Ecommerce software development for JewelCandle.

JewelCandle is a mid-size European manufacturer of scented products that sells in seven EU countries (B2B and B2C) via online shops. The company offers a line of handmade household products, like scented candles and jewelry gifts.

As a manufacturer and seller in one entity, the company manages a lot of processes: manufacturing, warehouse management, logistics, clients’ orders, and more. The main goal of the digital transformation was to streamline the management of all assets and processes and re-configure the existing legacy systems.

Because the company sells a wide range of products, flexibility in data exchange between the ERP and the online shops is a key factor in performance and customer satisfaction. So JewelCandle built a Digital Transformation roadmap to secure competitive advantages through eCommerce software development.

JewelCandle used WordPress-based websites to sell their products and for customer management. Stock management and logistics ran on an in-house product management system. This structure carried the following issues:

• Maintainability: the systems were too hard to maintain, since a lot of unrelated information was stored in one place.

• Scalability: creating a new shop and integrating it into the process required a lot of effort and produced a list of new issues.

• Performance: JewelCandle manufactured a large number of products (more than 10,000), and it was hard for the old systems to deliver an appropriate level of performance.

• Learnability: the old process had many manual workarounds that new employees had to memorize and easily forgot.

• Shopify migration: all WordPress-based websites were rebuilt on the Shopify platform.

• Middleware development: a custom app that serves as a link between the systems across the whole business process.

• QA testing: unicrew’s experts conducted a range of testing, including automated testing, load testing, and stress testing.

• Test plan: unicrew’s QA engineers developed the Test Plan and Test Cases that streamline the QA process on the client’s side.

When unicrew was contracted as an software development partner, the client faced two main needs: adjustment of all business processes and development of proper software solutions. Because the company manages many business processes across a range of poorly integrated platforms, the first step was the business process audit and modeling. The client’s IT department produced a high-level plan for eCommerce software development that had to be itemized and decomposed into sub-projects and user stories.

unicrew’s Business Analysts created the Stakeholder Register and Communication Plan and ran the elicitation phase by interviewing the stakeholders. To confirm a proper understanding, the BA team built BPMN models of the “as-is” state, which served as the starting point for the Improvement Plan. To demonstrate the improvements, the analysts then built BPMN models of the “to be” states where the new systems were involved. After a few rounds of brainstorming and confirming the changes, the BA team finalized the results. Based on the “to be” BPMN models, the analysts created a list of user stories supported by acceptance criteria and functional and non-functional requirements.

The development phase was shaped by the client’s decision to re-platform their sites from WordPress to Shopify and by the outcomes of the BA research. The company’s IT department introduced the solution outline: the core should be a centralized product information management system based on AWS and integrated with scalable infrastructure, and a Microsoft Dynamics ERP platform was implemented for logistics, procurement, and stock management.

To resolve the issues of the legacy systems, the team designed a new process built from new apps. The general logic keeps the data generated by each process separate, and because the processes are interconnected and rely on each other, the software architecture lets the system’s elements communicate through a custom app via API. The programme comprised three connected projects supporting one end-to-end business process:

• Shopify project: all WordPress-based websites were rebuilt on the Shopify platform.

• ERP project: Microsoft Dynamics was selected as the best-suited ERP. It became the “source of truth” for all products, handling communication with the logistics partners and stock management.

• Middleware project: a custom app that communicates between the systems across the whole business process, with a UI that customer service can use to manage orders.

unicrew’s developers joined the IT team that built the custom ecommerce app serving as the communicator between the systems.

To ensure code quality, unicrew’s experts conducted a range of testing: automated testing, load testing, and stress testing. Because the system was re-configured and built with new elements and logic, it was strategically important to run a constant Quality Assurance process, so unicrew’s QA engineers developed the Test Plan and Test Cases that streamline the QA process on the client’s side.