Intuitech Technology Ltd

BACKGROUND

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I’m the senior engineering manager in charge of the basket, checkout, and payment areas of the Sainsbury's online grocery store and Argos online shopping. I look after six teams within this domain, totaling 50 people.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What challenge were you trying to address with Intuitech Technology Ltd?

We were looking for remote resources that could help deliver the basket and checkout requirements that we had for our e-commerce site, mainly on the frontend for the basket area, and backend for checkout.

The demand on our website increased dramatically after the pandemic, so we had to reshape customer journeys to support this demand. 

We’d paid a lot for consultant work in the past, so I was looking for an offshore alternative. Everyone in our area was working remotely anyway, so there was no point in paying high rates for an onshore consultant. Intuitech provided us with high-quality developers at lower rates, who could work remotely full-time.

SOLUTION

What was the scope of their involvement?

Intuitech Technology worked on the transformation of the Argos basket web page, which was very complicated and sometimes confusing. They made it easier to use for customers and introduced cutting-edge technologies.

They added functionalities for appliance insurance, recommendations, and website customizations.

Intuitech Technology worked on a brand-new checkout API for paying online. The old technology was quite monolithic and didn’t use microservices. It had been running for 15 years, and it couldn’t support the current load. Intuitech worked alongside other consultants to reimplement the backend using a microservices architecture. They used technologies like Spring WebFlux, Kafka Streams, and Spring Cloud Stream.

What is the team composition?

We’re working with two people at the moment.

How did you come to work with Intuitech Technology Ltd?

Intuitech Technology was recommended to me by one of my friends.

How much have you invested with them?

The cost of their work is £80,000 (approximately $106,346 USD) so far.

What is the status of this engagement?

We started working with Intuitech in June 2020. They delivered in October, and we’ve kicked off trials with some of our customers. The system is in production and working properly. We finished the collaboration with Intuitech on the Argos checkout part in early-November 2020, but they still have consultants for the Argos basket.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

What evidence can you share that demonstrates the impact of the engagement?

We’re happy with the quality of Intuitech Technology’s work.

How did Intuitech Technology Ltd perform from a project management standpoint?

My team has had a good experience with Intuitech Technology’s consultants. Their communication skills are especially good. They know agile processes well, and some of them are working as scrum masters for us. They’re quite capable in terms of driving the team in an agile process, and they’ve actually helped me ramp up the skills of internal team members.

We communicate through Slack and Microsoft Teams. Everything is done remotely.

What did you find most impressive about them?

For the Argos basket side, I’d mention Intuitech’s agile management and communication skills. On the checkout side, they stand out in terms of technical capabilities, such as reactive programming, Kafka, and microservices architectures.

Are there any areas they could improve?

They could be more communicative on the checkout side, specifically within team meetings. They’re very good at understanding requirements and getting things done, but collaborating with other team members might be done better in the future. I’m still very satisfied with what Intuitech Technology has done, and I understand that working remotely will cause some problems when it comes to communication with others. Our other team members suffered from the same problems.

Intuitech Technology could bring some more expertise on working remotely, because they have the experience already, having done it for many years.

I can’t say anything bad about the actual work they’ve done. Everything was done perfectly.