TributeTech

Creating a Unified User Experience Through App Modernization with a Balanced Team

Overview

TributeTech is an innovative funeral home technology solution that provides services such as an online store for flowers and gifts, a place to feature tribute videos and keepsakes of loved ones, payment solutions, and more.

Goals

When TributeTech engaged Crafted’s help, they had three main goals:

• Have a consolidated technology stack that is scalable, supportable, and has fewer dependencies

• Increase the velocity of AB experimentation for the ecommerce software

• Be able to pull and analyze unified and more consistent data with greater velocity and accuracy

Challenges & Business Drivers

Disparate Products and Technology Stacks

• TributeTech expanded rapidly and acquired many companies with very similar feature sets

• Many different products built in different/incredibly outdated technology stacks with different features and data stores

• Need to consolidate disparate parts of organization and products

Legacy Untested Code on Each Brand

• Hard and slow to make changes on any one brand

• Inconsistent testing results across all brands

• Maintenance and support inefficiencies across platforms

Two Platforms with Similar Functionality

• Consolidated Funeral Services (CFS) and Tribute Store

• Both provided online obituaries, commenting functionality, and stores to purchase flowers, trees, etc. for grieving families

• Duplicative work to support two large, difficult-to-maintain monolithic products

Product Focus & Intended Outcomes

Develop Front-End Ecommerce App

• Create one product that consolidates the functionality of CFS and Tribute Store

• More unified brand and customer experience

Build an API Orchestration Layer

• Consume from various microservices

• Provide a uniform interface and serve as an anti-corruption layer

Approach

1. Modernize tech stack and stand up infrastructure

   • React for the frontend app

   • GraphQL for backend for frontend (BFF) API layer

2. Stand up code bases and come up with a solution for routing

   • Strangle out one page (Product Detail Pages, Product Listing Pages, Collection Listing Pages, etc.) from monolith at a time

   • Build integration bridges (bridges between the old code and the new code that work together to get you to a future state; over time, you’ll knock down the bridges as chunks of the new application are ready and the old system can be deprecated)

3. Implement best practices for future brand integrations

   • CI/CD - constant deploys to production

   • Monitor and adapt

   • AB testing

Outcomes

• Consolidated disparate products and parts of TributeTech organization by leveraging engineering best practices and a Balanced Team

• Developed a single ecommerce product called OneStore to created a unified technology stack and user experience

• Built a common playground for AB testing and more unified, consistent data to inform future brand integrations and enable further growth and expansion

“Crafted was instrumental in jump-starting our modernization efforts. They organized the kickoff and early stages, promoted the business value across the ecommerce organization, and paired with our designers and engineers. They contributed to and reinforced the thought leadership within our teams and the energy and collaboration they brought were top-notch.””

— TJ Bowen | Senior Product Manager, TributeTech

Conclusion

Crafted has helped companies of all shapes and sizes bring their businesses into the future and see real ROI with app modernization best practices. Check out our app modernization white paper to learn more, and don’t hesitate to reach out to see how we can help your organization!