Meet our Client
Pfister has been a leading provider of interior design services in Switzerland since 1882. With 18 branches, they are present in all parts of Switzerland, and with 100,000+ products available online, they rank among the largest furniture stores in the Swiss market.
Having been in the industry for so long, Pfister understands that shopping is more than just obtaining and paying for goods. Shopping is an experience. And in this digital age, it's essential to pair it with customer-centric service, thorough guidance, and continuous improvement.
Why you shouldn't neglect software updates
Pfister’s e-commerce solution was based on the universally trusted SAP Commerce. However, the version they used (6.4) was very old and lacked numerous technology advancements of the recent version (21.05), resulting in missed opportunities and hindered growth.
Besides, 6.4 was scheduled to be deprecated soon, meaning that they had to update to the latest version, and quickly. The problem was that they’d need to skip 8 (!) upgrades at once!
Since 2020, with help from SENLA's e-commerce experts, the Swiss furniture professionals have been turning their needs and vision into a future-proof solution.
SAP Commerce 21.05 advantages over 6.4
It might sound like comparing an iPhone 4 to an iPhone 13 Pro Max, considering the wide gap between versions, but let's have a quick look at the major advantages we aimed to deliver to our Client with this update:
- Quick adaptation to market trends thanks to the microservices approach. In this way, different parts of the system would operate independently and could be updated on demand (like responding to increased traffic during a sale).
- Increased sales through seamless integrations between various systems and real-time data sharing. That would allow marketing, sales, and inventory teams to always be on the same page (for example, to prevent overselling or overstocking).
- Operational efficiency thanks to modern BackOffice/SmartEdit features. That would provide the internal teams with powerful tools to enhance website management, order processing, and customer satisfaction.
- Richer promotional capabilities would enable Pfister to provide timely and relevant product bundles to the customers resulting in upselling (like suggesting a carpet that would go perfectly with a sofa).
- Reduced cart abandonment due to improvements in search, page load, checkout, and overall responsiveness, leading to more completed sales.
- Cost savings thanks to fewer manual interventions, integration-related issues, and reduced data discrepancies.
- Improved customer trust through enhanced security. The protection against breaches would also heighten, preventing potential financial losses and reputation damage.
Why did they ask us to help?
When searching for a trusted outsourcing partner, Pfister turned to SENLA, choosing us for a range of reasons:
- What mattered most to Pfister was that we had a ready-to-go dedicated team for this niche project. We had everyone from day one, without the need for additional hiring. Within just a week, we shared our experts' profiles with Pfister.
- We provided a diverse team of experts (a tech lead, back-end and front-end developers, QA specialists, etc.) who had already collaborated on other e-commerce projects. They functioned as a smooth-operating and well-balanced unit that distributed the workload and tasks effortlessly.
- We met Pfister’s timezone requirements. In-person meetings, live workshops, quarterly planning, and strong communication are still vital, even in today's remote-friendly business world.
- Being Europe-based, SENLA’s experts seamlessly integrated into Pfister’s corporate culture, aiming for a long-term software partnership.
- As a mid-sized company, we met the Client's needs with flexible contract terms and smart cost optimization while maintaining the highest standard of quality.
How we approached the project
To better allocate resources and define the optimal team size, we created a roadmap estimating the development time.
The project began with a series of workshops and a month-long thorough analysis of the existing platform. Next, we mapped out our development plan and pinpointed the necessary solutions. After that, we started the implementation.
At first, the team we provided consisted of a tech lead, 6 full-stack developers, and 3 QA specialists, including an automation QA engineer. Later we were able to quickly scale when the project got bigger and more diversified.
By sticking to our roadmap, employing the Agile model with 2-week sprints, and parallelizing the work we were able to go live with an initial version within just 6 months.
How we tackled the tech: Main site
The work was divided into two streams: one focused on the main website, and the other on the order-managing platform used by attendants in the physical stores.
For the main site we largely worked on the back end, concentrating on the following major and multiple minor tasks.
Update the platform from 6.4 to 21.05
The Client’s old SAP Commerce platform required an update from the technically obsolete version 6.4 to the latest 21.05 (skipping an impressive 8 versions on the way), bringing with it a wealth of improvements.
“Updating the software from 6.4 to 21.05 was indeed a big challenge and a significant achievement. Upgrading SAP Commerce is crucial for its efficiency but can be tricky. It's like a group project where everyone, from the business side to the tech and QA teams, needs to collaborate to make it work. We accomplished this by strategically dividing the tasks and carefully executing them through several parallel processes.”
Configure BackOffice and SmartEdit
The upgrade entitled migration from HMC to BackOffice and WCMS to SmartEdit. Both were newer and more advanced than the older tools used by the Client.
BackOffice would help clearly organize and manage product information and catalog hierarchies, leading to quicker order processing, better customer service, and improved overall operational efficiency.
SmartEdit would allow for making on-the-fly changes to website content and sharing it with customers in just one click. This would speed up campaign roll-outs, promotions, and storefront changes, allowing for quick responses to market trends or events.
Typically, you need to configure your storefront so that you can edit it with SmartEdit. However, Pfister used a custom React front end and wished to retain it. So to integrate the new editing tool, we created a new layer that converted React components and allowed them to be managed and modified through SmartEdit. Then, we needed to customize SmartEdit’s functionality further to work with the website’s existing WCMS content.
Integrate with Voyado (Apptus)
By integrating with Voyado (formerly Apptus), the updated website gained AI-driven features like marketing automation, loyalty programs, and campaign management. The website now could analyze customer actions in real time and adjust the products shown, creating a tailored shopping experience.
How we tackled the tech: Managers' platform
The order management platform gives store assistants real-time access to all sales-relevant information, including warranties, delivery times, discounts, possible product configurations, etc.
For it, we worked on the back end and front end. Besides adding new features and customizing the existing platform, we focused on the following major and multiple minor tasks.
Redesign the logic of best price calculation
Previously, Pfister’s e-commerce solution relied on custom algorithms for calculating costs and discounts, ignoring SAP Commerce's built-in price engine. As a result, calculations took almost an entire night.
With our enhancements, this time was reduced 4 times to only 2 to 3 hours thanks to multithreading of particularly resource-intensive processes and optimizing database queries.
We also added validators and checks to prevent data issues if someone changed the price calculation logic on SAP’s side.
Optimize integration with SAP ERP through DataHub
The managers’ platform was connected to the main site and SAP ERP so that the store assistants would always be up-to-date about products in warehouses or any discount campaigns on the site.
We improved the integration by establishing data synchronization through DataHub, resolving duplicates, and removing unused entries like old orders and customers.
Set up the CI/CD process
Another big task was setting up a streamlined and clear CI/CD process. For that, we reconfigured all Jenkins Pipelines used by administrators and developers to automate such aspects of development as building, testing, and deploying platform versions.
Part of this task also included migrating the repository from Bitbucket to GitHub, setting up automatic release versioning, and adding Jira ticket links.
For both project streams, we also created unit and integration test coverage and provided continuous support and bug fixing.
The value: Increased sales, happier customers, revenue boost
After 3 years of collaboration, SENLA continues to upgrade and support Pfister’s e-commerce platform, consistently expanding our Client’s capabilities to offer furniture and decor products.
Among the most notable benefits Pfister already enjoys are:
- Revenue boost through dramatically increased website speed and efficiency, driving online traffic, longer session durations, and consequently, higher sales conversions.
- Fourfold improvement in price calculation speed, allowing for swift price adjustments in response to market trends to maximize profit.
- Operational cost savings thanks to enhancing content and product management with effective modern tools.
- Quicker, more straightforward releases, roll-outs, and restarts due to streamlined CI/CD process, which directly lead to reduced downtime costs and increased sales.
- Improved inventory management through efficient data synchronization. This ensures minimized overstocks and stockouts.
- Enhanced per-customer revenue thanks to equipping shop attendants with real-time sales information for informed recommendations.
Currently, we are gearing up to upgrade to the next SAP Commerce version. This will bring even more opportunities for our Сlient's success and ensure uninterrupted future growth. Need assistance with your e-commerce solution? We're ready to start today.