HORNBACH is a home improvement store chain that has been operating in the Netherlands since 1997. With a total of 18 branches, each employing an average of 175-200 staff members, alongside 1 HORNBACH Flooring location, HORNBACH serves a diverse customer base, catering to both consumers and the professional market.
HORNBACH has ambitious plans to further expand its presence in the business segment. However, the company's envisioned growth must not compromise the personalized attention provided to its business customers. Personal attention is a fundamental principle that HORNBACH upholds. Additionally, this growth should not lead to increased workload for HORNBACH employees, as personal attention to the customer is converted into the loyalty program ProfiService, specially designed for its business SME customers.
The specific challenge lay in streamlining the registration process for ProfiService. Business customers felt that the registration procedures for ProfiService were time-consuming, as time is money for them too. Moreover, the numerous manual tasks in the back office were causing significant sub-optimization. Therefore, HORNBACH aimed to explore ways to enhance their existing service provision.
A unique, scalable, and highly flexible application. One with personalized functionalities and sky-high resolutions. An application that moves with the market and caters to the desires of both customers and employees. This sounded like music to HORNBACH's ears.
To tackle the complex challenge of the ProfiService registration process, HORNBACH wanted to develop its own unique application. This application aimed to optimally serve both customers and employees, as well as enable integrations with other external systems.
The numerous requirements made standard solutions inadequate, so HORNBACH turned to Solvy. Our solution? A custom-made application in the form of a progressive web application. And not just one application. No, not even two. But a total of three; one for the customer, one for the back office, and a backup transaction application in case of external system failures.
The work on the HORNBACH project was particularly challenging due to its immense scope, tight deadlines, and numerous integrations," begins Yauhen, Solvy's Technical Lead, sharing his story.
He lists some examples of these integrations: "Zkr for the iDIN process, Company.Info for company information and credit check, DCP for card production, and Surepay for bank account verification."
"Additionally, the required built-in processes, including customer acceptance, adjustment of credit limits, and financial data processing, were highly complex and demanded a great deal of flexibility. To facilitate the development of such a system, Solvy adopted an agile approach and maintained a 'make it done' attitude, closely involving HORNBACH in the daily development process.
Thanks to the active engagement of key team members from HORNBACH and our experience in implementing technically challenging systems, we can proudly say that both the chosen approach and the final result can be considered a great success.
In terms of technology, we opted for a proven stack comprising Symfony, NextJS, MariaDB, and Mongo. This entire stack is powered by Platform.sh as a PaaS, leveraging Gitlab pipelines for deployments. This allows us to streamline development and testing processes, ensuring seamless deliveries.
I always say, 'With the right people and the right attitude, anything is possible.' And this was also the case for the HORNBACH project. The experience of our team, complemented by the knowledge of the Hornbach team, provided all the ingredients to achieve ambitious goals.
Of course, it doesn't stop here. Developing and implementing these applications merely marks the beginning of an extensive journey at HORNBACH. To keep all three applications up and running, ensuring they continue to function as intended, constant additions of new features are being made. There's an ongoing quest to find ways to enhance and automate workflows and processes. Continuously optimizing and further developing these applications prioritizes both customer and employee satisfaction. It's been an impressive start, with a promising view of the future.
Functionalities:
✓ ProfiCard: Access and view cards, add and assign or block ProfiCards
✓ View and increase/decrease balance
✓Viewing invoices and payments
✓ Upload additional administrative documents
✓ Complete payments
✓ Shortcut as a download on your cell phone as an (PWA) App
✓ Personal dashboard
✓ Update data
✓ Highly secure environment
✓ Direct personal contact with your ProfiAdviseur
Integraties:
✓ Integration Worldline, transaction
✓ Integration KvK, company information, chredit check
✓ Integration iDiN, verification
✓ Integration Surepay, verification
✓ Integration Adyen, payments
Functionalities:
✓ Access to all users financial information
✓ Access to contact and user data (CRM) and email historie
✓ ProfiCard: Access and view cards, add and assign or block ProfiCards
✓ Promote workflow through automatic forwarding and assignment of tasks
✓ Manually assign tasks and add notes
✓ Personalized environment: Depending on account status and function
✓ Highly security environment
✓ Update data
Integrations:
✓ Integration Worldline, transaction
✓ Integration with the producer of the (physical) ProfiCards
✓ Integration iDiN, verificatie
✓ Integration Surepay, verification
✓ Integration Creditsafe
Functionalities:
✓ Back-up application
✓ In case of failure of external or POS systems, it is still possible to record transactions at all times
✓ ProfiUser validation
✓ Status ProfiCard validation
✓ Balance and credit status check
✓ Ability to record transactions and returns
