ASOS Tech Wins of 2023
As we step into the realm of 2024, it’s time to celebrate a year that has left it’s mark on the intersection of fashion & tech at ASOS.
2023 has been a stellar chapter at ASOS tech, where creativity and innovation collided to redefine the way we express ourselves through our unique style and values.
From the ASOS Sample Sale website to our incredible Northern Ireland hub, our top tech wins of 2023 have set a new standard during this challenging market. Join us as we unravel the tapestry of technological triumphs that have not only adorned our wardrobes but have also elevated the technical landscape at ASOS.
ASOS Drops
This year, ASOS delved into the world of online sneaker raffles. Our version called ASOS Drops allows users to sign up to have the chance at purchasing some exclusive sneakers, which are hard to purchase and not normally available for general release. Available on all platforms (Web, iOS & Android), this was a great new feature and one which we’ll be expanding in 2024.
Buy The Look
Our customers are discovering new styles, being inspired and buying the looks they love with our new feature, Buy The Look. This feature uses the extended functionality on our product display page to share other items available to purchase from the items product lifestyle photography, ASOS prizes itself on. Go and check it out on any of our platforms.
ASOS Sample Sale Site
Architects were tasked with continuing to expand our stock clearance channels, this transformed into the ASOS Sample Sale site and went viral! It became a way for us to sell older stock not deemed fresh enough for our main site. Built on the popular Shopify platform, this allowed a quick turnaround and easy stock management solution within the timeframe. Items sold like hotcakes and we’ll be doing more sales throughout 2024.
ASOS IRL Popup
Yes, it finally happened, ASOS appeared ‘in real life’, to our adoring public. Security at the venue was tight as this became an exclusive and popular event, aimed at only our most loyal fanbase. Tech was enabled to publicise to our customer base through marketing platforms, push notifications and personalised content. This may not be the last you see of ASOS IRL, so keep those push notifications turned on!
Test & React
One of our strategic plans for 2024 is Test and React, this is to produce more options on our site and app for our customers, improving our speed to design to site, faster stock turn and better margin in turn resonating particularly well with our younger customers.
Data Services have had extensive involvement with Test and React and have supported the business in 3 main areas:
- Identifying Priority actions to allow test & react across all ASOS buying groups — through the ingestion of the Priority User Defined Attributes for Product and Purchase Orders into the Data Lake and further downstream into the EDW and our PowerBI/Micro-strategy Reporting Layers, users now have the ability to identify and filter on specific Test and React options in reporting and analysis across ad-hoc reporting in Micro-strategy and specific PowerBI dashboards.
- Support Insights Pilot Dashboard — The insights team had supported the T&R commercial team in the initial pilot phase by creating a dashboard to track early performance of T&R. To ensure the stability and usability of this dashboard in the absence of Insight, Data Services have supported this dashboard by implementing bug fixes and various small additions to be able to have access to the most recent data at day level to support React decisions.
- Develop and build brand new Test & React Dashboard — In the interim, whilst supporting the Insights Dashboard above, Discussions and requirements sessions were held to understand the evolution of Test and React and the outcome was a brand new all encompassing dashboard that would serve as a one stop shop for T&R and provide 3 main goals:
- Automate
- Inform/Track/Analyse
- Centralise
The Engineering and PowerBI team within Data Services completed the first iteration in December 2023 which is now live and being used by the commercial teams and all the way up to the management committee and are currently working through iteration 2.
Backstage
ASOS are currently using Backstage.io to record their software catalogue, but it’s capable of so much more, and the architects & engineering team have been working hard to make it a one stop shop for engineers to access tools, services and information.
Tech Develops & Training
This year ASOS has delivered more than 40 different presentations and sessions organised by 40 different members of Tech and 10 external presenters! Over 280 hours of recorded content has been rewatched! We’ve also run 63 training sessions for 203 ASOSers and we’ve been working had to create new Self-Service videos which we hope to land in 2024!
In October, the Birmingham PayTech office hosted a series of dynamic and informative Tech Develops sessions, showcasing the up & coming cutting-edge fashion brands in Birmingham. They also held Bollywood dancing lessons, a talk on bats and a load of engineers learnt how to crochet!
The Tech Develops sessions not only fostered knowledge exchange but also served as a collaborative space for professionals to explore new opportunities and learn something new.
Northern Ireland
It’s been an amazing year in our NI Tech Hub. They did a lot of hard work and delivered some major projects for the business. They welcomed Cohort 4 into Commercial Tech, celebrated success and won awards and even welcomed the Secretary of State for Northern Ireland for a visit! Expect even more from our new tech hub in 2024.
Re:Ops
The Cloud Operations & Engineering (CO&E) and Studios teams migrated their workflows from using On Prem Storage (Microsoft StorSimple) which had reached ‘End of Life‘ and also had a single point of failure being based in our London office, into the LucidLink Cloud. Having a storage solution that is equipped to handle a high volume of imagery and video assets has meant software we use, such as CaptureOne, works far more effectively. This also essentially meant that the content the studios are creating is accessible remotely and can be worked on from anywhere in the globe! This was a great cross team collaboration is although primarily it involved the CO&E and Studios Teams, it also needed support from other teams across Tech — Digital Workplace and Networks.
Supply Chain Tech
Working with Celonis (A market leading process mining product) and Cognizant (Our implementation partner) we have built a solution and introduced a new value capability for Delivery Solutions to improve the process performance of their returns carrier network. Launching in April 2023, using process data, it has transformed the insight available to the business and flipped their carrier relationship from a reactive to proactive engagement with ASOS measuring and driving performance improvement.
The Agile Coaches
It shouldn’t come as a surprise to any readers of this blog around our focus on measuring (quantifying) the impact of working with agility across teams.
We started the year off strong following a ways of working review with our Alchemists team in AI & Data Science, where we saw measurable improvements in a 15% improvement in Throughput and 12% decrease in average Cycle Time.
As well as smaller engagements like our ways of working reviews, we have longer term assignments which again have seen wins such as teams in our Commercial Tech — Merchandise Management area, who have improved their focus and seen their average work in progress (WIP) decrease by 37% (from 55 to 38 items) and Cycle Time decrease by 58% (from 31 days to 17 days). The same can be said of all the teams in our Data Services area, where the average Cycle Time has reduced by 41% (from 22 days to 13 days) across the two halves of the year, with teams also limiting WIP to work at a more sustainable pace:
Back in May, we shared in our blog about our move towards better alignment of our portfolio backlog to the work teams do, ultimately wanting greater clarity of our purpose. We’ve seen significant improvements with this in 2023, with the portfolio having a 90% linkage to work directly in teams’ backlog:
Finally, we blogged just recently about our new approaches to capacity planning and forecasting feature delivery. A special mention goes out to our Apollo team in Orders, part of our Core Services area, who have been leading the way for our tech organisation in adopting the practices of rightsizing (and completing!) Features. In just a couple months they are seeing more features being completed (as seen by an increase in the frequency of dots) and in smaller batches (as seen by the decrease in 85th percentile value):
PEAK
2023’s peak trading period was our smoothest running ever! No major issues. Tech ensured there were 12,390,000 discounted price changes across products, and at our busiest, there were 69 orders per second!
A massive thanks to Commercial Tech, Core Services & Commerce Digital Tech, Customer Experience, Data Science & AI, Data Services, Finance Tech, Principal Engineering & Architecture, Re:Ops, Security, Supply Chain Tech & Tech Ops teams for all their hard work this year, bring on 2024!
About Me
I’m Joel Delane, an Engineering Manager at ASOS. I help guide Engineers & QA’s on their career journey, whilst supporting our technology platforms to deliver quality solutions across our wide tech ecosystem. Outside of work I’m a Husband, Father, THFC Season Ticket Holder, Sneakerhead, President of the UK Burger Club & sometimes I make things look pretty on the interwebs 👨🏼💻
ASOS are hiring across a range of roles in Tech. See all our open positions
