Staying competitive in IT&C retail through continuous innovation: Flanco

Learn how Zitec built a highly scalable application for Flanco, used exclusively for campaigns that generate a large amount of traffic.
Staying competitive in IT&C retail through continuous innovation: Flanco

Established in 1994, Flanco is one of Romania’s largest retailers and is considered a pioneer in many ways: it introduced the concept of a larger-sized electro-IT shop to Romania and was one of the first to start the Black Friday phenomenon here.

So how does Flanco manage to continue ranking as one of the top players in IT&C, 27 years after entering the market? In such a dynamic field, innovation is key to both thriving and surviving.

Inside Flanco’s digital transformation journey

Digital transformation is a continuous process and our partnership with Flanco has spanned over 8 years, throughout which we’ve had the opportunity to collaborate on several successful projects.

A scalable concept

Flanco wanted to improve its operational efficiency in the context of the largest shopping event in Romania, Black Friday. Given the significant increases y-o-y in online traffic and recognizing the clear advantage of avoiding downtime to support as many sales as possible, Flanco decided to move the infrastructure of their website to the cloud during the event.

Zitec worked on the company’s main eCommerce platform and built a highly scalable, customized application used exclusively for events or campaigns that generate a large amount of traffic, concurrent users, and orders per second.

Our teams developed a custom web platform using Microsoft Azure cloud and open source technologies, capable of supporting high data traffic. The hosted platform is a PHP app that perfectly integrates with other applications that Flanco uses on a regular basis for the infrastructure of the website hosted on on-premises servers. Thus, during an event, the website traffic is easily directed to its cloud-based version.

With the Microsoft Azure infrastructure, Flanco enjoyed up to 80% in cost reductions compared to its traditional version, also becoming one of the few market players to have zero downtime during Black Friday.

Over the years, we’ve constantly optimized the platform, conducting continuous performance tests while adding numerous features, such as real-time stock reporting or automatic QA testing.

Flanco’s sustained growth on Magento 

Another major accomplishment was the optimization of the product management platform and website. It began with a Zitec audit, which included a Magento utilization analysis, security tests, performance, and best practices. The proposed solutions consisted of a synchronization system between ERP and Magento, as well as performance fixes. Zitec implemented the following developments: optimization of the checkout process, integrations with eMAG Marketplace and other suppliers (NOD), electronic billing system generation, RMAs (Return Merchandise Authorizations), cache solution optimization, and Flanco card.

After all these changes, Flanco registered a significant increase in orders, which automatically led to the expansion of collaboration with suppliers to cover the demand for online products.

Earlier this year, Flanco migrated its online store from Magento 1 to Magento 2. The transition to the new platform came as a response to the market’s new demands, where online shopping is preferred over offline shopping and this translates into a steady increase in the volume of data needed to be processed. Magento 2 brings more stability, offering customers a series of new functionalities and a simpler shopping experience. At the same time, it ensures a streamlined order management process.

Let’s talk about your project

Would you like to see how a custom-made digital transformation process could benefit your company? Reach out to us and let’s have a discussion about your specific business needs. Then, we can work on the plan that’s most advantageous to you.

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