Custom Web Portal Development Synced to Dynamics NAV

Project Overview

ViitorCloud delivered custom web portal development for Hensel, a distributor portal that lets distributors place orders and sync them directly with Microsoft Dynamics NAV, replacing manual email purchase orders.

The Challenge

Hensel's distributors placed every purchase order by hand. Orders were typed into emails and pushed into Microsoft Dynamics NAV 2016 by staff, a process that was slow and easy to get wrong. A mistyped quantity or a missed email turned into a wrong shipment or a delayed one, and there was no way for a distributor to check stock or pull an invoice without asking someone internally.

The business problem was straightforward: the manual workflow did not scale and it cost accuracy. Hensel needed a distributor order management system that removed re-keying, gave distributors a self-serve view of their orders, and kept the company's ERP as the single source of truth. The trigger was simple. Every manual touch was a chance for an error that someone downstream had to find and fix.

Without a fix, Hensel kept paying for the same order twice: once when a distributor sent it, and again when staff corrected it. A distributor portal tied to live ERP data was the way to stop that.

The Solution

ViitorCloud built a custom web portal for distributors and connected it to Dynamics NAV. The work came down to a few deliberate decisions.

• A self-serve distributor portal, not a form: Distributors place orders, view order status, download invoices, and check warehouse stock from one portal, so routine requests no longer route through Hensel staff.

• Direct ERP integration over Dynamics NAV: Orders sync to Dynamics NAV through its SOAP API and web services, so purchase orders post without anyone re-keying them and the ERP stays the system of record.

• Real-time order and invoice management: Order details and invoices are pulled from the ERP and shown in the portal, so distributors see current data instead of a stale copy.

• Vue.js and Laravel for a maintainable build: A Vue.js front end on a Laravel back end kept the portal responsive for distributors and straightforward for Hensel to extend later.

The honest difficulty. The Dynamics NAV API did not always behave. It sometimes returned non-standard responses that made error handling and troubleshooting harder than a clean integration would have been. Most of the careful work went into the syncing layer: handling those irregular responses, confirming each order actually landed in the ERP, and preventing the order workflow from stalling when the API replied in an unexpected way. Getting that right was what made the automation trustworthy.

Value Proposition

What the Hensel distributor portal gives the business:

• Fewer manual errors: Removing email and re-keying from the order path cuts the data-entry mistakes that caused wrong or delayed shipments.

• Self-serve distributors: Distributors place orders, track them, pull invoices, and check stock on their own, so internal staff handle fewer routine requests.

• One source of truth: Direct ERP integration keeps Dynamics NAV authoritative, so the portal and the back office stay aligned.

The Results

What the portal delivers:

• An automated, error-reduced ordering path: that replaced manual email purchase orders with portal-to-ERP syncing.

• A single self-serve portal: where distributors place orders, track status, download invoices, and check warehouse stock.

• More time for managers: as automation removed routine data entry and freed staff for higher-value supply-chain work.

Conclusion

The Hensel distributor portal shows what disciplined integration work delivers: take a manual, error-prone process, connect it directly to the ERP, and give distributors a portal they can run themselves. The result is an ordering workflow that is faster, more accurate, and easier to scale than email ever was.

Want to Connect Your Ordering to Your ERP?

If distributors or customers still order by email and your team re-keys everything into the ERP, there is a better path. ViitorCloud builds portals that sync directly with systems like Microsoft Dynamics NAV. Talk to the ViitorCloud team about your ordering workflow, or explore our system integration and modernization services.