Situation
As online retailers increased their share of the consumer-electronics market, one of North America’s largest electronics retailers reimagined its sales strategy to widen its embrace of eCommerce tools. The retailer’s existing IT system posed several hurdles: the monolithic platform built on ATG imposed high costs, it slowed the retailer’s ability to bring new features to market, its release-management process was time-intensive and dependent upon the IT team, and it could not adequately scale during peak demands. The retailer clearly needed a new platform to achieve its eCommerce vision.
Collaboration
Wipro partnered with the retailer to assess and deliver a digital roadmap to transform its commerce platform. This roadmap reflected a complete transformation, as it encompassed open-source engineering, automation, CI/CD processes, cloud enablement, agile development, and talent transformation.
The entire system was split into different zones and categorized into multiple services, with peripheral systems like retail merchandising and FMS transformed to align with the new architecture. These microservices were connected through APIs and hosted on a cloud platform acquired as a service to ensure their adaptability. Omni-channel experiences were then driven though this services-driven architecture, allowing each service to scale independently based on demand.
With an auto-scaling commerce platform, the retailer would no longer experience crashes during peak load, even as new channels such as Amazon Orders and Google Express orders were introduced. Over time, the portal was enhanced with in-store delivery across North America, and new offerings such as home consulting and support were offered directly through the commerce channel.
In 2020, the reimagined platform even enabled the retailer to offer curb-side pickup in response to the pandemic. This enhancement, like other upgrades, was plugged into the existing system without any interruption in service.
Outcomes
The electronics retailer’s new eCommerce platform delivered many operational efficiencies. The reimagined platform reduced the infrastructure footprint from 100+ servers to 20+ cloud virtual machines, yet still enabled the company to reduce feature-deployment times by 70%. These deployments and enhancements could also now be completed during normal working hours without any interruption. In addition, automation saved the retailer the equivalent of four FTE annually, reducing costs and enabling that expertise to be deployed elsewhere in the organization.
Ultimately, the new platform has enabled the electronics retailer to recapture share and deliver products with the same speed and personalization of its competitors. Moving forward, this platform will provide the scalability and agility required to accommodate future growth.