The Issue
The client has a large customer base – retail outlets selling grocery products to end consumers. Each sales cycle, sales data would be sent to the client for processing. From that data, product promotions unique for each of the client’s customers would be developed and then forms – again, each form unique to each customer – would be emailed to the customer for promotional price tags to be printed. The preparation of each form and data entry and preparation of promotional pricing was initially a very time-intensive process.
The Solution
A sophisticated and powerful C# add-in for Excel was developed, making extensive use of the Ribbon and various built-in features of Excel to handle the back-end data import and form preparation. WPF was used to create a built-in GUI which presented the customer list, products sold, and a screen for promotional price preparation for each customer, displaying important metrics such as sales cycle, promotion cycle, profit margin (gross and net), and other appropriate data. Then, once the promotional pricing was entered, the customer would simply press a button, enter their email username and password, and each customer would be emailed a completed form with all the appropriate information filled out. The program also included a provision for maintaining the forms that were supplied by the customers, in the event that a form was updated, and also a provision for updating and maintaining customer data where needed.