PERMANENT REVOLUTIONAND THE BENEFITS OF CONTINUOUS OPTIMISATION

FOR HIGH SPEED, LOW RISK ECOMMERCE DEPLOYMENT

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If you’ve been involved with ecommerce over the last 15 years or so, you’ll be acutely aware that things change very quickly. The pace of this change is ever more rapid. At the beginning of this century, retailers recognised a need to be involved in ecommerce, without knowing how significant it would become.

Very quickly, something that started out as a stand-alone channel for most retailers began outselling multiple brick- and-mortar stores. Ecommerce soon mushroomed to the point where we are today: it’s at the heart of many retailers’ multichannel strategy.

The ability to deploy ecommerce capability rapidly is becoming a key differentiator for many organisations. The way we deploy technology solutions merits serious thought and practice, and it’s here that Salmon is changing the rules of engagement to help its clients stay ahead.

INTR

OD

UC

TIO

N

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Craig joined Salmon in 2002 and is responsible for

delivering high quality ecommerce and multichannel

solutions, spanning business analysis, architecture,

design, development & testing. Prior to joining

Salmon, Craig was Technical Director at Reveda Ltd

and Logsys Solutions.

Craig Harper-AshtonMultichannel Director, Salmon Ltd.

“Continuous improvement is better than delayed perfection”Mark Twain

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If you want to be successful, it’s paramount that you address the needs of the customer quickly.

In terms of brand interaction, customers’ expectations are increasingly more sophisticated,

and analytics tell us a lot about what they want. Unless a business is able to respond rapidly

to the demands of the market and consumers, its very existence could be under threat.

As such, organisations must deliver ecommerce capability rapidly - and with absolute

confidence of success - if they are to survive. Methods for software delivery are rapidly

evolving, and principles that were regarded as best practice a few years ago can actually be a

blocker to success today.

When delivering quality software in the required timescale, traditional, waterfall software

delivery processes can create bottle-necks. Technology is changing our lives, and to keep

abreast of it, we must respond by being more imaginative in the way we deliver technology

solutions.

WHEN YESTERDAY’S BEST PRACTICE BECOMES TODAY’S BLOCKER

Being able to keep up with the demands of today’s customers is critical

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Digging deep in its estimable toolkit built over 25 years, Salmon has been focusing on a key

internal initiative for the benefit of our clients called the Trotsky Programme. You’d be forgiven

for wondering why we have chosen to name a project after an individual like Leon Trotsky,

the Marxist revolutionary and theorist. The answer is simple: his name is synonymous with the

concept of “Permanent Revolution,” with the goal of positively transforming the status quo.

At Salmon, we have developed a fit for purpose delivery methodology over a number of years,

and are now focusing our efforts on continually refining and improving it to keep ahead of the

needs of our clients and their customers.

We have long believed in using a proposition-based approach to deliver the best solutions for

our clients, rather than simply delivering to a list of requirements.

This allows us to do three key things:

• Own, and lead, delivery of the solution.

• Ensure that we understand the thinking and values behind what the client wants.

• Reassure the clients with high confidence that we know the right courses of action,

whilst resolving pain-points, so they can focus on their day-to-day work.

The transformative outcome for ecommerce deployment is ultimately increased speed to

market, reduced risk and a culture of quality, no less. Allow us to explain...

Historically, we have collected the best characteristics from different proven methodologies,

and employed them in our own delivery methodology. Behind the theme of Permanent

Revolution is the adoption of DevOps practices and principles.

PERMANENT REVOLUTION: RESETTING THE ECOMMERCE LANDSCAPE

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DevOps, a compound of ‘development’ and ‘operations’, involves driving cultural change to

automate and optimise delivery of software, while fostering teamwork (typically across software

developers and other IT professionals) and constantly receiving feedback from all teams.

It’s a driver for continuous integration, which is a two-fold process:

• we constantly update and deploy a common repository of code

• we focus on continuous process improvement, which is equally important.

Monitoring of key metrics, such as release frequency and system uptime, is also key to

ensuring improvements are meaningful and measurable.

DevOps lends itself to agile, lean and collaborative ways of delivering enterprise software.

Teams focus on a simple, shared objective: delivering great software.

Its aim is to remove barriers and complexity, bottlenecks and “unplanned work” from a

workflow, and – crucially – it lets the team deliver small pieces of high quality software on

very short release cycles.

Central to this is automation, which allows us to deploy new features to a live website very

rapidly, and with 100% confidence. Clients do not have to wait weeks for a new feature or

enhancement that customers want now. System downtime is minimised or eradicated. Small

and frequent deployments reduce the risk of error and the need for extensive regression

testing. In fact, as much testing as possible is automated to make it rapid and repeatable.

INTRODUCING DEVOPS AND WHY IT MATTERS

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This programme gives Salmon a meaningful way of ensuring we deliver outstanding and

reliable software quickly and painlessly, reducing risk and churn significantly for clients.

At the same time, we are continuously making improvements to our processes, so clients are

always in the best possible position: they’re more equipped to respond to ever-increasing

rates of technological and market change, and better positioned to meet the demands of their

customers, promoting loyalty and success.

With time and a little patience, clients are now seeing some outstanding results. We’ve

increased the frequency in major, large-scale deployments from months to weeks, interim

testing (to ensure real quality) from weeks to days, pre-deployment standard quality checks

from days to hours and problem fixes from hours to minutes. Small efficiency gains add up

to significant amounts of time that can be filled with developing more features and value for

customers and end users.

Where do we go from here?

With Salmon continually enhancing its processes, we’re keen to capitalise on the benefits for

our clients today and in the future. If you’d like to discuss how you could get ahead through

permanent revolution, get in touch via info@salmon.com

THE BOTTOM LINE: OUTSTANDING SOFTWARE FOR CLIENTS, DELIVERED FAST

©2016 Salmon Ltd. All rights reserved. All company and product names, brands and symbols mentioned herein are brand names and/or registered trademarks of their respective owners.

For more information,email: info@salmon.comor visit: www.salmon.com

ABOUT SALMON

Salmon is a global digital commerce consultancy – the largest in WPP’s network of companies. We define and deliver market-changing solutions and customer journeys for the world’s leading brands.

Established in 1989, with operations in London, New York, Melbourne and Beijing, Salmon clients include AkzoNobel, Argos, Audi UK, DFS, Halfords, Premier Farnell, Sainsbury’s and Selfridges.