Transforming a Business Management Platform for a Leading Retailer: Achieving Scalability and Enhanced User Experience with Maple
How SingleStone partnered with one of the nation’s leading Internet and catalogue retailers of consumer electronics to reimagine and replace their business management platform. The new platform, named "Maple," was designed to support rapid growth, improve customer service, and enhance system reliability.
THE CHALLENGE
Client Background:
One of the nation’s leading Internet and catalogue retailers of consumer electronics has managed its Canadian business since 2008 using a commercial product known as Volusion.
Challenge Overview:
- Performance Degradation: As business grew and requirements changed, the client’s internal software development team made customizations to Volusion. Over time, this led to performance degradation, especially in credit card transactions.
- Customer Service Issues: Customer service suffered due to longer wait times and frequent system timeouts, making it difficult to maintain the company’s reputation for excellent service.
- Training Challenges: Training new Customer Service Representatives (CSRs) became increasingly difficult due to Volusion’s unpredictable performance.
- Impact of COVID-19: The COVID-19 pandemic exacerbated these challenges as more customers shopped from home, increasing the strain on the existing system.
Key Pain Points:
- Scalability Issues: The existing system could not scale effectively to meet the growing business demands, leading to system slowdowns and inefficiencies.
- User Experience Challenges: The unpredictable performance of the system negatively impacted both customer and employee experiences.
- Increased Operational Costs: Frequent system timeouts and performance issues resulted in higher operational costs and longer customer service interactions.
THE SOLUTION
Reimagining the Business Management Platform:
Excellent customer service is our client’s claim to fame. Conscious of this, SingleStone set clear expectations before development: fewer bugs reported, shorter customer service calls, faster application performance, increased reliability, shorter times from point of contact to sale, and trust with credit card transactions.
Key Actions Taken:
Development of the Maple Platform:
- .Net Web Application: Developed the new Maple platform as a .Net web application, ensuring it was designed with scalability and reliability in mind.
- Customer-Centric Focus: Focused on improving customer service outcomes by reducing bugs, shortening customer service calls, and increasing system reliability.
Collaborative Design Process:
- Consistent Collaboration: Worked closely with the client’s power users to ensure the new system met their needs and expectations.
- Language and Interface Design: Evolved the systemwide language to be succinct and uniform, improving formatting, grammar, and overall user experience.
Incremental Rollout:
- Phased Deployment: Incrementally rolled out the Maple platform to completely replace the existing Volusion system, ensuring a smooth transition with minimal disruption.
- Robust Input Validation: Implemented robust input validation to provide sharp and timely user feedback, enhancing the overall functionality and user satisfaction.
THE OUTCOME
Key Achievements:
- 30% Reduction in Outdated/Inoperable Features: The new platform eliminated unnecessary features, streamlining the system and improving performance.
- Simplified Order Returns Process: Corrected inaccurate reason codes during the order returns process, improving operational efficiency.
- Clean and Intuitive Interface: The final Maple interface was clean, intuitive, and highly functional, improving the user experience for both customers and employees.
- Uniform System Language: Established a uniform and easily understandable system language, reducing training time and increasing user satisfaction.
Long-Term Impact:
- Scalability and Growth: The Maple platform provided the scalability needed to support the client’s rapid growth, ensuring the system could handle increased demand without compromising performance.
- Enhanced Customer Service: The improvements in system reliability and user experience led to shorter customer service calls and higher customer satisfaction.
- Operational Efficiency: The streamlined platform reduced operational costs and improved overall efficiency, allowing the client to focus on strategic growth initiatives.
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