Overview

LiteBreeze has developed and continues to expand a custom e-commerce and order management platform for one of Europe’s largest printing businesses, servicing customers throughout Europe for over a decade.

The platform combines an e-commerce storefront with a backend order management service, facilitating much of the business’s day-to-day operations across multiple sales channels spanning production, supplier relationships, and logistics, all requiring tight coordination.

Challenge

At its core, this is a business where precision at scale is not optional. With many moving parts from production schedules and material supply chains to production floor machines and shipping consolidations, all operating simultaneously, this complexity came with several key challenges:

• Orders came in from multiple dissimilar sources like the e-commerce storefront, email inboxes, APIs, and manual input with print data and other related files/instructions stored at various sources like SFTP servers, API endpoints, etc. Processing them at scale, without any data loss was challenging.
• Volume-based pricing and customer-specific production configurations demanded tricky fine-grained customisations in the business model.
• Print jobs had to be handed over from the application directly to the machines on the production floor, involving different protocols and message formats.
• Intelligently consolidating shipments for cost optimisations added significant operational complexity.
• Keeping suppliers, customers, and internal teams informed throughout the order lifecycle was largely manual and prone to delays.
• Tracking and resolving claims was a largely manual process, making it difficult to address recurring issues or generate actionable insights from operational data.

Solution

LiteBreeze designed and delivered a custom platform built with an e-commerce storefront and a comprehensive operations management system.

The system was built to handle high volumes with minimal manual intervention, automating each stage of the order lifecycle across multiple channels and workflows.

The primary objective was clear: we needed to build a platform that could do it all, precisely and at scale. That meant starting with a flexible e-commerce storefront capable of serving multiple European markets, with multi-language and multi-tax support built in. Behind the storefront, a unified order management system would bring all incoming channels into a single structured workflow, resulting in faster order processing and improved operational efficiency. Production needed to be smarter too, with automation introduced where possible, increasing throughput and reducing inefficiencies and operational costs. Every order, from quotation through fulfillment, had to be visible end-to-end, with automated communication keeping customers, operators and suppliers informed at each stage. And for management, real-time reporting across order volumes, shipping, and claims would finally make data-driven decisions possible.

Key Features

Operations management system:

• Multi-channel order intake: Orders are received from e-commerce websites, email, REST APIs, and manual entry, processed automatically from receipt to fulfillment.
• Quotation to order conversion: Quotations can be converted into orders with a single click, eliminating manual re-entry and reducing the chance of errors.
• Batched print runs: Similar orders are grouped into batched print runs to maximize production efficiency and minimize setup time.
• Automated job processing: Print jobs could be triggered automatically from the application reducing manual effort and increasing throughput.
• Shipment consolidation: Orders sharing a delivery destination are consolidated to reduce shipping costs and logistics overhead.
• Invoicing and supplier management: Customer invoices and supplier orders are created, tracked, and managed from within the same system.
• Automated communications: Order-related notifications and updates to customers and suppliers are handled automatically throughout the order lifecycle.
• Claims handling: A dedicated claims system allows issues to be tracked and resolved quickly, rather than being handled case by case manually.
• Reporting: Management gets a real-time overview of order volumes, shipping activity, and claims through visual dashboards, making it easy to monitor performance and spot bottlenecks.

E-commerce storefront:

The Opencart storefront was custom-built to handle the commercial complexity of serving multiple European markets, with key features including:

• Payment gateways: Supports PayPal, Klarna, SagePay, WorldPay, DIBS, Payex, Payson, 2Checkout, and MoneyBookers, giving customers a wide range of payment options at checkout.
• Volume product configuration: Customers can select multiple products at different quantities and place them all within a single transaction.
• Customer-specific pricing: Product prices can be customized per customer to support flexible commercial arrangements.
• Multi-language and multi-tax support: The storefront supports multiple languages with VAT calculated automatically based on the customer’s EU country.
• On-site SEO: Every product page includes unique titles, meta descriptions, and keywords to support organic search visibility.

Platform Evolution

As the platform grew, so did the demands on it. What started on Core PHP had served its purpose well, but over time the technology was holding the platform back, and the system’s dependency on Windows infrastructure limited flexibility on both sides.

In 2025, LiteBreeze migrated the entire system to the cloud and using Laravel, resolving that entirely. Feature additions and third-party integrations became far more manageable, and the platform is now environment-independent, with full hosting control. 

Technology Used

Backend & Core Application

• Laravel – The primary backend framework powering the rebuilt application’s core business logic and APIs.

Frontend / UI

• Laravel Blade – Server-side templating engine used to render dynamic views and structure the application’s UI.
• Vue.js – Used in specific pages to handle dynamic, interdependent user input and reactive UI behavior.

Database & Storage

• MySQL – Relational database used to store and manage application data efficiently.
• AWS RDS (MySQL) – Managed cloud service used to host and scale the MySQL database with high availability.
• AWS S3 – Object storage used for storing and retrieving application files efficiently.

Cloud Infrastructure

• AWS EC2 – Provides scalable virtual servers as the underlying compute layer.
• AWS ECS – Manages and orchestrates containerized application deployment on EC2 instances.

Caching & Performance

• Redis – In-memory data store used to manage caching and improve application performance.

Integrations & External Services

• Microsoft Graph Exchange API – Handles order imports and email communications through integration with external systems.
• Third-party API Integrations – Enables importing orders, managing shipping processes, and tracking deliveries across multiple platforms.

Document Processing

• PDF Enhancement Tools – Optimizes PDF files for printing to reduce ink usage and improve print efficiency.

Local System Automation

• PowerShell Scripts – Monitor file activity in designated folders on the client’s local machine for automation workflows.
• Go (Golang) Local Application – A client-side service that routes print jobs to appropriate printers based on predefined configurations.

Development & Environment Setup

• Docker – Provides a consistent local development environment that mirrors production deployment.

Results

From 7,000+ orders annually in 2015 to 100,000+ in 2025, the platform has scaled alongside the business, and the rebuild ensures it is ready to keep doing so.

A Replicable Approach

This project reinforced that complexity at scale demands more than good code — it demands a deep understanding of the business, its workflows, and where it is headed. Building systems that are designed to grow, making technology decisions that age well, and staying ahead of what the business will need next, not just today, is what defines how we work. The migration from Core PHP onsite to Laravel in the Cloud was not reactive, it was a deliberate move to ensure the platform remained modern, flexible, and easy to evolve. That mindset of anticipating change and engineering for it is what has kept this partnership going for over ten years.