Projects/ Optimizing the B2B Experience with Shopify Plus for a Leading Distributor

Optimizing the B2B Experience with Shopify Plus for a Leading Distributor

Context

Adapting eCommerce to B2B Realities

Brault & Bouthillier is a Quebec-based company recognized for over 75 years in the distribution of educational materials for schools, early childhood centers and educational institutions. Their catalog includes thousands of specialized products, ranging from teaching materials to educational furniture.

Unlike a traditional B2C business, most of Brault & Bouthillier’s customers are organizations that place structured orders, often with multiple users under the same account. Orders can be large, planned, or recurring and frequently involve approval processes or institution-specific requirements.

The eCommerce experience must therefore be tailored to the realities of B2B commerce: corporate account management, fast ordering of multiple products, recurring shopping lists and specific cart rules.

Brault & Bouthillier aimed to evolve its Shopify store to deliver a more efficient experience better suited to the needs of its institutional clients.

Project highlights

Project highlights

+10K

products

+8.6%

month-over-month AOV

+121

synchronized dynamic price lists

+3K

new customer profiles post-launch

"In the context of redesigning our transactional platform, our objective was to provide our customers with a modern, intuitive shopping experience tailored to their diverse needs. Novatize supported us with professionalism throughout the project, helping us navigate the various stages, evaluate available options and make decisions aligned with our business objectives, budget and timelines. We particularly appreciated their collaborative approach, their transparency, and their ability to transform complex business needs into concrete, scalable solutions. With their support, we were able to maintain a strong balance between our strategic vision, the customer experience and operational realities, which contributed to the project’s success. This project represents an important milestone in our digital transformation and in the evolution of the experience we offer our customers. We are proud of the work accomplished and excited about the opportunities this new platform opens up for the future."

Lucie Boivin

MBA, CMO & Senior Vice President, Products and Brands

Brault & Bouthillier

Mandate

Deploy a Custom Shopify B2B Experience

Novatize’s mandate was to implement and optimize several advanced B2B functionalities on Brault & Bouthillier’s Shopify Plus store to improve the purchasing experience for institutional clients.

The project involved designing and developing custom features to simplify large and recurring orders, facilitate corporate account management and provide fast ordering tools for professional users.

The Novatize team also developed several custom components and application features to adapt the Shopify platform to the company’s operational realities.

Objectives

Simplify and Accelerate B2B Ordering

The platform was built using Novatize’s B2B feature accelerator, SPINE, to address the complex realities of institutional environments and multi-site organizations. It enables seamless purchasing management across multiple users while respecting internal validation and governance processes, facilitating recurring purchases, accelerating order creation, and improving teams’ operational efficiency thereby reducing the time spent on administrative tasks.

The purchasing experience dynamically adapts to different customer contexts, ensuring consistency, relevance and simplicity throughout the transactional journey.

Result: a high-performance platform that enhances user autonomy, execution speed and the overall quality of the customer experience.

Results

An eCommerce Platform Built for B2B

Thanks to the optimizations implemented by Novatize, Brault & Bouthillier now benefits from a Shopify Plus platform capable of meeting the specific needs of its institutional clientele.

The developed features allow users to order more quickly, manage corporate accounts more easily and simplify recurring purchases through shopping lists and quick order tools.

The purchasing experience is now better aligned with B2B realities, enabling institutions to save time in their procurement processes and allowing Brault & Bouthillier to more effectively support the growth of its online sales.

“As a Product Owner, I particularly appreciated the smooth collaboration despite the complexity of the project and the diversity of stakeholders, including Shopify, third-party applications, marketing, as well as ERP and PIM systems. Discussions were always constructive and solution-oriented, which allowed us to stay on track despite unforeseen challenges. This project pushed us to be creative in addressing certain technical limitations, while delivering a B2B experience aligned with the client’s operational realities. The Brault & Bouthillier team stood out for its ability to clearly structure and communicate its needs throughout this large-scale project.”

Inès Kouamé

Product Owner

Novatize

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