-
Chronicle Books, largest North American independent publisher of color-rich books, journals, cards, and giftware
the challenge
Chronicle Books came to SolutionSet with a non functional web infrastructure. The company who originally built the site vanished, leaving Chronicle with a code base (Java/MySQL) that no longer performed adequately and troubleshooting problems that never ended. Chronicle wore itself out just trying to keep the system running, and cumbersome legacy systems requiring daily inventory and sales data from the web system were an added complication. Chronicle did not want to throw away the valuable data and content from its site, but they did not know how to move forward with their website needs.
the solution
SolutionSet's consultants met with Chronicle Books in person to define the challenges facing their website, swiftly adopt Chronicle's problems as their own, and give relief to Chronicle's exhausted internal team. Together SolutionSet and Chronicle chose and implemented an open source solution, giving Chronicle quick and continued access to future upgrades and to a large community of enthusiastic, approachable experts on the program. SolutionSet customized this open source solution to meet Chronicle's unique requirements, then implemented the design (by Method), personality, and technical infrastructure of the site, importing all existing merchandise data from the current system. SolutionSet completely integrated the new sleek, streamlined site with the old legacy inventory systems and ran full systems tests before launch. The final product: a fully-functioning e-commerce website with zero re-entry of data.
the result
400% increase in sales
500% minimum rise in responsiveness of same hardware/software
0 data input needed by Chronicle staff, as all existing information was maintained and transferred
Visit www.chroniclebooks.com