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Customer Story

Increase Scalability with Continuous Integration Platform

“Being digital means enabling information to move at lightspeed. But it is about people—and that takes time”
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Software Technology

Industry
Retail

Company
Xebia

About the Company

Wehkamp is an online department store with no physical retail locations. Initially a mail-order company founded in 1952, Wehkamp has grown into one of the e-commerce players in the Netherlands. Wehkamp has over 2,7 million regular customers and handles over 11 million shipments annually.
Why
The test time needed to be reduced to enable quick improvements
What
Introduction to test automation
How
Development and marketing departments now collaborate closely. Testing is no longer a mere technical exercise; it’s an integral part of the design process based on business goals

The Challenge

In 2014, Wehkamp started to build an entirely new (and more flexible) e-commerce platform, a massive operation that impacted the entire company. The platform’s testing process was among the last components to be set up. Previously, Wehkamp’s testing platform consisted of just the front-end. The current platform is much bigger and more complex, requiring testing of both the front- and back-end (orders, payment methods, and logistic processes triggered by these)—additionally, test time needed to be reduced to enable quick improvements.

The Solution

Although microservices increase flexibility, they require you to continuously ensure that a service interacts justly with other services after a change. Xebia introduced a test automation solution that helped Wehkamp to eliminate almost all testing work.

Within ten minutes, developers are now able to identify whether an applied change or a microservice they completed functions correctly. Wehkamp is now using a dashboard that provides real-time insight into the tested microservices and the acceptance environment, showing the quality of recently developed or updated services. Developers receive more feedback on their work and continually learn how to improve it. Finally, Xebia established integration tests, a critical new testing category.

The Results

The new e-commerce platform instigated a revolution within Wehkamp. Previously, development and marketing departments were functioning separately; now, they collaborate closely. The new platform provides options for the company’s marketers to increase online conversion regularly. The development teams better understand why marketers make change requests and can respond to business needs faster. Additionally, testing is no longer a mere technical exercise; it’s an integral part of the design process based on business goals, and Wehkamp’s testers know which issues to prioritize accordingly. After automating all standard tests, more time is now available for the ones that need more creativity.

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