The value of global e-commerce is estimated to be greater than 1.2 trillion USD, and is growing at a rapid 18.3% . While this represents a tremendous opportunity, rising customer expectations mean that success is dependent on robust technology that delivers an enjoyable shopping experience.
Here is how Mindtree engineered an innovative e-commerce platform from end to end for a start up firm in North America. We enabled the customer to focus on business requirements while our team took on a Technology Officer (TO) organization role.
The challenge
The customer’s vision was to develop an e-commerce platform to help users find deals in their neighborhood, and buy those products using tax-free discount cards. The platform was designed to allow small neighborhood stores to compete against big corporations by drawing customers using attractive prices and offers.
The organization had run into project development issues with their existing service provider; and Mindtree therefore stepped in to deliver the project along demanding timelines and on a tight budget. Specific challenges included:
- The need to quickly rewrite the code developed by the incumbent vendor due to requirement changes
- Meeting timeline commitments in the face of frequently changing business requirements
- Keeping pace with rapidly evolving technology; and choosing the best tools based on the customer's unique needs as a start up
Our solution
Mindtree collaborated with the customer to develop a best-in-class e-commerce platform to connect small retailers with consumers. Solution highlights included:
- Choosing Magento as the core e-commerce engine because of its flexible, feature-rich functionality. We also developed customized modules and user interface themes
- Choosing Solr as the search engine thanks to its powerful full-text search, hit highlighting, faceted search, near real-time indexing, dynamic clustering, and database integration
- Using a proprietary Mindtree tool to aggregate data on eligible merchants and automatically populate the e-commerce website thereby reducing manual intervention. Mindtree's highly customizable Web crawler enabled accurate gathering of desired product information comprising text and images
- Using the Apple Passbook app to deliver coupons over mobile phones. This enabled the customer to create passes automatically, deliver passes via emails, and update passes through push notifications
- Using Amazon-provided services such as elastic clouds, RDS and S3 for hosting and deployment
- Providing other solutions such as bulk upload from CSV/XML and integration with commission junction
Business impact
- Improved core business focus by taking over a TO organization role
- Reduced time to market and technology costs
- Helped the customer develop mobile functionality
- Reduced the need for manual effort
