Software Development Project for Major Retail Chain’s Website

The Situation: In 2007, a major retail chain embarked on a new development project to apply specific pricing promotions to customers’ online orders. The application would need to provide high-volume, unit-level pricing for internet products; apply the high-volume pricing to millions of customer orders everyday; and provide a user interface for the retail chain to manage item pricing, pricing rules and promotions necessary to ensure promotions and high volume prices were applied properly to customer orders.

Since the pricing application would support the company’s entire direct-to-customer business, it was essential to develop a solution that would not only optimize the client’s investment in new technologies but also integrate seamlessly with existing systems and processes.

Using Agile development methodology, construction of the applications had already begun, but the retail giant needed to bring in developers midstream to finish the job.

Results: The InSource Group partnered with the client’s project managers to build a team of senior Java developers for the high-volume pricing engine and the user interface. The InSource Group provided 7 of the 10 senior developers for the project. Each developer brought both technical and leadership skills required to successfully complete the job. The InSource Group developers worked closely with business subject matter experts to hone the actual business requirements necessary to achieve a world-class application that addressed the client’s business needs.