Agile Processes Improve Deliverable Quality for National Furniture Retailer
THE BRIEF
A national furniture retailer began a company-wide digital transformation in 2017 and began with a website migration to Salesforce Commerce Cloud platform. Shortly after the project was underway, key associates resigned from the organization and brought the project to a stand still.
THE CHALLENGE
The national furniture retailer was growing at an unprecedented rate so the decision was made to restructure how they deliver value to their customers utilizing digital transformation. The first step was migrating their website to a cloud platform, but after just a few months, pivotal team members left the company and the project quickly turned from green to yellow and then red.
Apexon was approached four months into the nine month plan to bring in project management oversight, AS/400 development, and the quality assurance required to complete the implementation on time and on budget. Apexon’s expert consultants went to work and tackled the first matter of business, onboarding the executive team.
THE SOLUTION
Apexon engaged the executive team to gain further transparency and buy-in, as the project was being managed through IT with minimal input from all departments. Monthly executive leadership updates were created to solve this problem and a PMO meeting requiring project managers to provide weekly updates to key executives was implemented. This reduced project risk by discussing and working through issues as they arose. A test plan was executed to ensure customer orders would properly flow into the AS/400 from the Salesforce platform. The site was launched only 8 days after the original timeline which was hailed as a fantastic accomplishment.
The Salesforce Commerce Cloud and Bazaarvoice implementation effort has resulted in over 8,300 product reviews.
THE RESULTS
Increase the quality of deliverables
Apexon’s agile development model benefits organizations by helping them to increase the quality of deliverables through continuous improvement, cope better with change, improve communication across functional business units, respond effectively to user feedback through software development, and ultimately deliver value sooner.