NETFORMIC GmbH

As Director of E-Commerce for a listed fashion company in the men's outerwear segment with 4 brands in Germany, I am responsible for the online stores and marketplace business with growth potential. The goal of the task is to structure a customer-oriented platform in such a way that both brand and sales are strengthened to the maximum.

Netformic convinced in the pitch to replace an agency that, from our point of view, could not achieve satisfactory results both technologically and cost-wise. Two brand stores, which were already set up on Shopware 6 with Vue Storefront in German, were to be migrated, made available in German and English and implemented with Storefront. One of the two stores also received a facelift at the same time. Project timeframe: 3 months until go live plus hypercare phase

We reviewed a selection of agencies and held preliminary interviews. Three agencies made it into the pitch. For this, we provided briefings, defined parameters for evaluation and evaluated them via scoring.

The cooperation started with the discovery phase, where we presented the issues we had in the existing stores. Netformic worked out solution options for the biggest blockers and after risk assessment made a very fair offer for our decision. The time and also the handover of the former agency was the biggest challenge for us. Due to very good interpersonal skills on all sides, the cooperation on all sides worked out very well. We were able to provide the design concepts asap and even if they were not handed over in the usual format (Adobe XD), we did not feel a problem at any time as customers. Minor adjustments were taken on incredibly short official channels and implemented perfectly. The collaboration via JIRA and chat was always in flow. We received customized roadmaps, documentation and budget overviews at all times. In refinements and sprint planning, we as customers were one team with the service provider. Regular steerings were very pleasant and informative. Blockers were directly discussed and cleared out of the way due to the common agile way of working. All commitments discussed in advance were adhered to by all parties.

On the Netformic side, we worked with a very dedicated team consisting of a PO (Scrummaster), Teamlead Tech, several backend and frontend developers, QM, as well as Dev Opts (about 6-8 MA). It was equally important for the success and adherence to the project goals, tight project plan that we as a client provided a dedicated project team consisting of PL, PM, QA and Testing (approx. 4 MA).

The project was implemented exactly in scope and budget, although the facelift was not planned and was done on top during the migration period. The performance of both stores was significantly improved after Go Live, blockers in the buybox that existed before were eliminated. The stores are running stably.

The long-planned bilingualism via country dropdown was implemented without discussion and there was no ticket ping-pong in the implementation phase because the QA on the part of Netformic was simply right. We had addressed this beforehand and committed to it. The board was actively served by all sides and ensured that all sides could act at any time.

The absolute energy, the perfectionist ambition and an exchange that took place at all times, as well as solution-oriented and proactive recommendations for optimization in the collaboration inspired me. I did not have the feeling that we had to "find each other" first, but the teams ran harmoniously and effectively from the beginning. When action was needed, we talked and found solutions-immediately! That made me enthusiastic.

The chat was sometimes not only "on fire" but burned. The fact that all developers from the project also have customer record access is perhaps not even necessary. Maybe it blocks resources unnecessarily and in any case confuses the customers already once. However, it also brings real momentum to the project.