HORNBACH is a home improvement store chain that has been operating in the Netherlands since 1997. With a total of 18 branches, each employing an average of 175-200 staff members, alongside 1 HORNBACH Flooring location, HORNBACH serves a diverse customer base, catering to both consumers and the professional market.
Challenge
With the HORNBACH Profiservice, HORNBACH offers custom services for professionals. HORNBACH already serves many professionals with the Profiservice and has ambitious growth plans. However, this growth should not lead to extra workload for HORNBACH employees or compromise the personal contact with customers. Personal attention to the customer is, after all, one of the core principles of the Profiservice. We created a self-service portal.
Anytime, anyplace, anywhere
The specific challenge was to shorten the registration process for the Profiservice. Customers felt that this process took too much time, and time is valuable, especially for professionals. Every minute a professional spends on administration is a minute they cannot spend working for their clients. Only when they are not working do professionals have time for their administration. This must be done quickly and from any device, at any time. Anytime, anyplace, anywhere.
Additionally, the many manual tasks in the back office led to some suboptimal performance. HORNBACH wanted to explore how they could improve their existing services.
Solution
A unique, scalable, and highly flexible application. One with personalized functionalities and sky-high resolutions. An application that moves with the market and caters to the desires of both customers and employees. This sounded like music to HORNBACH's ears.
To tackle the complex challenge of the ProfiService registration process, HORNBACH wanted to develop its own unique application. This application aimed to optimally serve both customers and employees, as well as enable integrations with other external systems.
The numerous requirements made standard solutions inadequate, so HORNBACH turned to Solvy. Our solution? A custom-made application in the form of a progressive web application. And not just one application. No, not even two. But a total of three; one for the customer, one for the back office, and a backup transaction application in case of external system failures.
Process
The work on the HORNBACH project was particularly challenging due to its immense scope, tight deadlines, and numerous integrations," begins Yauhen, Solvy's Technical Lead, sharing his story.
He lists some examples of these integrations: "Zkr for the iDIN process, Company.Info for company information and credit check, DCP for card production, and Surepay for bank account verification."
"Additionally, the required built-in processes, including customer acceptance, adjustment of credit limits, and financial data processing, were highly complex and demanded a great deal of flexibility. To facilitate the development of such a system, Solvy adopted an agile approach and maintained a 'make it done' attitude, closely involving HORNBACH in the daily development process.
Thanks to the active engagement of key team members from HORNBACH and our experience in implementing technically challenging systems, we can proudly say that both the chosen approach and the final result can be considered a great success.
In terms of technology, we opted for a proven stack comprising Symfony, NextJS, MariaDB, and Mongo. This entire stack is powered by Platform.sh as a PaaS, leveraging Gitlab pipelines for deployments. This allows us to streamline development and testing processes, ensuring seamless deliveries.
I always say, 'With the right people and the right attitude, anything is possible.' And this was also the case for the HORNBACH project. The experience of our team, complemented by the knowledge of the Hornbach team, provided all the ingredients to achieve ambitious goals.
Future
Of course, it doesn't stop here. Developing and implementing these applications merely marks the beginning of an extensive journey at HORNBACH. To keep all three applications up and running, ensuring they continue to function as intended, constant additions of new features are being made. There's an ongoing quest to find ways to enhance and automate workflows and processes. Continuously optimizing and further developing these applications prioritizes both customer and employee satisfaction. It's been an impressive start, with a promising view of the future.
