A global network of SAP experts, ready to help
At iSoftStone, we’re proud of our status as an SAP Gold Partner. Our global team has run complex SAP implementation, maintenance, support, and optimization projects for enterprise clients in the US, China, Southeast Asia, and beyond. In addition, we’ve developed offerings for two unique carbon emission management and carbon data analysis solutions available through SAP marketplace. We leverage the deep technical expertise of offshore teams, combining it with onshore talent and 12+ years of organizational experience supporting retail clients through digital transformations.
SAP Commerce Cloud plus a headless CMS
When one client engaged us towards the end of their SAP Commerce Cloud (formerly SAP Hybris) implementation to support an issue with zone pricing, we were primed to bring in the best expertise from our retail solution services team.
Headless applications like SAP Commerce Cloud are growing in popularity, partly because decoupling the front-end UI from the back-end e-commerce engine allows for intuitive user interfaces and fewer development constraints. Uniquely, our client had also chosen to integrate a headless content management system (CMS) alongside SAP.
Andreas Muller, the iSoftStone technical product manager on the engagement, notes that the headless integration and AI capabilities are relatively new and exciting. “It’s not just content management,” he says. “Our client ingests a lot of their product data and their product catalog from SAP and then relies on the CMS to display the information in relevant ways via algorithms and user intent.”
iSoftStone’s technical audit uncovers systemic issues
In an ideal world, SAP’s product data powers the client’s product listing pages and is leveraged to generate rich customer experiences like personalized search results and dynamic assortments. It’s also a key need for third-party apps like our client’s augmented reality room designer, an AI-powered discovery platform, and the company’s marketing software.
However, as iSoftStone’s experts began work on zone pricing and were in daily partnership with both the client and original implementation vendor, they realized there was a systemic problem. As an additional service to our client, we conducted a full technical audit.
The audit uncovered issues in the overall code quality and architecture. Our client’s website wasn’t as performant, scalable, or durable as it needed to be. Its Google Lighthouse score was in single digits. The mobile experience didn’t meet industry standard. Some elements hadn’t been upgraded during development and were already out of support. The client’s IT team was facing hundreds of bugs, including critical issues impacting the checkout.
While our client’s tech stack is complex and the use of SAP as middleware isn’t common, the integrations should’ve been achievable. “I believe the original implementation team had a good understanding of the old SAP technology but probably didn’t have anyone who was experienced in the new front end,” says Yves Winkler, iSoftStone’s SAP Commerce Cloud architect on the project. “It seems as though they had no senior team members with solid Angular experience. Some fundamental understanding about the functionality of the decoupled UI was not there.”
In lay terms, the site had been built with the front end as a mirror of the back end. The implementation vendor had architected a headless experience as though it had a head.
Our rapidly scaled team delivers wins for the client
Our client’s commitment to quality and value is paramount to their brand. As a result of the audit, they invited iSoftStone to take over the implementation and remediate the defects. We rapidly scaled from a team of 10 resources to 34 and partnered closely with the original vendor to ensure the smoothest possible handover.
As our SAP and CMS experts got to work, their biggest technical challenge was to ensure that infrastructure-related changes and technical changes were applied across environments to guarantee proper functionality and consistent results.
In addition to delivering on time and budget for the zone pricing work, we achieved other quick wins for our client. In the first month of the engagement, for example, we fixed server-side rendering issues to make the website crawlable for search engines and leveraged data efficiently for a headless storefront. Instead of requiring the site to place many API calls to SAP Commerce Cloud, the data is also consolidated in the search engine. Now information can be surfaced promptly and smoothly.
We also deployed a team of Tricentis Tosca experts to introduce automated performance and functional testing throughout the development lifecycle. Tests that previously took our client hours — or even days — can now be completed in just minutes.
Lasting partnership and hypercare
iSoftStone’s company values emphasize developing trust, building relationships, and serving those around us. We believe these qualities, alongside providing deep, relevant expertise, are the key to any successful engagement.
As Muller says, “We embedded ourselves with the client’s IT team and delivered at scale. We made sure we had a well-oiled process and the necessary teams structured to deliver the correct feature enhancements and new capabilities.”
And now our client and their customers are able to enjoy a first-class e-commerce experience and reap the rewards.
