mgm technology partners was selected as the development partner for the Web shop and tasked with the realization of a scalable, multi-client and internationally deployable overall system. The web shop framework from mgm technology partners formed the technical foundation. The project integrated this foundation with the selected mail order ERP solution, producing a high-performance and reliable overall system. The fixed price project was completed within the specified time frame.

The mgm web shop framework forms the technical basis

Not all shops are created equal, not even on the Internet. The business type, product turnover and order quantities, product range structure, price management and the selected sales channel call for various accentuations or selection criteria for the technology deployed. Lidl’s online business must be just as reliable, simple and swift as in the Lidl supermarkets, even when several thousand customers are surfing their way through the web shop simultaneously during peak periods. Many customers are attracted by promotional items that are offered in weekly intervals – after first being advertised in flyers distributed throughout Germany in the tens of millions.
About the project: After comparing various shop systems, Schwarz E-Commerce selected the mgm web shop framework as the technical basis for individual development instead of a standard shop system already available on the market. On the basis of the measurements that were made and the use cases that were explored initially, the mgm components covered the requirements for Lidl’s high-volume business in a demonstrably optimal manner:

• Online presentation of the product range
  Thanks to a Model-View-Controller (MVC) architecture, the mgm web shop provides an especially flexible presentation of the product range. With the help of an administration interface (CMS) realized as a Web 2.0 application, product managers can make changes themselves.
• Shopping cart and ordering
  The bundled experience of countless projects entered into the mgm web shop in order to achieve the customer specific implementation of shopping carts, ordering processes, delivery costs and payment systems.
• Suitable for high volume business
  Some shop systems require extreme amounts of hardware in order to achieve high performance. But not the mgm web shop: the benchmark conducted showed that the web shop needs only a fraction of the hardware used by the competition.
• Quality and open standards
  The web shop is based on approved standard technologies when it comes to surface design and searching, development language as well as database and data access concepts. In order to be deployed in the Lidl shop the chosen components had been proven in practice, already, considering online business requirements.

“With eight months to complete the project, we had to be certain to deploy the right technologies,” reports Matthias Weber, Managing Director of Schwarz E-Commerce. “What was even more important, however, was to work with professionals with a genuine understanding of online business and of their clients.”

Automated quality assurance guarantees functional reliability and failsafe operational performance.

Since the shop’s production start, changes and additions have been made to the shop on an almost daily basis. One step taken in order to achieve high online service quality was to use the integrated mgm QA Toolset for Web applications. It provides almost complete automation of the technical quality assurance measures.
The toolset comprises modules for:

• Function tests,
• Load and performance tests,
• Build and deployment tests as well as
• Integration tests.

The technical quality management is supplemented by evaluations of the shop utilization by the customers for product management, in order to support decisions related to online shelf space optimization.

mgm technology partners remains long-term development partner

“It is quite simple, really: when you have found a partner, who is reliable, even if there are sometimes glitches that have to be ironed out, you don’t look any further afield. This is especially true in IT and therefore mgm will remain our preferred partner,” Matthias Weber concludes.

* This reference has been officially confirmed by Schwarz E-Commerce.