricing, company & customer info, billing & shipping address, and order details & status, remained up to date, reducing manual efforts and improving the overall customer experience.
The Challenge
During the website transformation project for Abe Janitorial, two significant challenges were encountered and addressed:
- Unstructured Corporate Hierarchy
- Initial Issue: Abe Janitorial’s existing platform lacked a well-organized representation of its corporate structure. As the company supports a B2B clientele that often requires complex organizational account management, this gap created difficulties in managing diverse customer hierarchies, branch relationships, and user roles.
- Impact: Without a robust corporate structure, it was challenging to assign appropriate permissions, establish account hierarchies (such as Corporate Account), and enable streamlined approval workflows for larger clients. This led to inefficiencies in order processing and hampered the ability to provide customized solutions for enterprise customers.
- How we overcame it: To address this, we developed manual scripts to create a structured corporate hierarchy with appropriate company relationships and roles assigned to each user and account. The client was highly cooperative and open to reorganizing their existing system, which allowed us to align the new structure effectively with their operational needs.
- Real-Time Own ERP Data Synchronization
- Initial Issue: Connecting Abe Janitorial’s existing ERP system with the new website was essential to ensure that company data, user details, shipping and billing addresses, PO numbers, and pricing stayed accurate and consistent.
- Impact: The absence of real-time data synchronization increased the risk of errors, such as displaying out-of-stock items or incorrect pricing, which could negatively affect both sales and customer trust. Additionally, manual intervention increased the operational workload and delayed critical updates across the system.
- How we overcame it: To solve this, we built a new tool called Connector, which enables real-time integration between their ERP system and the eCommerce platform. This ensured that all critical data, such as pricing, company & customer info, billing & shipping address, and order details & status, remained up to date, reducing manual efforts and improving the overall customer experience.
Conclusion
Overall, the project came with its own set of challenges, but those challenges turned into opportunities for innovation. They pushed us to develop new features, enhance system integrations, and optimize key workflows that added long-term value to both Abe Janitorial Supplies and our DCKAP Commerce. The client, along with their ERP team, was extremely cooperative and provided timely feedback throughout the process, which played a crucial role in the project’s success.
By streamlining order processing, enabling accurate B2B pricing, and supporting scalable corporate account management, we helped Abe Janitorial Supplies strengthen its digital infrastructure, improve operational efficiency, and better serve its commercial clients in the highly competitive janitorial supply market.