It happened at the worst time. During a crucial launch event, with the clock ticking and huge potential revenue on the line, our client’s systems failed.
The reason?
Technical debt.
If you’ve read our blog ‘There’s no excuse for technical debt—here’s why‘, then you’ll know that any level of tech debt poses a risk to your business, even if you think you’re able to manage it.
As we saw with our client, however, tech debt can also be very difficult to avoid. You’re bound to accumulate blind spots in your tech stack over time as your business scales, and it’s here that tech debt builds up—sometimes without you even noticing.
Through a mixture of unfortunate timing and rapid business spikes, our client was hit by a tech debt pile up when they least suspected it, and at a critical moment in their growth.
But today?
Our client is stronger than ever. Armed with a long-term tech debt remediation strategy and a new, scalable system that provides maximum uptime, revenue, and opportunity for growth, they now have the resources to scale without the threat of tech debt bringing down their operations.
So, let’s rewind and look at what happened.
The client
Our client—an ecommerce company—designs, manufactures, and sells premium collectable products. Many of its customers are on the hunt for the latest, greatest, and rarest items on the market. As a result, business can spike dramatically, with most of the company’s revenue coming from new launches and limited edition sales.
These sales often last only a few hours and can attract thousands of prospective buyers at once, so any downtime likely results in shopping carts being lost forever, which is catastrophic for revenue.
Enter technical debt
The company was running a Shopify listings component with a custom backend that managed transaction details, and it had been making tactical upgrades to this tech stack as it scaled. However, it was scaling fast, and these upgrades weren’t keeping pace with the business.
To complicate matters, the company was also relying on a shared hosting provider. Though this was a cost-effective option during business lulls, it forced our client to compete with other companies for resources during its busiest moments.
This double-pronged tech debt build up was already causing the company’s system to fail at commercially critical moments.
And then disaster struck.
The incident
In 2023, our client’s tech debt reached critical mass at precisely the moment it could least afford. During a major launch event, their platform went down for three hours.
With another event already looming on the horizon, our client realised that it was time to act. Another incident like this could cause irreversible damage to their revenue and reputation.
What we did
Once the client reached out to us at HI, we knew we didn’t have long to get things back on track before the next launch. We rapidly deployed a discovery team to the client and in just over a week, we modified and re-hosted their system using dedicated cloud services, freeing up precious resources for the upcoming event.
During the launch weekend, we provided a dedicated, high-availability team to ensure everything ran as smoothly as possible. Then we looked at the results.
The result
Our client flourished at the event. Their new platform easily handled the spike in traffic and delivered nearly 100% uptime across the weekend, maximising the client’s revenue capture by 13% (allowing them to pay back their investment in our services within just three weeks).
To ensure the client was equipped with the tools to prevent another crisis, we also created a tailored tech debt remediation programme that involved de-risking their operational systems and providing them with a robust, scalable system that will support their growth in future. We continue to help our client implement new features and on-going improvements.
Lessons learned
It’s vital to tackle technical debt as soon as possible. As we saw with our client, tech debt is highly unpredictable and can surprise you at any moment during the vital stages of your company’s growth. When you’re scaling quickly and trying to handle rapid spikes in business, it’s important to keep tabs on your tech stack performance to ensure you aren’t inadvertently accumulating tech debt.
We’ll help you tackle technical debt
We’ll perform a deep review of your tech stack and operations to locate technical debt and then provide you with a high-impact remediation plan—all with minimal disruption to your business. Get in touch today and schedule a call to get started.