The Evolution of Boozt Platform: Own-built Systems and Services
Boozt CTO and Co-founder, Jesper Brøndum, shares the evolution of the Boozt platform team.
Before we launched Boozt.com, brands would outsource their e-commerce to us and then we would outsource everything we did to someone else. Including things like developing systems, running the purchasing, managing projects, and even our warehouse at some point. It was very monolithic, not in our control and not something we preferred.
In 2010, we decided to take ownership. We stopped outsourcing and using consultants. We established our own warehouse and started building our own platform. We launched Boozt.com and later Booztlet.com. We changed our strategy to working with our own shop and big mono-brand businesses, instead of hundreds of small businesses. Then we started the cloud journey.
We applied a more service-focused way of running the business. Started focusing on mobile first, and now, app first. Automated the warehouse. We started working in small decentralised teams with an engineering focus. This was our way of scaling up the business to make sure we are well ahead, usually one year ahead of business decisions.
Now with Boozt’s Nordic Department Store strategy, we are becoming more offensive. We are moving to a product-focused mindset. That is why questions like “Why do we do this?” and “How do we continue to work with this?” are very important when we start differentiating what we do more, expand and build on.
Our winning philosophy
There has been quite the evolution of our systems over the years. In the early days, we had Netsuite as our main system. It was meant to be the only system we would use. It could do everything we needed, it was cloud-based, and it could scale.
When this wasn’t working for us anymore, it was split into two; the ERP part in Netsuite and then the webshop. When we took ownership, we started building our own platform and technologies.
Our philosophy is that whenever something becomes a bottleneck, we split it into multiple systems and refactor it.
Over the years, we have added an own-built warehouse management system, a content management system, apps, a partner portal, and media services. We have replaced the ERP system with our own finance system and added an EDI integration framework. At the moment we have about 40 different own-built systems and services, and we are not done yet. It is a continuous journey that gives us power and has taken us to where we are today. Whenever a system complexity grows to a level where it becomes a bottleneck, we consider to split it. This is a journey that will never end.
Building the best systems for ourselves
I get asked a lot: why can’t we just sell our technology and offer our systems to others? The short answer is, that we have the very best system in the world for us, but not necessarily others. If we were to sell systems to others we would have to work on their functionality, offer 24/7 support and a release cycle that is in their interest, but not necessarily in ours. So, it is a matter of priority that we would rather spend energy on our internal development.
Instead, focus is on building added services on top of what we already have; BMP is building on top of all the media display that we have to our 3 million customers and the BDI is working with data and understanding data, offering it as an added service to our partners. Likewise, Liveshopper makes sense for ourselves, and could potentially spawn into something we could offer others. It all comes back to the data that we have that we can follow and show our partners.
Building our platform has been about being in control of the business, and working closely with colleagues and partners. It is about being ahead, as well as scalability and making sure that we can continue this development going forward.
Future focus areas
Going from fashion e-commerce to becoming a full department store that should be able to service all kinds of categories and needs has changed the way we work to be more category dependent.
We are working to get the brands to become more self-serving and give them a part in the challenge of selling their own items and an opportunity to sell more. We are going towards a more context-based recommendation system, meaning that e.g. in the Beauty category, it will make sense to recommend an item you bought before, whereas in the fashion categories this would not make sense.
We are working on aligning Boozt and Booztlet, so they offer the same features and functionality across the shops and different devices. The next step is making sure navigation, search and filters are all different depending on where you are in the department store, as well as making an inspirational universe where customers can read and learn more about products. For the logistics operation we are working on how we store odd-sized items, how we pack them, and how to handle return processes for these.
And last but not least, we are working on the next generation of customer communication. The Club is a huge technical investment, where we will be offering rich text messaging in the app format, an inbox, a wallet for vouchers, discounts etc.
All these things we are building ourselves.
