Endeca hinders innovation in product discovery
Business problem
Let's face it: Endeca is now a legacy technology, and is hindering innovation in the product discovery space.
Endeca lacks true personalization, doesn't possess AI-based ranking or query understanding, and cannot handle real-time updates of availability, pricing and promotions data. It also has issues with omni-channel scalability and is not friendly to cloud deployment. As a closed source solution, Endeca is notoriously hard to customize. For these reasons, many retailers see Endeca as an impediment to their search innovation, and are looking for alternatives.
Open source search engines, such as Solr and Elasticsearch, offer foundational search capabilities and are supported by active developer communities. Moving the product discovery experience to these platforms can unlock in-house innovation, and tap into new, exciting features.
Re-platforming with Grid Dynamics
At Grid Dynamics, we have assisted several tier-1 retailers in moving from Endeca to modern, open source search engines.
We take a phased approach, gradually migrating parts of the Endeca ecosystem over to the new open source technology stack. At every step of the migration, we add new features which were previously impossible with Endeca, such as near real-time store inventory updates and advanced query understanding. At all times, we ensure that business KPIs are improving with rigorous A/B testing and search tuning.
As a result of these features, the new system provides higher relevance, resulting in better conversion rates and average order values. In some of our engagements, we saw revenue from search increasing by 25%, and search revenue per visit increasing by 10% over a one year period. Additionally, the new, open architectures are ready for further innovation in-house, as well as integration with best-in-breed cloud services.
Phases of Endeca replatforming
Migrate search traffic
- Create a catalog ETL and messaging feeds
- Build a new product discovery service for search and browse
- Keep XM for search configuration and merchandising
- Convert XM rules and configurations for a new platform
- Migrate search traffic
- A/B test and tune the search experience
Migrate content management
- Introduce a new content service
- Keep XM for content management
- Convert XM configuration for the new content service
- Migrate the UI from Assembler to a new content service
Migrate merchandising processes
- Introduce a digital merchandising tool
- Migrate MX rules to the new merchandising tool
- Migrate merchandising processes from XM to the new tool
- Retire Endeca
Benefits of the new architecture
Open architecture
Horizontal scalability
Near real-time signals
Semantic search
Elasticity and resiliency
Search Engine Optimization
Endeca Replatforming blueprint
In the new architecture, Endeca's former responsibilities are replaced and divided by several services: the product discovery service is responsible for providing keyword search and the catalog navigation functionality similar to MDX, while the content service takes on the responsibilities of Endeca Assembler. Merchandising and content management concerns are migrated to corresponding merchandiser tools.
