Van der Pol tegels en bouwmaterialen B.V.

Van der Pol tiles and building materials with Odoo

Customer profile

Van der Pol is a long-established business in Amsterdam, combining a physical showroom with the sale of tiles and building materials. Customers can review collections in person and rely on knowledgeable guidance when making choices. That mix of showroom, advice and delivery shapes the daily operation in a very practical way. It requires systems that support customer-facing work while also keeping internal information accessible and consistent for the team handling follow-up.

The company’s website also plays a role in how customers explore products and possibilities before or alongside a visit. As a result, online presentation, customer communication, order handling and stock awareness are closely linked. For a compact organization, it is important that those activities do not remain disconnected. The need is for one shared working environment in which information can move smoothly between sales activity, administration and operational follow-up.

Reason for change

When customer data, quotations, orders and stock-related actions are managed in separate steps or separate tools, work becomes harder to coordinate. In a business where products are often discussed in the showroom and then need to be ordered or delivered correctly, current information matters. The goal was therefore to create a central source of information that would help align teams around the same customer and order data throughout the process.

The change was not only about digitizing more tasks, but about improving process coherence in a way that matched daily practice. Information needed to flow more logically from initial customer contact to administrative follow-up. The connection with website activity and incoming requests also mattered. In that sense, the project focused on better process continuity , while still respecting the practical, service-oriented character of the company’s showroom-based way of working.

Challenge

The main challenge was to bring different workflows together in one environment without making the system unnecessarily complex. Customer interest, commercial follow-up, order processing and inventory handling each have their own pace and details. For a specialized trading business, software has to support that reality rather than force a generic model. This required a setup that connects sales and operations while remaining understandable and workable for the people using it every day.

Another aspect was that standard flows do not always fully reflect the way a specialized company manages its products, customer questions and internal follow-up. Product presentation, communication, availability and processing all need to align. That is why the project was not limited to standard configuration alone. It also involved targeted adjustments in Odoo, with the aim of creating a fit for Van der Pol’s workflow while preserving a clear and maintainable operational structure.

Odoo solution

Odoo was set up as the central platform for the company’s key commercial and operational activities. Within one environment, customer records, sales opportunities, orders and administrative actions can be aligned more consistently. This reduces fragmentation and makes it easier for employees to work with the same information across process steps.

In practice, that creates better control across the chain from customer contact to the internal handling needed to complete the sale and follow-up properly. Alongside standard apps, Odoo Studio and focused custom work were used to adapt the solution to day-to-day needs. That made it possible to support specific requirements without losing the benefits of a standard platform. The result is a balanced approach in which Odoo serves not just as an administrative tool, but as an operational system that supports daily trading and customer service in a way that fits the company’s practical working style.

Apps and processes

Sales, CRM and Contacts play an important role in capturing customer information, handling requests and supporting commercial follow-up. Invoicing supports the financial completion of transactions, while Inventory helps organize stock awareness and operational handling. Website and eCommerce relate to the online presentation of products and any digital interactions around them.

Together, these apps support a connected path from customer to delivery , reducing unnecessary handovers and helping information stay available throughout the process. Studio provides room to adapt screens and fields to the way employees work, while Discuss and Calendar help coordinate internal communication and planning. That means Odoo is not only a place to register transactions, but also a practical daily workspace for collaboration and follow-up. For a relatively compact team, this bundled approach is especially valuable because it supports quick switching between sales, administration and operational tasks within one coherent application landscape .

Result

The realized outcome is that Van der Pol now has a central Odoo environment where core processes can support each other more effectively than in a fragmented setup. Customer information, sales handling, inventory-related actions and administrative follow-up can all be managed within the same structure. That makes daily work easier to oversee and helps create a more consistent process. For employees, this mainly means a clearer and more uniform way of working when handling customer requests and processing orders.

The expected longer-term value lies in continued efficiency and stronger information quality as the system is used more deeply over time. When data is brought together in one place, it becomes easier to monitor, align and improve processes where needed. For a company combining showroom activity, online visibility and operational follow-up, that creates a solid foundation. Odoo therefore supports not only the current operation, but also further process professionalization in a way that matches Van der Pol’s business model and daily reality.