The Story

Custom Plus Distributing is a leading distributor of consumer electronics, providing specialty dealers with specialty products since 1989

Custom Plus Distributing is a wholesaler based in Washington, United States.  They sell and distribute some of the most elite, sought-after consumer electronics products in the industry to specialty dealers and installers. The company provides electronic brands like Sony, Samsung, LG, Sonos, and Bose.

The Challenges

Custom Plus Distributing main challenges included:

The old Magento website contains a lot of unqualified source code

Custom Plus Distributing made a significant investment in website development with Magento, the leading open-source e-commerce platform. However, they made the mistake of choosing a customizing service that was not powerful enough to exploit the full potential of Magento. The challenge was that this team worked with Magento (a powerful eCommerce platform built on Zend Framework) as a plain PHP developer.

In particular:

• The old Magento website contained a lot of unqualified source code
• Stock data was updated via batch file written in Python which is hard to debug
• Python script could not answer when data was changed

The handcraft data connection process between the Enspire ERP and Magento eCommerce website

Enspire ERP, the ERP program that CustomPlus was utilizing, is incredibly out-of-date. Finding technical support for such a system was challenging, especially when it came to investigating its information and features.

When confronted with Custom Integration – Batch Files, they are in this predicament.

• Used scheduled bash script for extracting data from MSSQL Enspire DB on Windows to CSV files
• Used scheduled bash script to upload from Windows Server to Linux Server via FTP connection.
• Used scheduled Python scripts to import data into Magento MySQL Database
• Was unable to detect WHEN and HOW a bash script was running.
• Having no idea WHAT transpires when a data item was missing
• Afraid to make changes on the batch files because it may affect the other working parts.

These are all mistakes that an eCommerce engineer must not make!

The Objective

Make their eCommerce website profitable then optimize business performance with ERP and Magento integration

Reinventing its Magento eCommerce website, an important strategy for a wholesaler like CCC.
Integrating its Magento eCommerce website with its legacy ERP platform without changing the platform.

The Solutions 

• First, Variux Magento developers converted all non-standard source code to Magento convention. Then, Variux with expertise in Magento development helped CDP custom its eCommerce following its UI/UX design. Customization is one of the vital factors that make a Commerce website successful and profitable.
• This is a very rare case of data connection between the Infor Enspire ERP and Magento. However, Variux, in collaboration with BeeHexa, upgraded to a HexaSync Integration Solution, allowing the Infor Enspire ERP to easily connect to the Magento website. This has helped CPD not miss a single shopping cart from the Magento website while minimizing human errors.

The Results

CDP now owns a stable and profitable eCommerce website… 

• Successfully taking full advantage of Magento Open Source, CPD now owns its stable and profitable e-commerce site, providing full features for all customers. Not only did the Variux crew develop, but also continued to accompany CPD to maintain and constantly develop its eCommerce catching up with the UX/UI trends in line with the times.

… And have billions of data records synchronization between Magento & the Infor Enspire ERP 

• A couple of weeks after fixing the Magento website, the HexaSync solution helped CPD synchronize +6,000,000 data between Magento & the Infor Enspire ERP. Though the Infor Enspire ERP is an out-of-date ERP and has never been integrated by HexaSync before.