Enter Centric: Building an App for B2B Customer Engagement
Due to the dynamic nature of the client’s industry, they were looking for a partner who could rapidly scale a team to deliver project results on a quick timeline.
The F&B company also has operations in India in proximity to where Centric has a fast-growing technology center. As a result, they approached Centric to assess our capabilities and invited us to submit a proposal.
The company wanted to create a globally scalable, cost-effective B2B application (iOS and Android) to enable digital ordering and customer engagement across multiple countries. Our experts helped build a highly configurable mobile application design and architecture that connected to multiple client systems and enabled quick rollouts to different geographies.
As part of the discovery phase, our teams gathered the requirements for a minimal viable product (MVP) solution. They started with Latin America as the location and built a proof of concept (POC) and a plan to deliver it, including timelines and resourcing.
Once our plan was in place, we partnered with the client to design an app that digitized and simplified the ordering experience for their B2B customers starting with smaller store owners. The app focused on three key elements to achieve our client’s goals: user onboarding, digital ordering, and customer engagement.
1. User Onboarding
No matter how much functionality an app has in terms of selling products or engaging users, it won’t work without the right foundational customer data. That’s why our team built the platform with an end-to-end registration process. The process centralizes and maintains consumer information so the CPG company can better connect with users and optimize their experience.
2. Digital Ordering
It was critical for the teams to build the platform to allow retailers to place orders easily and intuitively because timely orders majorly drive our client’s revenue. The app visualizes this experience, allowing B2B customers to search and filter products based on their own location’s needs. They can then add them to a digital shopping cart for purchase.
3. Customer Engagement
The platform also incentivizes users by awarding loyalty points for taking actions such as placing digital orders, completing feedback surveys, and participating in seasonal promotions. Retailers can accumulate points and redeem them for prizes like free streaming service subscriptions, gift cards, and tech gadgets. The fun, interactive application boosts customer engagement and allows our client to diversify orders by rewarding users for purchasing certain products.
Focusing on these elements, our end-to-end team (including program management, business analysts, scrum masters, application developers, UI/UX design, and manual/automated testers) designed the app with an intuitive user experience that allows efficient and seamless navigation between its four key functionalities:
- A central location to advertise the company’s latest products and campaigns.
- An interactive, gamified place where customers participate in interactive content and challenges.
- A section where customers can track the points they earn while participating in activities and redeem points for rewards.
- A place where customers can effortlessly discover, comprehend, and search for products, interact with them, learn about promotional offers, and complete their ordering transactions. As a result, transactions are more accurate, decreasing returns or disputes and increasing customer satisfaction.
The first three functionalities provide general product information and incentivize customers to engage with the app, while the fourth includes features like real-time notifications at every touchpoint, order history tracking, offline ordering options, and estimated delivery dates making the app an omnichannel experience that improves the brands’ reach and reinforces customer trust and loyalty.
The app also integrates with an interactive planogramming feature that empowers users to optimize their product displays and improve sales with the help of real-time business insights. This feature makes the app more than a mere shopping platform. Instead, it is a valuable tool for store owners that helps them make informed decisions and optimize their product displays by suggesting “must-have” products.
The result is an experience that builds a symbiotic relationship between the customer and the company. The app intertwines our client’s success with their customers’ success, elevating the relationship between the two from transactional to transformational.
The Results: A Custom Solution Across the Globe
Our client has successfully launched the new app in Brazil, Colombia, New Zealand, Australia, and Turkey. Now, we’re working with them on a global roll-out in more than ten countries across Europe, Latin America, and the Asia Pacific over 2023 and 2024. In addition to the development of the application, an offshore support team is assisting with the ongoing implementation effort and improving app stability by:
- Developing an aggressive deployment schedule to roll out the application in more countries.
- Enhancing the application functionality and tailoring it to suit the needs of the various geographies.
- Performing unit testing to detect and resolve vulnerabilities for better app stability.
- Troubleshooting production issues.
- Providing quick deployments for bug fixes and new features.
Conclusion
We assembled a full end-to-end India-based team of more than 40 people to deliver a platform that made our client’s ordering processes more efficient while also increasing customer engagement. The app transitioned the organization out of manual ways of working by eliminating the need to reach out to individual store owners about promotions, resulting in more widespread visibility into promotion opportunities. Removing this level of human intervention from their process also provides more accurate, real-time data.
Centric India lead, Rohit Gambhir said, “One of the best things that worked for us was doing the first project right and making sure we were able to deliver high-quality work. Executing this project within stipulated budgets and timelines built trust and credibility with the client, opening the door for us to help with larger-scope initiatives in the future.”
We relied on that trust when our client wanted us to scale more quickly for their next project, which was an even larger platform. Like us, they value integrity and honesty in the workplace, and we were able to assure them that we could complete the project while scaling at a pace aligned with our resource availability.
Although we’re proud of the cutting-edge technology that we helped develop for such a large company, our biggest accomplishment from the first year of this partnership lies in the trusted relationship we built with them.
Our team worked to proactively build trust with the client from day one to ensure early alignment with leadership, establishing regular checkpoints, responding quickly to feedback, and consistently delivering on promises. As a result, the client continues to count on our ability to deliver high-quality work, tailored to their needs.
