Wholesale digitisation in 90 days: a real plan, not a mega-project

Wholesale can be digitised in about 90 days if you split it into three 30-day phases, each ending in something that works: first a foundation and a pilot, then a portal reading from the ERP, finally full order intake and scale. The key is not to do everything at once and not to confuse digitisation with a giant IT rollout. Below is a plan that genuinely fits a quarter, and the honest conditions under which it will not.

The three phases below are not rigid boxes but a rhythm: each delivers a result you can work with before the next begins.

Days 1–30: foundation, not features

The first month does not produce a portal yet, and that is deliberate. You start with an audit: what the data in the ERP looks like (products, price lists, counterparties, stock), which exchange route is actually available, and which customers are good pilot candidates. In parallel you define the portal MVP scope: the minimum set of features that will genuinely take work off the office, with no nice-to-haves. End-of-phase result: an integration map, a chosen pilot group and an unambiguous scope, not another presentation. This month looks modest and decides the whole outcome: most failed rollouts lose right here, by skipping the audit.

Days 31–60: a portal in read-only mode

The second month delivers the first visible result. The portal reads data from the ERP: a customer logs in, sees their contract prices, live stock and catalog, has quick ordering by code and their history. It does not yet write orders to the ERP automatically, but it already shows that a single source of truth works and the data adds up. This ordering is intentional: reading is safe and builds trust with the team and customers before you allow writing. The pilot group starts using it and reports feedback that goes into phase three scope. Result: a working portal where real customers really log in.

Days 61–90: order writing and opening

The third month closes the loop. Orders from the portal start flowing back into the ERP as sales documents, with an error queue and retries, so the office stops retyping. Add onboarding for more customers, help materials and the first metrics: how many orders went through self-service, how many office hours disappeared. The opening is gradual, in customer cohorts, not a big bang, because that minimises risk. End-of-90-days result: wholesale that takes orders on its own, including outside office hours, while sales reps return to selling instead of retyping. We describe the architecture of that writing separately in the article on B2B store and ERP integration.

The whole plan fits three 30-day phases, each with its own focus and result:

Three 30-day phases; each ends with something that works, not a slide deck.

When 90 days is not enough: honest conditions

A plan that fits a quarter assumes several things. First, an ERP with an available exchange route (an API, an integration service or at least a structured export); an ERP mid-replacement moves the whole schedule. Second, organisational readiness: someone on the company side decides on scope and prices, and the pilot group genuinely tests. Third, a sensible MVP scope; if the first version is meant to have a product configurator, courier integration and a loyalty program all at once, that is not a 90-day project. Honestly: with an unusual ERP or messy data, the first phase can stretch, and that is normal.

Why 90 days and not a year

A year-long digitisation project has a built-in flaw: the result appears at the end, so for twelve months the company pays and waits while scope swells. Splitting into three 30-day phases reverses that logic: every month there is something that works, to learn from and to show the board. Risk is lower, because mistakes surface early and cheaply, not in month eleven. It is the same principle our whole way of working rests on: fixed scope, a defined result, no project without a visible end.

Where to start this week

You do not need a vendor yet to begin. Write down how many orders a day the office retypes by hand and how many hours it takes, because that is the number that justifies the whole project. Check with your ERP provider which data exchange route is available. Pick three to five loyal, patient customers for the pilot. With those three things, a conversation about digitisation starts from specifics, not generalities, and the first phase becomes a formality instead of a discovery.

How to tell the digitisation worked

The success of wholesale digitisation is measured in a few concrete numbers, not in an impression:

• The share of orders placed through self-service without the office, which should climb steadily after opening.
• The average time from placing an order to the document appearing in the ERP, which drops from hours to seconds.
• The number of corrections from retyping, which falls to zero.
• Office hours recovered per month, converted to cost: the number that matters most to the board.

If after 90 days you cannot state these four numbers, the rollout had no clearly defined goal, and it is worth fixing that before you go further.

Wholesale does not need a giant rollout or a revolution. It needs manual retyping removed from the middle of the process, step by step, so that after each step things are better than before. Ninety days in three phases is enough to do that, and short enough not to get stuck.