Contactless delivery is one of the hottest e-commerce trends. There are already over 13,000 parcel machines in Poland, but judging by the available resources, as many as 20 million people in Poland still do not have direct access to parcel machines. Our client is a leader in the field of e-commerce, enabling the sale of products via one of the top platforms in Europe. Currently, the client is taking their first steps on the courier delivery market and is developing a new chain of parcel machines in Poland, with plans to put 3,000 of their own machines in operation by 2022. At those pickup points, customers will be able to collect their packages using an app.

Need

• Due to the development of the platform, there was a need to quickly build a team of experienced developers who would support work on automating the complaint process as well as services supporting the selection of a courier company.
• Our client would also like to make it possible for recipients who are having problems opening a locker to quickly contact a technical support consultant who will be able to open it remotely.

Challenges

• Quickly building a development team with expertise in both frontend and backend technologies.
• Creating a solution to meet the assumed legal and security requirements.
• Multidisciplinary cooperation and constant communication with many other teams working on this solution (including in terms of law and cybersecurity).
• Automation of the complaint process.

Solution

Automated complaint process

The client has been benefiting from the support of Inetum for many years – our teams are developing a deferred payment system and mobile shopping application for them, among other things. We were able to quickly build a team consisting of programmers with the required competences. Inetum developers are working on automating the complaint process. The times when website forms were complicated and discouraged customers from submitting complaints are becoming a thing of the past. Currently, companies are open to feedback and are focused on improving customer service. For this purpose, we are developing a complaint form available on the website so that it will be fully integrated with the web store login system. Our solution will enable auto-completion based on the previous customer data. Inetumprogrammers are developing this functionality in accordance with the guidelines provided by law and data security specialists.

Software for the parcel machine technical support team

Our developers are also involved in developing a solution for a team of technical consultants. Thanks to the functionality which we are developing, technical support assistants will have access to a map of pickup points, as well as being able to check the contents and available storage. In case of any problems, they will assist the recipient and open the parcel locker remotely. The application is being developed in microservices architecture, which facilitates the implementation of new functionalities without the need to shut down the entire system. The project has the potential to develop further, and later on we will also work on a service that will support the process of selecting a courier company.

Benefits for the client

• • Quickly building an autonomous team of developers
  • 24/7 solution monitoring – the team sets the necessary alerts itself.
  • An automated and improved complaint system.
  • Remote project implementation.

What do our developers say about the project?

It is often difficult to explain to people from outside IT what solutions we are working on as programmers. The most interesting thing about this project is that our family and friends will be able to see and test the solutions we have developed. It motivates us to deliver as good a product as possible.

Team Leader & Senior Java Developer at Inetum

In the era of a rapidly developing e-commerce sector, online e-commerce entrepreneurs are looking for solutions to enable them to monitor the trending popularity of products and continue to expand their base.

Our client, who has been operating on the market for over 20 years, has an e-commerce platform which is used by over 12 million users around the world, and an average of 100 new products appear on the platform every single minute. When it comes to market needs, the creation of modern tools enabling the business development of the platform’s clients is a key element of the company’s strategy.

Challenges

• Development and maintenance of microservices which help to monitor trends, thanks to which products are listed on the e-commerce platform at favorable prices.
• Processing of data from various sources, such as websites of online stores and internal databases.

Solution

CLIENT STORY

Our client from the e-commerce industry needed the support of iOS and Android teams to develop their mobile application.

Find out how JCommerce's specialists supported the project. Read the client's story!

The team mainly takes care of the maintenance and development of microservices. We are in constant contact with developers from other teams to agree on the requirements and processes that go beyond the scope of work of individual teams.

On the client’s side, we work directly with a Project Manager who provides project requirements and prioritizes business tasks. The next stages are defined at business meetings which our Team Leader participates in. The functionalities we create are subject to continuous analysis based on charts presenting their effectiveness.

Benefits for the client

• Automating the process of expanding the database and trend analysis.
• The Inetum team takes responsibility for the entire software development process: from selecting technology, to implementation and testing, to monitoring the application’s performance.
• Working with a highly competent team that independently selects project technologies.

Our client is one of the top brands in the e-commerce industry, and its services are used by millions of users. As the client opens up to new foreign markets, they need technological solutions which will facilitate the addition of multiple offers at the same time, managing data from different sources and adding internationalized information to the system.

CLIENT STORY

Our client from the e-commerce industry needed the support of iOS and Android teams to develop their mobile application.

Find out how JCommerce's specialists supported the project. Read the client's story!

Challenges in the project

• Enabling merchants to import a large number of offers to the website
• Unifying data from merchants’ sources and adapting to the needs of various clients
• Adjusting the way that offers are displayed in different languages on the interface and enabling the processing of personal data from different countries
• Working with large amounts of data from various sources

Scope of work

The project involves a Inetum team with the necessary competences in the area of software development, DevOps and test automation. In order to meet the client’s needs, the team:

• created the engine for mass operations. Currently, it handles 1 million offers a day, and ultimately that figure may rise to 70 million operations on the e-commerce platform a day. 
• is working on a solution which will make it possible to create offers on the platform based on flat files (CSV, XLS), external integrators, such as CRM and ERP systems, and other services providing API and UI. To address this challenge, Machine Learning mechanisms will be ultimately used in the project to automate the translation / conversion of various e-commerce taxonomies. Currently, for this purpose, the Inetum team is using a self-designed architecture solution.
• introduced a pioneering solution that will enable the creation of offers in many different currencies. The service supports the addition of offers based on templates in different languages.
• designed a web application which supports other e-commerce vendors’ templates and dedicated templates.
• is responsible for a number of auxiliary services, such as integration with a banking system or servicing administration tools. The team monitors the solution themselves 24/7 using self-programmed incidents triggers. 
• owns 10 microservices and is involved in the development of many other teams.
• cooperates with the Product Owner on the client’s side, developing the software in the Agile model.
• the web application supports other e-commerce vendors’ templates and dedicated templates.

The solution

• The web application supports other e-commerce vendors’ templates and dedicated templates.
• The offers have 100% analytical coverage, thanks to which the team knows the amount of data, and has knowledge of their sources and operations performed on them in particular categories. This allows the team to quickly notice any anomalies and prepare development plans.
• The solution is constantly being improved and developed in terms of UX thanks to continuous cooperation with a dedicated UX designer and sales research conducted together with the client’s sales departments.

Technologies: Kotlin, Groovy (Spock), Spring, Gradle, Mongo, Kafka (Avro), Hermes, React, S3 

Tools: Atlassian Stack, Intellij Idea, Slack, Mesos, ELK, Graphana (Prometheus, Graphite) 

Duration: October 2019 – ongoing  

Benefits for the client

The iOS and Android teams supported the client in the development of an existing mobile application that allows for the convenient viewing of offers and the completion of purchases on one of the biggest e-commerce platforms in Poland. JCommerce specialists, developers and Quality Assurance specialists support the client’s teams in the area of software development, and are responsible for maintaining key application functionalities. They also take care of the quality of the developed application thanks to automated tests, and implement A / B tests for new functionalities.

Challenges in the project

• The biggest challenge in the project was to ensure the continuity of the purchasing process when replacing the old solution with a new one (gradual implementation, A / B tests, monitoring),
• The second challenge was related to handling payments due to the multitude of payment methods available (BLIK, payment cards, Google Pay, transfers, payment in instalments, various payment providers) and the volume of transactions each day.

The solution

In addition to work carried out in the area of software development and testing, one of the recent projects consisted of a complete redesign of the existing shopping basket process in the application and implementation of the new solution. As a result, it will be easier for users to do their shopping, and the application itself will be adequately prepared for increasing traffic from the technical side.

Business value

In order to launch a production project of digital receipts, the client asked for support from JCommerce advisors in the implemented cloud environment, so that it would be able to handle a significant amount of data which would increase over time. The challenge was to find an effective and scalable solution that would allow for cost management according to the increasing amount of processed data. Another aim of the project was to design the appropriate architecture and prepare a control panel for users. Finally, the project aimed to maintain the Swedish standard of digital receipts according to the guidelines provided.

Solution

As part of the project, the implementation of the AWS cloud infrastructure was recommended, and the implementation and configuration of the environment were commissioned. The work carried out was comprehensive and included the creation of architecture, including the Back-End and Front-End layers of the control panel. During the ongoing work, JCommerce specialists created a user panel that allows users to manage digital receipts (adding, deleting, categorizing, editing and searching). An API was also created to allow external POS (points of sale) to send receipts in JSON or XML format.

The result

Thanks to the knowledge and experience of JCommerce in the implementation of cloud-based solutions, it was possible to determine the client’s needs and then carry out the implementation of a scalable cloud environment. As part of the work carried out, a panel for managing digital receipts which meets the client’s requirements and complies with the Swedish standard was created.

Business value