The image shows a car displayed on a tablet to illustrate its features and specifications.

Multiple Markets, One E-commerce Standard

Mercedes-Benz.io

Customer
Mercedes-Benz.io
Customer since
2019
Go-Live
July 2023
Website
www.mercedes-benz.io
The picture shows three different car models.

7

Software Engineers

2

Solution Architects

1

Site Reliability Engineer (Systemverwaltung)

2

Test-Engineers

A vehicle carrying two bicycles on the roof and a picture with a display in the vehicle.

Teamwork and Sales Sections

Mercedes-Benz.io was looking for various specialists in different fields. Unic provided a total of twelve commerce experts clustered into agile teams based on expertise. The result of this teamwork is a global, fully integrated commerce solution carefully adapted to the individual markets and supported by a tailored IT system based on Kubernetes: flexible, highly scalable, and innovative to the core.

Visualisation for different business models in B2B and B2C.

Different Business Models, One Standard

In frontend development, we had to account for different business models, which are made available based on the country. This is how different markets are matched with different customer requirements – both for B2C and B2B.

Reservations with the option of specifying the location, including the price for the reservation option.

Fully Integrated E-commerce

In addition to the basic functionalities, customers can state the location where they would like their order delivered. The system can also factor in the client’s preferred dealership, displaying the final price and modes of payment.

Simplified Rollouts and Updates

Harnessing the vast range of expertise in the project led by Mercedes-Benz.io, we developed a flexible and configurable commerce solution focused on establishing a common standard with flexible options for configuration. The result: Future rollouts will be swift and easy to execute. Without a doubt, the procedure for future platform updates is the greatest benefit. Development time will also decrease drastically because the system only requires one rollout for new developments.

Configurable, But Core System Remains Untouched

Of course, the different versions can be configured individually. The core system, however, will always remain untouched.

In future, we will be working on creating country-specific configurations for the respective standard solutions. This includes sophisticated features, specific processes for the user flow and language and currency settings.

Kubernetes – Automated Operation From the Cloud

Since e-commerce solutions usually need to run continually and uninterruptedly, scale flexibly and handle very dynamic loads, we migrated internal IT to a Kubernetes environment – based on a cluster-as-a-service (CaaS) solution.

Kubernetes mapping including compute workloads, Kubernetes as a hub, and the machines or nodes.
Image: The computer workloads are executed on the individual machines (nodes). Kubernetes takes care of the orchestration, allocating workloads to nodes, injecting configuration data and creating links, among other things.

24/7 Availability and Automation

The advantage of this is Kubernetes itself. Every application is visualized in containers in the IT environment and operates independently from other applications – system dependencies and linked services included. This means that if one application fails, other instances handle the request. This type of container orchestration particularly pays off when applications and their components need to be available 24/7. And if you require more resources, the systems add them as needed.

Development With Increased Focus

The result is an infrastructure almost entirely represented in code as well as an application configuration that updates automatically. And if changes or optimisations are to be made, these are easily entered by developers, thanks to version control tool GitOps. This way, the high quality of code required is guaranteed. The high degree of automation enables developers to focus on what matters without limiting their options for influence when necessary.

Summary

Our team has worked with Mercedes-Benz.io to design a solution that is configured for specific countries. Only the central store solution needs to be maintained. The same applies to the cloud-based infrastructure. Thanks to Kubernetes, it even maintains itself to a certain extent.

The result is the implementation of a central control room for a global e-commerce company with this solution.

Contact for your Digital Solution with Unic

Book an appointment

Are you keen too discuss your digital tasks with us? We would be happy to exchange ideas with you.

Jörg Nölke
Jörg Nölke
Gerrit Taaks
Gerrit Taaks

Contact for your Digital Solution

Book an appointment

Are you keen to talk about your next project? We will be happy exchange ideas with you.

Melanie Klühe
Melanie Klühe
Stefanie Berger
Stefanie Berger
Philippe Surber
Philippe Surber
Stephan Handschin
Stephan Handschin