Exapro Development of a B2B marketplace for the market leader in used industrial machinery that has grown into a strategic partnership
For 10 years, we have been cooperating with the French company Exapro, which mediates the sale of second-hand machinery. We have developed a worldwide B2B marketplace for them in several languages, currencies and dimensional units. It is visited by 400,000 users a month, we keep the software at the forefront of technology, and Exapro appreciates the long-term cooperation on the global project so much that it has offered us a stake in the company.
b2b marketpython & djangocrm for dealersmultiple languages and currencies
How cooperation began several years ago
"Exapro first approached us in 2012 with a demand for a new B2B marketplace. At the time,
it had software written in PHP that worked, but its architecture and UX limited the
company's development."
One of many examples: when processing orders, Exapro employees always had
to click on something, and saving as little as 10 clicks in each business case saves 20
salespeople hours of work per month. These can be used, for example, to reach new
customers or take care of existing ones.
About Exapro
A French company selling used machinery and equipment for various industries. Exapro
operates an international B2B e-marketplace with 400,000 users per month, where
companies sell or search for presses, CNC machines or entire production lines.
Exapro employees provide advice on choosing the right machine and facilitate
communication between seller and buyer. Acquisition of an industrial machine
requires professional assistance, e.g. with verification of functionalities and
technical parameters. It's not nearly as easy as purchasing an item in an e-shop.
35 000+
usual number of machines on the e-marketplace
400 000+
visitors per month
20
number of employees
We excited the whole Exapro with proper preparation
Together with the client, we analysed the processes down to the smallest detail and designed a system that:
will be easy to use for Exapro people,
can handle a database with tens of millions of records,
takes into account specific internal processes, and
makes it easier for selling and buying agents of industrial machinery to arrange a deal.
One of the first sketches of the Exapro ticket system.Thanks to the Ticket system tailored, the Exapro trading team is much more efficient.
It was thus a combination of a customised CRM system with a B2B electronic marketplace,
where a person from one company enters data about the machine being sold, a person from
another company (even on the opposite side of the globe) finds the machine and they strike a
bargain.
The software therefore had to manage, among other things:
various languages (English, French, Spanish, German, Italian, Czech, Russian,
Polish, ...),
relevant attributes according to the type of machine (speed for drills, force for
presses, etc.),
display of machine parameters in various systems of units (metric and imperial),
or prices in different currencies (dollars, francs, euros, crowns, pounds, yens,
roubles, zlotys or Turkish lira).
„I'm not exaggerating - when we presented the prototype to
the salespersons, we were given standing ovations, Exapro employees did not expect
that we could make their work that much easier.“
Ivoš Gajdorus, co-owner of COex
We gradually added scoring and newsletters to the software
Thanks to scoring, Exapro employees can tell which client sells or buys often in the
market. The system calculates customer scoring, for example, based on
sales volume or average value. The buyer can thus easily verify the credibility of the
seller and Exapro consultants can see which business case they should give higher
priority to.
We have further increased the benefits of the SW solution by adding jointly designed additional functions. Noteworthy is the connection with the Active
Campaign system, which has streamlined the distribution of newsletters and the "scoring" of business cases.
Detailed information, useful parameters and details about the seller are available for each machine.
A client understanding the principles of development and the life curve of SW
That's why in 2019 we embarked together on a major upgrade of the system, including its
core.
Exapro is one of those companies with enlightened management, which realizes that even software working great needs updates and development.
We changed the architecture of the system. we switched from the "monolithic" to a
more modern container solution (better scalability, lower operating costs).
We redesigned the system backend through switching from the original layout to a
tailor-made solution (better customization and higher speed).
We kept the look and technology of the frontend, but connected it with the newly
created backend.
We've improved automated translations and marketplace searches.
We have updated Python, Django and all libraries to the current version (read
details about the technologies we
use).
„Even the best system cannot be operated for 10 years
without updates. With the constantly emerging new versions of individual programming
languages, frameworks and tools, support for older versions is gradually coming to an
end. The developers of these frameworks and libraries also stop releasing security
updates, like Microsoft discontinued support for Windows XP.“
Jan Tezner, CTO COex
From technical analysis to long-term partnerships
When developing the first version of the Exapro application, we placed great emphasis on
technical analysis and regular consultations with their project manager and sales team. That
is how we managed to cut the acceptance phase in half.
2010
October
Exapro addressed us with the first request
2011
January
technical analysis and start of development
2012
March
completion of development, subsequent updates and maintenance of the application
2017
November
update to Python 3 + Django
2020
April
new Exapro version, update to version 2.0
Work process on the Exapro B2B marketplace.
Project results and more than 10 years of collaboration
We developed, tested and deployed the first version and the results were soon
apparent:
Exapro’s work efficiency increased by 40%,
the marketplace contributed to a year-on-year increase in sales of EUR
8 million
and within 2 years, the traffic to the portal increased by 150%.
But we are most pleased that after 10 years of intensive cooperation, we have great
relationships with Exapro and their confidence. We even received an offer from Exapro to buy a smaller share in their company,
which we took up with pleasure.
35 000+machines on offer
400 000+visitors per month
350 000+processed tickets
„Great job by COex. The system they developed for us works as
the central brain of our company and we are much more efficient thanks to it. If
anything is needed, COex provides us with 24/7 support.“
Thomas Bordier, Exapro, Managing Director
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