Industry overview
What is shaping electronics
Consumer electronics and appliance buyers research online, compare prices across channels and judge brands on after-sales service as much as on features.
- Purchase journeys blend online research and in-store demos
- E-commerce and modern retail compete on price and delivery
- After-sales service drives repeat purchase
Client background
An electronics components distributor, working in India. Client identity is withheld to protect confidentiality.
- Organisation
- An electronics components distributor
- Sector
- Electronics
- Team engaged
- IT & Development
- Services
- Web application development, API development & integration, Software testing & QA
Client challenge
Business customers emailed requests for stock, pricing and datasheets, waiting hours for responses. Sales staff spent most of their time answering routine queries. Customers designing new products often needed answers within minutes and would turn to competitors if they waited too long.
Research objectives
- Deliver on the brief: a distributor portal for an electronics components supplier.
- Design around the real needs of business customers.
- Define requirements and success criteria the solution would be tested against.
- Deliver a reliable, secure solution the team can run and extend.
Target audience
The work focused on 1,500 business customers.
- business customers1,500
Audiences we typically reach in electronics
Appliance and device buyersOwners and usersRetailers and sales staffE-commerce shoppersService technicians
Geographic coverage
Coverage: India. Market: India.
- India
Research methodology
An iterative delivery approach: discovery, design, build and test in short cycles, with the client reviewing each step.
- 1Brief
- 2Customer interviews
- 3Ordering portal with ERP integration
- 4Insight
We built a portal showing live stock, customer-specific pricing, datasheets and order tracking, integrated with the distributor’s ERP, and tested it thoroughly with real customers before launch. Before building, we interviewed purchasing engineers and buyers at customer companies to learn which questions they asked most often and how quickly they needed answers.
Web application developmentAPI development & integrationSoftware testing & QA
Sampling strategy
- business customers
- 1,500
- Users and stakeholders from every affected team took part in discovery workshops and acceptance testing.
Data collection
- Requirements were gathered through workshops, process walk-throughs and a review of existing systems and data.
Data quality & validation
- Peer code review on every change
- Automated and manual testing
- User-acceptance testing with the client
- Release checklist and rollback plan
Data analysis
- Usage and performance monitoring after launch
- Defect and support-ticket trends
- Process time before and after
Key findings
- Routine queries moved to self-service, orders were placed faster and the sales team focused on design-in support for new projects.
Live stock visibility was the feature customers valued most.
Recommendations
- Build on the core insight: live stock visibility was the feature customers valued most.
- Track adoption and support tickets, and plan the next release from real usage.
Business impact
- Customers began using the portal to check stock before designing parts into new products, which gave the distributor earlier visibility of future demand.
Impact is described qualitatively.
Deliverables & next steps
- Cleaned data file and data tables
- Deployed solution with documentation and handover
- Support and maintenance plan
- Repeat the measure after changes are in place to track progress.
- A natural follow-on question: how satisfied are customers with service?
Client identity is withheld to protect confidentiality.