Company: Bidz.com
Bidz.com is an online auction that went from dangerously failing to successfully competing
with eBay. Bidz.com offers an online auction platform for consumers to bid on a variety of
products. In the beginning, Bidz.com strictly offered jewelry and did not allow third party
sellers on their platform. Consumers were able to purchase jewelry for pennies on the dollar.
Problem:
The technical design and architect that a previous consulting company originally
implemented for Bidz.com was poorly designed for scalability and flexibility. Bidz.com was
operating fine until their business starting increasing in customers. Below is a summary of
problems that they encountered due to a poor technical design:
- As activity on the website increased, the performance of the company significantly decreased.
- The inventory system was failing. Items were missing because of misfiling and possible employee theft.
- The web server that stored the photographs for auction items was configured poorly and began to crash.
- The shipping department was flooded with phone calls regarding the status of customer’s items.
- The customer service department was flooded with phone calls and emails which were mainly regarding technical issues.
- The marketing department wanted to create new programs to increase the customer database and triple the activity on an already fragile website.
- The server co-location provider was not dependable and responsible for sporadic downtime.
- The domain server (office server) was overworked with too many tasks and demands. Frequent server re-boots caused excessive employee downtime.
Solution:
The immediate and obvious solution was to rebuild and restructure the entire technical system.
Not only was that not part of their budget, but the technical status of the company was already
critical and needed to be stabilized immediately. To stabilize each department and the technical
system as a whole, we accomplished the following:
- The existing database that drove the checkout process was not meant for web use and definitely not
for high traffic web use. We implemented an application that improved the data transfer from customer
to database. The checkout process was faster than ever.
- We custom tailored an application where all pertinent information about a customer was retrieved with
a customer’s username. As a result, the customer service department was able to handle more calls
with greater efficiency.
- To meet the needs of the marketing department, we developed new marketing tools that allowed the
marketing department to attract more affiliates and the customers began flocking to the website.
- We rebuilt two servers to handle the current crashing and rebooting servers. Immediately after the
integration, there was little to zero employee downtime and the customer service phone calls
(regarding technical issues)also began to decline.
- We migrated the web servers to a new and more dependable co-location and negotiated a lower rate for
the monthly co-location services.
- A Fed-ex tracking system was implemented to improve the efficiency of completing an order. An online
tracking system was also developed for the benefit of customers. The shipping department was able to
ship orders quicker and spend much less time handling customer service calls. This solution allowed
for a much faster turnover from sold items to delivered items. As a result, revenue increased.
- As the company became stable, Bidz.com was able to bring on additional IT personnel and we began
developing a new system. Once the system was integrated, the company became truly stabilized.
- The financial and overall condition of Bidz.com was able to mature due to our consulting. When we
arrived, the company was turning roughly $40,000 a month in revenue with a customer database of
roughly 115,000. Our marketing applications and technical work grew the company to $1,000,000 a month
in revenue and over 3,000,000 customers in less than 2 years.
To find out how Galaxy Creations can transform your company into a success story,
contact us for a free consultation.
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