The starting point

Our client is a steel trader. They buy from mills and resell to construction companies, hardware shops, and individual buyers. The interesting part is that very little steel ever sits in a warehouse: most orders are passed straight to the mill, which ships directly to the end customer. The business earns its margin on the trade itself, not on holding stock.

That lean model works, but it had been running on WhatsApp messages, phone calls, and quotes typed by hand. Fine at small volumes, harder as the team grows and several salespeople chase the same deals. Management couldn't easily answer a basic question: how much steel did we sell this month, and who sold it?

The goal was to become a structured commercial desk, sales and trade, without locking up cash in storage.

What the business looked like before

Salespeople received enquiries by phone and WhatsApp, wrote quotes by hand (steel type, tonnage and kilos, price, payment terms), and sent them as PDFs over WhatsApp. The customer confirmed by message, with no formal signature step.

After confirmation, fulfilment split in two:

• Dropshipping (most orders). At day's end, the sales lead compiled all confirmed orders, customers, items, quantities, delivery locations, contacts, into a report sent to the mill, which then delivered directly to the end customer.
• Internal stock (small orders). The salesperson prepared a delivery note, goods were dispatched, and accounting issued the invoice.

On tax: every taxable sale in Rwanda must be captured on an EBM-certified invoice (the Rwanda Revenue Authority's electronic billing system). In dropshipping this happens twice, the mill invoices our client, and our client invoices the end customer, which is exactly why both legs need to be visible in one place.

What we built in Odoo

The design kept everything that already worked, including PDF quotes and WhatsApp confirmation, and added structure around it. A guiding principle throughout: use native Odoo wherever it does the job, and only build custom pieces where the standard product genuinely can't cover the need.

CRM for the pipeline. Every enquiry becomes an opportunity, owned by a salesperson and worked through a clear pipeline: New Lead → Qualification → Offer Sent → Negotiation → Won / Lost. Each opportunity captures the customer, steel type, quantity in tonnage and kilos, target price, and probability. For the first time, management has a live view of what's in play.

Standardised quotations. From the opportunity, one click creates a quotation, carrying the customer across automatically. Products, units (kg or tonnes), and totals are calculated by Odoo, so the maths is never wrong. A branded PDF is generated and sent over WhatsApp, exactly as before. No e-signature step, so the workflow stays familiar.

A note on units: steel is sold by weight, so we set up tonnes and kilos in the same unit category. A line can be entered in tonnes while stock, pricing, and reporting reconcile in kilos behind the scenes. Get this right once and every quote, order, and KPI inherits it.

Two integrated sales workflows. A confirmed quotation becomes a sales order, and from that single order Odoo follows one of two routes:

• Dropshipping / Make-to-Order. Using the Make to Order + Dropship route, confirming the sale automatically raises a purchase order to the mill. The mill ships directly to the customer, and the EBM flow runs as before. The difference is that the purchase is now linked to the sale, so the connection between what was sold and what was ordered is never lost.
• Internal stock. Using a stockable + delivery order route, the sale generates an internal delivery order, logistics picks the goods, and the invoice is issued on demand.

The salesperson doesn't manage two systems, it's the same order, routed correctly.

Reporting that comes for free. Because every quotation and order already carries the right units and the salesperson's name, the KPIs management wanted are a by-product of working in the system rather than a month-end spreadsheet exercise: volume sold (tonnage and kilos), total value, best-performing product categories, pipeline by stage, and performance by salesperson.

What actually changed for the team

The way salespeople talk to customers barely changed: they still confirm over WhatsApp, still send a PDF, still need no customer signature, and the mill still delivers directly in dropshipping. What changed is that their work now leaves a trail the whole company can see, and that trail turns into pipeline visibility, consistent quotes, and trustworthy KPIs, with almost no extra effort from the person doing the selling.

Prepared by Araka, Official Odoo Partner in Rwanda.