SPAR ICS is the IT unit of the SPAR Austria Group, oversees all IT operations for SPAR, INTERSPAR, Hervis, and SES (SPAR European Shopping Centers) retail chains.

Their mission is twofold: providing a smooth and satisfying shopping experience for all SPAR customers in all markets they operate in, as well as controlling all “behind the shelves” digital processes.

When Ing joined, SPAR was using multiple engines across its distribution channels to calculate promotions and loyalty points, with some markets even having country-specific loyalty programs and different pricing logic. This resulted in a significant overhead, as SPAR had to maintain numerous promotion calculation systems that performed similar functions but in varying ways.

Moreover, none of these systems were future-proof, nor did they support the omni-channel initiative or offer the flexibility to accommodate upcoming projects.

To address these challenges, SPAR ICS began streamlining and centralizing all these solutions into a single, cloud-based backend built on a set of Java-based microservices. These microservices now serve as the foundation for user-facing apps across all SPAR markets.

We began our collaboration with SPAR ICS in Q2 2022 by establishing their Customer Experience team, where we played a key role in analyzing, planning, and developing several modules for their new CX Engine. This initiative was part of SPAR's strategy to create a unified backend solution that could be utilized across all distribution channels and countries.

Over the past two years, we've focused on developing three critical modules for the CX Engine. The first, the Price and Promotion Engine, manages pricing, promotions, and loyalty points for all SPAR and Hervis distribution channels.

The second module, Voucher Service, handles vouchers issued to customers across all SPAR retail brands. Finally, the eLoader module was developed to manage gift card processing in all markets where SPAR operates.

Our solution is built on Azure cloud infrastructure, following best practices to ensure optimal performance. We migrated all performance-critical components to the cloud and leveraged Azure messaging systems, which were crucial in achieving high performance. By introducing these practices, tools, and conventions, we set a new standard for SPAR ICS, which has since been adopted by other teams and projects within the company.

The results speak for themselves: the system we developed can seamlessly manage a multi-million user base and handle millions of daily requests without impacting the performance of the CX Engine.