How Red Squirrel helped Provi update a legacy B2B system, unlocking 14,000 new customers after just one quarter
Tech Staff Augmentation
Facing challenges in expanding to new markets and accommodating a high-stakes partnership opportunity, Provi sought the expertise of Red Squirrel Technologies to support their technical team. Red Squirrel's familiarity with Provi's tech stack and ability to navigate legacy codebases proved invaluable in updating the system to cater to unique regulations in specific markets. The successful implementation of the integration project allowed Provi to secure a major partnership and unlock 14,000 new customers and $200,000 in additional revenue in just a few months.
TL:DR
Provi is the largest online B2B marketplace in the wholesale beverage alcohol industry. Provi connects bars, restaurants, and retailers to multiple distributors in a single ordering platform. Managing more than 750k products from 1400 distributors, Provi brings simplicity to an otherwise drawn-out operation by providing robust search, discovery, integrated stock & pricing, single-click ordering, and beyond. Through this, it has become an exemplar for using tech to streamline an antiquated, rigid system.
About Provi
Provi needed to expand out to new markets to continue modernizing the B2B alcohol industry. In this industry, most distribution is regulated by a three-tier system that funnels alcohol from suppliers to distributors and finally to wholesale buyers. However, some markets (Class B states) divert from this three-tier system and have additional local regulations, thus creating a unique challenge that disrupted core legacy assumptions in Provi’s codebase.
Adding on to this friction was a recent high-stakes partnership opportunity with feature requests that further challenged tightly woven assumptions in Provi’s existing monolithic system. Taking on this partnership would require meticulous yet swift workmanship to expand in new markets.
The Challenge
Our solutions
To help accelerate the extension and expansion of their marketplace, Provi approached Red Squirrel to support their existing technical team. Through staff augmentation, Provi’s ambitious goals were paired with Red Squirrel’s dedication to quality, communication, and eagerness to learn.
The MVP was an update to their legacy system to allow customers in Class B states to place online orders, be able to select pickup or delivery as their shipment method, and view different pickup locations/pricing. In Class B states, retailers/bars are restricted by their county/state on where they can purchase alcohol and sometimes have minimum alcohol volume limits. That meant increased complications regarding how to organize inventory and customer data in a way that allowed Provi to place these restrictions on the ordering system and display the correct pricing depending on their selected shipment option and pickup location.
The legacy system mainly included a monolith with Ruby on Rails back end and Svelte front end, as well as another backend Integration Service using Ruby on Rails. The tech stack also included Elasticsearch for their searching capabilities, Postgresql and SQLite for storage, and Sidekiq for threaded background processing.
What set Red Squirrel apart is the balance of familiarity with Provi’s tech stack and of intuition when exploring new territory. The Red Squirrel team thrives in treading through legacy codebases, understanding their complex wiring, and proposing ways of building new features while also untangling existing ones along the way.
Throughout the entirety of the project, Red Squirrel ensured productive coordination with relevant parties, comprehensive testing, and overall thoroughness. Ultimately, the solutions were implemented in a timely manner, and they stand the test of time and scale from both a customer and a developer standpoint.
In the end, this has unlocked markets and partnerships that were once inaccessible.
Results
New major partnership – By fulfilling feature promises for a prominent third-party, Provi solidified a new partnership with the market’s largest alcohol & fine foods provider. This subsequently unlocked 14,000 new customers for Provi’s marketplace by the end of the quarter.
Successful MVP delivery – Provi was able to present a completed MVP to a high-stakes prospective partner within the allotted time. Although the initial project timeline was drastically shortened to align better with market timing, the MVP was delivered without sacrificing code quality and customer experience. Remarkably, the piloting of the MVP presented zero order-blocking bugs and led to more than $200,000 in sales within just 2 months.
Improved codebase condition – Instead of adding on more complexity to the monolithic codebase, the team was tenacious about leaving the codebase in a state that was easier to understand and develop in for future developers. Constant accountability for maintaining clean, defensive coding and detailed write-ups paved a path for efficient development and posterity. For improvement opportunities that could not be squeezed in the roadmap, requirements were planned out for future iterations.
Market expansion – Provi can now operate in new markets that divert from the three-tier alcohol distribution system, now that the legacy system has been upgraded to handle these unique scenarios.