Kaufland is one of the well-known German hypermarket chains, it is a part of the Schwarz Gruppe which also owns Lidl and Handelshof. The chain operates over 1200 stores in Germany, the Czech Republic, Slovakia, Poland, Romania, Bulgaria and Croatia. Expansion to Australia and Moldova is underway.
The Challenge:
Kaufland in its quest to disrupt the discounter market started the journey with several innovative projects, one of those is introducing the mobile Kaufland App for both Android and iOS platforms. The initial tasks of our consultants were to manage and execute a best possible roll-out plan in a number of middle and eastern European countries. The roll-out activities involved training of the responsible departments in target countries, as well as coaching the operations and 2nd and 3rd Level Support. Cooperation with Kaufland soon evolved into a partnership with further projects and responsibilities, where our consultants were also responsible for designing new solutions and new functions to be rolled-out before customers in all Kaufland countries.
The Technology:
The technologic setup involved a complex architecture integrating several backend and middleware systems over a ESB system. Thank to a complex ETL logic the integration between legacy SAP system and a DevOps based architecture with NoSQL DB was possible and smooth. Over the course of our involvement, not only the architecture, middleware systems and processes were optimized, but a number of new solutions were taken live – including a complex monitoring and analytical service, push-notification’s service and a several of solutions for operations.
- Linux
- Couchbase
- Stibo STEP
- SAP Retail
- Google Analytics
- Google Firebase
- Crashlytics
- AeroGear Push Server
The Solution:
Our consultants planned, led and executed the initial go-live of the newly developed mobile companion app. This task included leading and trainings of different remote departments involved in different stages on the Supply Chain, Change management (ITSM), managing the entire PDCA cycle for handed-over parts of BI applications. In the first stage after bringing the system live in all planned countries, the operations in each of the countries were trained to perform the 1st Level support, while 2nd and 3rd Level were taken out by our consultants. In the 2nd stage of the project, 2nd and 3rd Level was gradually handed-over to an internal support department.
Our consultant were directly involved in designing and developing several new solutions with the full SDLC.