Bouwmaat

THE GOAL 

Bouwmaat is a Dutch building materials wholesaler. Founded in 1986, the company is on a mission to bring innovation to the building sector. From its 13,500-plus online product range covering areas including construction, wood, plumbing, tools, hardware, paint and kitchens to the opening hours of its 46 branches, everything about Bouwmaat contributes to this. With competition high, good customer service and strong supplier relationships are important. Bouwmaat turned to CLEVR to provide an innovative, low-code IT system that would allow it to rapidly develop new business applications to ensure it is always on the front foot when it comes to both. 

THE APPROACH 

For suppliers, Bouwmaat knew it could provide better awareness of its products. Its promotions brochure, called Action, is the company’s main means of communicating with its market and customers. It is used strategically to boost demand for different product categories, with new campaigns initiated every three to four weeks. All channels have to be redesigned for each new campaign, including Action, but even though there was a large team working on it, the production process was prone to errors.  

It was decided that key to eliminating these errors was to have one central database where all users could collaborate at the same time and which would support the entire promotion process. Bouwmaat worked with no-code and low-code specialist CLEVR, adopting the company’s Promotion Manager. Quick to implement, Promotion Manager is a proven, low-code, ready-to-use platform that gives clear sight of vital elements such as supplier application development platform that allows easy customisation without hard programming. 

THE RESULTS

CLEVR’s solution for Bouwmaat is all about improving data quality and speed. As a result, Bouwmaat has been able to enhance its service to suppliers when it comes to collaborating on promotions. For example, it can better advise them about the most effective place for a promotion in its Action newspaper and the availability of that slot. It can also draw on the results of previous campaigns to improve outcomes. The correct information always being centrally available dramatically reduces the number of errors. 

Meanwhile, the low-code environment, combined with flexible and Agile working, also helped accelerate application development at the company, quickly improving the customer experience. For example, working with CLEVR, Bouwmaat developed in just 20 days a branch portal that connects back and front offices and acts as a speedy conduit for centrally held data, which includes more than one million records. This allows staff in store to maintain and access accurate customer data, from name to contact details such as email and phone numbers. It even aids them in addressing customers correctly. It has also helped ensure more remote queries are answered because the contact details are correct. 

But it’s important to note that the benefits of working with CLEVR aren’t limited to the software. Bouwmaat enjoys a truly collaborative relationship with CLEVR when it comes to developing the roadmap and coming up with new ideas. 

CUSTOMER QUOTE 

"We now have full focus on process improvement in our organisation. Future projects will focus on further automation to make work easier and reduce errors. Centralising information is an important pillar in this, helping us serve our customers well”  

Peter Buenk, information manager, Bouwmaat