Entirely Rebuilt 1:1 SMS Outreach SaaS Product for Extra Profitable Retail Platform
Blackbird became a natural team extension of Statflo inc. Together we scaled the product team from two to eight people and rebuilt successful 1:1 Retail Conversations™ product from the ground up to meet the growing client base demands.
The Challenge
Firstly created 1:1 Retail Conversations™ product turned out to be a huge success in the retail industry. However, the initial microservice-based application architecture wasn’t fully ready for that.
Outcomes
Together we built absolutely reimagined 1:1 Retail Conversations™ that is now packed with lots of new yet important features like profanity check and more. CQRS with event sourcing replaced previous architecture.
Impact
The shiny new 1:1 Retail Conversations™ is going through final tests and about ready for the mid-2020 launch. Moreover, some of the current clients — national chains and Tier 1 national carriers already gave it a high score.
“Fantastic, I'm totally blown away by Blackbird services, tech expertise, and each team member individually. Sometimes, I even forget where our staff is and where Blackbirders are.”
Ian Gervais, VP of Product
51-200 employeesHQ Toronto, CanadaClient since 2018 | Retail TechFunded Startup previously, SMBs currentlyTechnical summary
In the early beginning of our cooperation with the client, Blackbird worked on multiple microservices where we used Docker and Kubernetes for deployment. The communication between the microservices was done via RabbitMQ.
Built the first version of the new 1:1 Retail Conversations™ utilizing AWS Amplify framework (as a part of theResearchandAnalyticsservices used).
Migrated architecture from entirely microservice-based application architecture to CQRS with event sourcing. UtilizedAxonFramework to support the new application infrastructure.
Senior developers mastered and successfully applied Command Query Responsibility Segregation (CQRS) architectural pattern with event sourcing within two calendar months.
OvercameTwilio APIlimitations of 1000 threads per account alongside learned how to reassigning each of threads to sales reps under multiple accounts.
Improved DNC handling both auto and manual ones.
Developed the new brand, legal and privacy Compliance API for all of Statflo products.
Moved from own SSO authentication solution toAuth0 API.
Implemented the new responsive UI design on the front end with React, Typescript, Redux Thunk, Redux Toolkit. Apollo Client was used since all powered by theApollo Graphql.
Quality control: all endpoints are covered with end-to-end automation tests in Postman.
Deployed and operated DevOps infrastructure for the product to run a closed beta with the most interested in product clients.