In 2021, electronic invoicing became mandatory for companies in Greece, and with it the need appeared for TECTRA Ltd to begin handling the vast portfolio of products in a systematic way.

The primary driver was to be able to generate unique item numbers for the products configured, quoted and sold, so that they can be invoiced electronically.

• Development of requirements, especially given the frequent need to bundle various components
• Definition of a 7-character (mostly, digits) code schema fit for the purpose, i.e. the size of the product range and the number of product categories and variants within them
• Design of an appropriate database schema
• Evaluation of different low-code/no-code software tools, such as AirTable, BudiBase, and NocoDB (the latter was selected)
• Implementation of the database schema in NocoDB (backed by Postgres)
• Development of Python code that accesses NocoDB’s autogenerated REST API for issuing new product-item codes in smart ways that poka-yoke against typos, for creating bundles and auto-generating descriptions in Greek, for calculating bundle BOM costs, etc.

The resulting software is NocoPIM and is in daily use, being heavily utilized as the prime backend of most other microservices at TECTRA Ltd .