About the client
AkzoNobel is a leading global paints and coatings company and major producer of specialty chemicals. Dulux is AkzoNobel’s leading paint brand in the UK.
Problem / Opportunity
Paint distribution is of vital importance to Dulux. More and more enthusiastic home builders want to get inspired and do much of the work themselves. All they need is the affordable help of professional interior designers. For this they envisioned a well-designed consultation booking platform open to any consumer. They tasked MRM//McCann to build the portal. After over one year of development, Dulux were saddled with a behemoth system, that could not be extended nor maintained. Hack and Craft took over the project because complex payment options were needed and the third party booking engine needed replacing.
Key Achievements
- Delivered a flexible booking system covering a wide range of services.
- Rebuilt platform from ground up replacing production system with zero down time.
- Drove Test and Learn approach to Dulux's initiative to the Uber of home decoration.
Innovation Team
AkzoNobel brought us on-board to build a booking platform, replacing the third party service in use. We liaised with the original agency, business owners, interior designers and customer support to work out the smoothest possible integration story.
Based on the successful integration of our booking engine we were tasked to add time-tabling portals, voucher codes and a deeper integration. Gradually we rebuilt the system from the ground up into a flexible and performant platform in which new requirements could be realised very quickly.
Based on the successful integration of our booking engine we were tasked to add time-tabling portals, voucher codes and a deeper integration. Gradually we rebuilt the system from the ground up into a flexible and performant platform in which new requirements could be realised very quickly.
Tech
We analysed the status quo and realised that the original architecture could not facilitate any meaningful changes. We were consequently tasked to simplify the architecture and add new capabilities. We added a complete CI harness and process around the inherited source code, and successfully onboarded it without any documentation. The key challenge was how to reengineer a brittle and inflexible system based on third party plugins and generic SaaS to enable faster iteration towards market fit.
Impact
With our bespoke architecture, Dulux were able to push through powerful new features and carefully crafted user journeys. We also provided a streamlined BI process that allowed accurate KPI monitoring.
We operated the platform for Dulux at a fraction of the original cost. Finally, Dulux was able to run UX tests and compare conversion and customer life time value across their experiments. They were able to try and validate custom pricing options and with our tailored booking solution managed to streamline the interior designer schedules, thereby reducing staff costs in the design team.