PATTERN®. Accelerating Global e-Commerce with Reliable, Predictable Delivery
Pattern® is an e-commerce accelerator that helps companies grow faster, protect their brand, and sell globally through on-line, D2C, and other digital channels.
ITX and Pattern teamed up on a key initiative to improve development work on Pattern’s Product Catalog solution. Pattern had traditionally used a third party tool to track product price, volume, SKUs, etc. across the marketplace. Now they intend their new Product Catalog to serve as the next-generation repository for product information across Pattern – a key component of their long-term vision in response to the changes required to transition all of Pattern’s systems from the previous tool.
Product Catalog now gives Pattern access to better product data, drives efficiencies, and significantly reduces the cost of data manipulation.
Meet the Client.
Pattern® delivers a blend of marketplace analytics, product distribution, MAP compliance, and brand management to drive ecommerce acceleration for premium brands. Their more than 1,100+ global employees operate from 7 countries across 5 continents, helping client brands grow faster and sell more on ecommerce marketplaces.
“ITX’s sense of ownership is incredible. Our other custom software vendors are not nearly as performant. The predictability of ITX’s delivery is something we’ve been consistently referencing internally.”
Objective.
With the launch of Product Catalog, the goal was to resume development and improve Pattern’s ability to ensure that access would be sufficiently reliable to be integrated with internal financial systems. This included supporting extra levels of control and auditability.
Challenge.
- Pattern’s global network houses vast repositories of data, all migrating in from multiple sources. To manually consolidate a master product catalog in a database that aggregates all product properties in markets like Amazon, eBay, and Mercado Libre was a monumental, time-consuming task.
- Every product in Pattern’s market listing possessed different properties and attributes that required on-demand dynamic modification by the Data Manager – without interfering with other processes.
Action.
- ITX deployed an object-oriented database model to allow dynamic attributes and properties to be modified on-demand without coding. This helped to build the Shelf Product Catalog that allowed Data Managers to upload products and listings, in bulk, into their marketplaces.
- The team delivered an Architecture Assessment, which outlined key refactoring needs. Our subsequent task was to immerse ourselves into code that had been built by another team and into a backlog of features that had been put on pause for a year.
- ITX’s swift transition from scrum to modern agile helped Pattern hit a critical deadline with the system in production, ready for an audit. This compressed timeline required us to deliver with frequency greater than the regular 2-week sprint.
Result
- Product Catalog was launched to an internal team of Data Managers. Available audit records made for a seamless audit process.
- ITX delivered 40% more productivity than the budget anticipated. By maximizing our effectiveness and efficiency levels, we were able to extend our 3-month budget to 5 months.
- A renewed contract increased budget by 100%.
