Distributed Systems Unification and Integration Solution

I would like to present to you my new case study. This time I will focus on the partnership of SPD Group and BlackHawk Network. The main goal of this project is implementing the new architecture design. Learn how SPD Group helped with business processes and assets consolidation, data transformation/migration and post-transition support.

Overview
BlackHawk Network is a U.S.-based provider of prepaid and payment products in the United States and Canada. The company employs about 2,000 people and has hundreds of clients and partners (B2C and B2B), including Kroger, Simon, Disney, Staples, ITunes, BestBuy, Target, and eBay. BlackHawk Network focuses on gift cards. The company’s strategy was to increase the amount of online gift card sales by expanding the reach of the company and acquiring smaller companies working in this field such as NimbleCommerсe and Cashstar. For over a decade, SPD Group was involved in developing from scratch and well as providing ongoing support to NimbleCommerce — a white-label E-Commerce platform founded in Silicon Valley. When BlackHawk Network acquired NimbleCommerce in 2016, SPD Group remained a partner for the new owner. BHN had to choose and build a strategy with the smaller companies they had owned now to fit their vision. Which one should they focus on first? Which one needs more experts? Which must be closed down while experts transition to another project? How it is possible to save costs? How can automation be improved?

Business Goal
BlackHawk Network needed help from an expert team with merger-integration expertise to consolidate business assets after multiple M&A deals, integrating, migrating, and merging eight different E-Commerce platforms according to the domain model.

Challenge
Each company, including BHN, had its own software and hardware; thus, the challenge was to consolidate all acquired platforms in one unified system.

The biggest problems that diverse systems caused for BHN were:

Different UI/UX and architecture resulted in different user experiences, which caused a lot of confusion;
High operational costs due to platform support and the development of the new features;
Logic duplication for product catalog purchase flows, orders and order management, etc.;
Infrastructure for every platform requires significant maintenance costs (mostly Amazon Web Services);

Read the full case study here: https://spd.group/cases/distributed-systems-unification-and-integration/