A school supplies startup scaled across Europe: 90% less manual work, 120% sales growth, five times faster operations.

The Challenge

Growth revealed the limits of the systems the company had been running on. As order volumes increased and the product catalogue expanded, the manual processes that had worked in the early stages became a liability. Order delays and inventory errors were reaching customers, and the operational team was spending large portions of their time on data entry and coordination tasks that added no value. The product information problem was particularly acute. Managing a large, constantly updated catalogue of school and office supplies, across multiple storefronts and markets, required consistent, accurate product data at every point. Without a structured Product Information Management (PIM) system, maintaining that consistency manually was both time-consuming and error-prone. Customer engagement was also underperforming. The enterprise had the customer data to support targeted marketing and retention programs, but no system in place to act on it. Personalization and lifecycle marketing were not happening at scale. The client had worked with another vendor before turning to Gradion, and the key problems had not been resolved. The risks were clear: continued operational friction would cap growth, erode customer satisfaction, and prevent European expansion from becoming viable. A partner was needed who would act as an extension of the team rather than a service provider operating at a distance.

The Approach

Gradion entered the partnership not with a fixed technology prescription, but with a diagnostic process designed to understand where the operational bottlenecks were worst and where automation would have the highest leverage. The first major intervention was the implementation of a custom Product Information Management (PIM) system. The PIM was designed to centralize product data creation, management, and distribution, replacing the patchwork of spreadsheets and manual processes that had been maintaining the catalogue. By automating the workflows that had previously required constant human intervention, the PIM eliminated 90% of the client’s manual tasks. This freed significant operational capacity that could be redirected toward growth activities. The second intervention was a CRM system designed to transform how the company managed customer relationships. With properly structured customer data and automated marketing workflows in place, the enterprise could segment its audience, deliver personalized communications, and run retention programs that had not been operationally feasible before. The result was a 120% growth in sales, driven not by acquiring more traffic, but by converting and retaining customers more effectively. The third element was the adoption of Agile project management across the organization’s operations. Agile methodology introduced the cadence and responsiveness needed to keep pace with a fast-moving market: regular prioritization, shorter delivery cycles, and a team structure that could react to changes without losing momentum. Gradion’s team in Vietnam worked directly with the client to support the build-out of local operational capacity, contributing both engineering delivery and organizational knowledge transfer.