http://idcee.org/p/uwe-horstmann/ Uwe studied business administration at WHU – Otto Beisheim School of Management in Vallendar / Germany. He has been working with Berlin-based startup incubator Rocket Internet (mostly known for its ventures eDarling, Zalando and CityDeal / Groupon) since 2007. Since 2009 he served as its managing director, focusing primarily on international rollouts. He is also a judge in business plan competitions held by the Federal Ministry of Education and Research. He is a regular lecturer in Entrepreneurship at his alma mater WHU and a researcher in the same field embedded in his PhD studies at RWTH Aachen. At Project A Ventures, Uwe focuses on product management, internationalization and interim management. After having served with the United Nations in the war-torn regions of Eastern and Central Africa, he discovered his passion for humanitarian logistics and remains active in this field until today, working e.g. as a strategic consultant to Oxfam, trying to bring learnings from the private sector to the NGO space. Pic's are here: http://www.flickr.com/photos/idcee/sets/ More @ http://idcee.org Follow us on: YouTube: http://www.youtube.com/user/OfficialIDCEEChannel Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/IDCEE Linkedin: http://www.linkedin.com/groups/IDCEE-3940138 Twitter: https://twitter.com/idcee_eu Google+: http://gplus.to/idcee Flickr: http://www.flickr.com/photos/idcee/collections/

1. BUILDING THE NEXT GENERATION ECOMMERCE
PLATFORM
Uwe Horstmann
uwe.horstmann@project-a.com
@uwehorstmann

2. Yves & Zed – a shopping system that combines all the
features we need with the performance we expect
Executive Summary
• Lightweight eCommerce platform for
emerging and growing enterprises
• Highest and cache-free scalability
• Complete order-processing including
flexible workflow management system
• Reliable information through integrated
business intelligence system
 KPIs for sales and operations
 Integrated KPI library
Y&Z meets our standards better than any of-the-shelf or open source solution
2

3. Yves & Zed is a modern multi-purpose system
Model
Examples
1
Straight
eCommerce
2
Shopping
clubs
3
Marketplaces
Easily adoptable to
various business
models
Y&Z designed for fast
development
4
Subscription
models
Yves & Zed is a system for all transactional business models
3

4. Where do we come from?
Alice & Bob
Yves & Zed
Advantages
•
•
•
•
Easy to implement
Huge developer base (Recruiting)
Many features
Sufficient for medium sized
ecommerce businesses
Limitations
Yves & Zed
• Performance – scalability of
architecture very limited
• Features – high complexity to develop
customized features
• Order processing – often ERP system
needed (expensive and hard to
implement)
• Business intelligence – reporting
features not very advanced
Yves & Zed overcome the limitations of Magento
4

5. Yves & Zed has a lightweight structure and is easy to
work with for developers
Search-Engine
(Solr)
Read
only
Customers
External
providers
Push
updates
Yves – Frontend
Zed – Backend
Yii-Framework Application:
Zend-Framework Application:
•Very fast execution without html caching
•Easy to learn for developers
•Fast development
Payment
Loose couples components:
•Order-processing with state-machine
•Customer management
•Voucher system
•Cart calculation
•etc.
 Store-concept for localized shops
Webservice-calls
•saveOrder()
•registerCustomer()
Fulfillment
Logistics
Mail
Read
only
R/W
Sessions
Push
updates
KV-Storage
(clustered
Memcache)
(local
Membase)
Share
info
Store-Sync
(ActiveMQ)
QRM
propel
Database
(MySQL with
normalized
structure)
ETL
Business Intell.
Data
Warehouse
(PostgreSQL)
Webtrekk
Unlimited and cache free scalability through separation of front- and backend
5

6. Store concept enables code sharing between projects
and ventures
Shared code
between ventures
Specific code for
one venture
Specific code for
one store
Store DE
Venture specific
Store FR
Store PL
Core
Store DE
Venture specific
Store AT
Venture specific
Store DE
Updates of the Core are available for all attached shops
6

7. Yves & Zed offer state-of-the-art features
• Payment
• Logistics
• Return Handling / Dunning
Web tracking
• Tag management tool
• Individual tracking pixel creation
• Integrated uplinks to various providers
• Flexible product types
• Multi-tree categories
• Search
User & role
management
• Role assignment
• User groups and privileges / rights mgmt
Internationalization
• Translations
• Store concept
Cross-device
capabilities
• Responsiveness to various screen sizes
• Framework for easy creation of device
dependent CSS
Data
Warehouse
• Ad-hoc reporting
• Flexible Quebes
• Full operations and marketing KPIs
Order
processing
Catalog
Marketing
Content
Management
• Vouchers / coupons
• Data feeds
• CMS
• SEO
• URL redirection
Monitoring
• Detection of of problems and
monitoring of system health
Mails
• Full mailing functionality for automatic
transaction notifications
Customer
admin
• Customer data/relations management
• Subscription management
Range of features is steadily being increased
7

8. Technical decisions lead to lightweight and highly
scalable system
Separation
Front- and
Backend
PHP
• 100 > 10 > 1: from 100 visits, 10 convert to shopping cart, resulting in 1 sale (exemplary!)
• Through separation of front- and backend: 100 visitors only strain Yves and do not slow Zed
• Yves always up to date; each second data is updated from Zed (asynchronous)
• High quality developers widely available at adequate salary
Proven
technologies
• Use of fully tested and proven technologies (e.g. Solr, Zend framework)
Architecture
• Flat tables in databases easy to read
Monitoring
• Fast detection of problems and system health
Lean architecture with proven technologies
8

9. Incorporated Date Warehouse enables data driven
decision making
Marketing Tools
Shop Back-End
Import Data
DWH
Push Data
Web Analytics
CRM Tools
Reporting
& Analysis
DWHs not only integrate different data sources but also push information
9

10. Incorporated Date Warehouse enables data driven
decision making
Marketing Tools
Shop Back-End
Import Data
DWH
Push Data
Web Analytics
CRM Tools
Reporting
& Analysis
DWHs not only integrate different data sources but also push information
9