The Challenge

This customer is a prominent retailer specializing in high-end performance sportswear and resort apparel, available in stores and online. As the business expanded rapidly, it required new systems and applications to support this growth. Historically, these applications were implemented using point-to-point integrations, creating a complex and cumbersome environment. This complexity is expected to escalate with the introduction of additional applications.

The existing integration model proved to be unreliable, lacking observability and resulting in lost or delayed messages and orders. Resolving failed integration of key business events incurred significant time and effort, leading to challenges in responding to dynamic business needs. This not only introduces a higher risk of errors into the system but also directly impacts both customer and employee experiences.

Customers face issues such as shipments arriving before order confirmations and orders not being fulfilled on time (missed allocation), necessitating upgraded shipping to avoid late deliveries. On the employee side, team members spend a disproportionate amount of time addressing failed integration jobs, conducting root cause analyses, and tracking down unsuccessful transactions. This often extends to weekend or night work, contributing to employee burnout and job dissatisfaction.

To sustain and enhance business growth, there is an urgent need for a more efficient and robust integration solution that effectively addresses these challenges.

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Services
  • App Innovation
Industries
  • Retail
Company Size
  • 100 - 500

The Solution

3Cloud recommended an Enterprise Service Bus (ESB) to replace the existing point-to-point approach to enterprise application integration. Utilizing powerful Azure Integration Services, this scalable platform will decouple applications, APIs, databases, and all other elements of the digital estate, enabling them to communicate asynchronously and change independently. The introduction of an ESB offers the flexibility for enterprise-wide, inter-application communication and forms the foundation for vastly increased business intelligence via real-time, enterprise-wide telemetry.

In addition to the core ESB integration, 3Cloud recommended implementing a robust framework that provides the client with a centralized platform to monitor the status and health of all integrations. This framework facilitates the swift identification and resolution of failed integrations or specific transaction failures. The redesigned architecture simplifies the distribution of a single message to multiple applications, empowering the retail client with a more agile, faster, and easily maintainable environment.

The Results

The adoption of an Enterprise Service Bus (ESB) by this retailer has resulted in significant time savings for IT resources responsible for maintaining a medium to large application environment. Their efforts are no longer focused on point-to-point updates and fixing connections; instead, they only need to update one application.

In addition, the integration of an ESB has provided enhanced reporting and analytics capabilities by granting direct access to data from the ESB. The improvement in message delivery reliability is a noteworthy outcome, ensuring consistent delivery of critical information to its destination. The introduction of a single control panel provides a comprehensive view of the entire integration landscape, streamlining monitoring and management processes. Additionally, the ease of scaling new applications to the ESB environment positions the organization for seamless growth and adaptability to evolving business requirements. Lastly, the new efficiency and time savings has improved the employee experience, as well as their customers’ experience with consistent timely deliveries.

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