As a full-service provider, Amann Girrbach offers system solutions in the field of digital dental prosthetics. Headquartered in Vorarlberg, Austria, the company is already active in more than 90 countries.
The innovation leader is also consistently pushing the issue of digitalization with a digital sales platform based on Spryker.
4
months
project duration
10
project team members
3
months
duration until the first final MVP
The challenge
In an approximately 2-month requirements phase with five types of workshops, a common goal and common sense were developed among the various stakeholders. The existing product data structure from the ERP was aligned with Spryker's product data model through the development of a data model and corresponding mappings, as well as data enrichment.
Specific data timeliness requirements were implemented through a combination of access to persisted data and ad-hoc web service queries. Shipping costs and methods were aligned with binding calculations and existing logistics processes.
This agile project started with a fixed schedule and budget, and then evolved the scope based on customer requirements.
The coordination between TOWA and Amann Girrbach took place in two-week sprints, allowing for continuous adaptation to the final product.
The common goal was to go live within eight sprints and to enable the first orders from defined test customers. While the first customers were already placing orders, further integrations, optimizations and tests were implemented. Just six weeks later, the next group of customers was onboarded. Since then, the platform has been continuously developed and rolled out.
With Spryker, Amann Girrach opted for a modular and scalable commerce framework that can be optimally adapted to specific requirements and business processes.
The use of Spryker's PaaS hosting provided an ideal technical basis for targeted further development through continuous integration (CI) and the use of scaling options. With tideways, a monitoring tool for identifying performance bottlenecks and real-time error detection was integrated into the project setup. Elasticsearch, which is part of the Spryker package, was integrated as a powerful search index.
The Used Technologies at a Glance
📁
Data modeling
Specification of a data model based on the existing product data in the ERP and corresponding extensions.
🔌
ERP data integration (Sage)
Price and inventory query, partly for persistence, partly in the form of live requests.
🤝
Customized prices
Implementation of customer-specific price catalogs and update cycles.
🧮
Calculation of shipping costs
Set up shortage surcharges and parameterized shipping cost calculation.
📦
Shipping cost logic
Implementation of a logic for standard and express shipping depending on the weight of the item.
🔛
PIM Integration (Akeneo)
Data integration and specification of workflows for product data import and update processes.
Spryker Commerce Platform
Persistent pricing and inventory data is made available on the front end through the Key Value Store. This data store, which is designed for fast availability, is supplemented by ad hoc queries against the ERP to ensure that critical data is always up to date. For example, the prices in the shopping cart are retrieved as a live query from the ERP to take into account any price updates.
In the project setup, the middleware acts as a central data hub that also acts as a quality gate. Missing or invalid values are intercepted by setting fallback values to ensure the correct display of products in the front-end.
Florian Wassel
CEO & Managing Partner
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