At the beginning of the project, EPAM conducted discovery sessions with Dawn Foods to identify requirements and performed UX research to dictate the design and layout of the eCommerce site.

In addition to the initial discovery in 2019, EPAM performed an assessment in 2021 to re-evaluate the commerce experience across disciplines and gain a holistic understanding of how to improve the solution. EPAM’s consultants synthesized the findings into a report, which identified six strategic imperatives — from automating inventory to managing data flow to personalizing the experience — to drive more customers to the site.

Leveraging our expertise in cloud and MACH, EPAM worked with Dawn Foods to develop and build the site infrastructure from scratch. Hosted on Google Cloud, the solution integrates Contentstack’s content management system (CMS) and commercetools’ eCommerce platform. The responsive, MACH-based eCommerce site works seamlessly across devices with a composable architecture leveraging a suite of APIs. This functionality frees Dawn Foods from the restraints of traditional commerce platforms, enabling the company to roll out modernized commerce experiences quickly with integrations in a variety of systems.

Using the MACH-enabled eCommerce site, retail bakery customers can quickly and easily navigate Dawn Foods’ extensive product catalog and purchase items with one click without having to enter shipping or billing information. The easy-to-use digital experience even makes it simpler for customers to consolidate suppliers. The agile, headless solution also enables Dawn Foods to launch and change different customer-facing touchpoints without having to update code in their commerce engine or create new, channel-specific content.

To support the eCommerce site in 2020, EPAM ran user acceptance testing to ensure a smooth launch. Since then, EPAM has managed the quality control and testing processes to ensure optimal performance with minimal defects. EPAM’s testing team regularly performs a wide range of manual testing for common, uncommon and edge and use cases. They have also implemented automated testing for 95% of client-facing functionality using mabl, an intelligent low-code test automation platform. For each new feature Dawn Foods rolls out, EPAM’s team rigorously tests the system before handing over to Dawn Product Owners for acceptance.

From a DevOps perspective, EPAM helped automate the environment deployment, optimize environment schedules and costs, and construct new CI/CD processes on Google Cloud to ensure compatibility with the tech stack. To improve platform security, EPAM implemented several monitoring systems that use open source tools, such as Defect Dojo and Cloud Custodian, to scan code and environments. EPAM’s QA and DevOps teams support security scans by running result analyses without the need for additional security engineers.

During system rollout and integration, EPAM partnered closely with Dawn Foods’ internal development team to provide technical support and guidance. The experts ran knowledge transfer sessions to ensure the entire team understood the system design, customizations and the software development lifecycle (SDLC) process so development could continue in-house. Additionally, EPAM’s business analyst team provided detailed user guides to Dawn Foods’ business team that explained how to leverage the solution’s custom functionality, which gave them the foundation they needed to fully own the production environment.

EPAM helped with the build of a custom B2B search experience based on Algolia. Building the new search experience only took one month, thanks to the seamless integration made possible through MACH’s composable architecture. Algolia adds key B2B features to search, like personalized results, managed search result rankings, suggestions and promoted products and brands. The search functionality is customizable, enabling customers to easily modify search logic with facets and filters to find the products they’re looking for instantly. With this enhancement, Dawn Foods significantly increased search speed, and now results render in a matter of milliseconds, providing customers with accurate suggestions almost immediately.

Initially, the eCommerce solution supported artisanal customers. Since launch, EPAM has helped Dawn Foods onboard new customers and other user groups to grow its eCommerce footprint. Our teams have been thoroughly researching and carefully considering customer experience recommendations and UX design so every group provides a streamlined experience for each unique customer.

To meet Dawn Foods' B2B requirements, EPAM also enabled special order types that allow customers to request quotes for products that were previously unavailable to them. This feature allows customers to purchase products with confidence, knowing they’ll get their special orders alongside the products they routinely purchase from Dawn Foods. Customers now also have complete end-to-end visibility of their orders and can track their purchase requests with the eCommerce site.

Additionally, a more advanced price service integration solution was created by EPAM that integrates Zilliant IQ, an intelligent pricing product. This integration optimizes Dawn Foods’ price management by calculating customized prices for customers based on cost, geography, size and order frequency.