National B2B Ordering Platform

The client's existing ordering platform had served the business well for many years, but it was built on an ageing version of Drupal that was approaching the end of its supported life, and had accumulated a number of pressing issues:

• The underlying Drupal version was scheduled to lose community support, with known security concerns in some PHP-based components
• The platform's legacy architecture was nearing the limits of what it could comfortably handle as transaction volumes grew
• Any replacement had to preserve an extensive set of business-critical functionality - multi-level accounts, staff roles and permissions, budgets and approvals, product ranges, returns, and tight integration with the client's ERP system - with zero disruption to daily ordering
• The business wanted room to keep innovating - favourites lists, quoting, order consolidation, single sign-on, punchout integrations with enterprise procurement systems, and eventually a public-facing retail storefront - without those ambitions being constrained by the old platform

Rather than patch the existing system, Koda proposed a ground-up rebuild on its own Node Commerce platform - a commerce engine Koda has developed and refined over ten years, built on technology originally developed by Google and released to the open-source community. Delivery was staged so the client could move at a manageable pace without ever stopping trading:

Stage One - Core platform

• A new Node Commerce ecommerce engine with a redesigned, ReactJS-driven front end
• Full account management, user roles and permissions, and a rebuilt product management system
• On-account and card payment methods via a modern payment gateway
• Direct, two-way integration with the client's ERP system for products, accounts, orders, invoices and returns
• Employee budgets, order approval workflows, and a self-service dashboard for staff and administrators

Stage Two - Incremental feature delivery

• Favourites lists, quote requests, and order consolidation logic
• A redesigned companion Progressive Web App with an integrated payment gateway
• Punchout support for enterprise procurement systems, and single sign-on via multiple identity providers
• Live order tracking with backorder visibility and estimated delivery dates fed directly from the ERP

Stage Three - Future-proofing

Because the new platform exposes its commerce functionality through a set of microservices APIs, Koda also scoped a pure business-to-consumer retail experience that could sit alongside the existing account-based ordering system - reusing the same product data without duplicating the platform.

The rebuild gives the client a modern platform that does everything the old system did - and considerably more - without a single feature being lost in translation. Corporate customers keep the account structures, budgets and approval chains they rely on; the client's own team gets a system built for another decade of growth rather than a system approaching its limits; and the tight ERP integration means product, order and invoice data stays accurate and current across every system it touches. The staged approach meant the business was never asked to stop and wait - new capability arrived incrementally on top of a stable, fully tested core.

The new platform pairs a ReactJS front end with Koda's Node Commerce engine, an architecture chosen specifically for the demands of a high-volume, business-critical ordering system.

Security

Security was treated as a foundation, not an afterthought. The platform was designed around multi-factor authentication (via an authenticator app, SMS or email-generated codes), database content encrypted at rest, and a web application firewall (such as Cloudflare) to guard against DDoS and other malicious traffic. Password complexity and expiry rules are enforced, a comprehensive audit log tracks every action taken on the portal, and the client has the option to commission independent penetration testing against the finished system.

Performance

Koda's Node Commerce platform is developed using a test-driven development approach, meaning every piece of core functionality is protected by automated tests that run before any new feature is deployed - keeping the system stable even as new capability is added sprint by sprint. Moving off a legacy PHP/Drupal stack onto modern, purpose-built commerce infrastructure gives the platform far more headroom for transaction growth than the system it replaces, while the decoupled React front end keeps the ordering experience fast and responsive for users placing high volumes of repeat orders.

SEO

As a login-based B2B ordering system, the core platform's priority is a fast, secure experience for existing account holders rather than public search visibility. Even so, the same SEO discipline Koda applies to public websites - clean URL structures, semantic markup and fast page performance - carries through to every public-facing surface the platform exposes, including the account request and enquiry forms search engines can index. This groundwork also means that if the client proceeds with the proposed public retail storefront, it will launch on a platform already built with strong technical SEO foundations rather than needing to retrofit them later.