A digital catalogue written in Perl, with no real e-commerce behind it, was replaced by a full in-house online shop. Deeply integrated with the internal system landscape, with ML-driven product recommendations and an international rollout. €20M revenue in the first year, expectations beaten.
An established German market leader in motorcycle mail order ran a website written in Perl that was more digital catalogue than online shop. Only a fraction of the range could actually be bought. Integration with the internal system landscape, inventory management, point of sale and the connected specialist systems, was largely missing.
For a market leader in its segment, that was a strategic problem. Bricks and mortar retail worked, but the digital business stayed far below what was possible. A step by step approach was not an option, the Perl base was too old and too inflexible. It needed a complete restart.
A rewrite is the riskiest project there is. The old shop had to keep running in parallel while the new one was being built. At the same time the requirements were complex: deep integration with a grown internal system landscape, country specific shop variants for the international rollout and a fast checkout process that lives up to a market leader's claim.
On top of that came the weight of expectation. A market leader launching its first full online shop expects a lot. No MVP thinking, no "let's see how it goes", but a shop that works from day one and generates revenue.
Built a full in-house online shop on PHP with Zend Framework. Not a standard system bent into shape, but a bespoke solution that adapts to the company's processes instead of the other way round.
Designed and implemented a central product catalogue. Built a fast and reliable checkout process. Integrated external payment providers for secure and scalable payment processing.
Integrated the shop deeply with the internal system landscape: inventory management, point of sale and the connected specialist systems. Real time data exchange instead of manual processes. The internal system landscape and the shop speak the same language.
Implemented automated, ML-driven product recommendations on top of Elasticsearch. Analysed user behaviour, suggested relevant products, raised conversion measurably. Decisions based on data instead of gut feeling.
Built country specific shop variants as the basis for international expansion. Multiple languages, country specific payment providers, local requirements. The shop was built for international growth from the start.
revenue in the first year
Expectations beaten: from digital catalogue to the strongest revenue channel.
conversion
Through ML-driven product recommendations, measured over a year and continuously optimized.
market leader
The first full online shop in the segment: a digital foundation for sustainable growth.
A digital catalogue written in Perl, with no real e-commerce behind it, was replaced by a full in-house online shop that generated €20M in revenue in its first year and beat expectations doing it. ML-driven product recommendations raised conversion by 10%. The shop runs deeply integrated with the internal system landscape, supports country specific variants for the international rollout and forms the digital foundation for the sustainable growth of a German market leader. The successful delivery led to a follow-up engagement.