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The summary of Q3 2017 at i-systems

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July, August, September have passed. Hence it’s time for the next summary of the third quarter of 2017 at i-systems. The holiday months did not affect the pace of development of the organization.

New projects

Two companies made a decision to implement the system. One of them sells services using e-commerce and the other is engaged in a wide range of activities: from high-quality bathroom fixtures to home furnishings such as furniture, carpets, blankets, bedspreads and bathrobes to sports equipment. The mentioned system will allow sales in B2B and B2C model.

Another five companies invested in conducting a business analysis. Among them there are manufacturers of glass, electronics, as well as distributors of shoes and children’s articles.

Systems for the customers operating in furniture, interior and garden equipment sector, as well as those representing fashion industry, had its premieres. One of them was Vistula Group S.A. The project included the implementation of sales systems for three brands – Vistula, Wólczanka and W.KRUK. After a successful implementation, the company signed a contract with i-systems for further development.

– The first stage of the new online system for W.KRUK is already behind us. Now it is time for systems’ development. We have plenty of interesting ideas, which will be put through systematically – commented after implementation Bartosz Twardosz, e-commerce manager at W.KRUK. 


Trends in system development

One of the trends that will significantly impact e-commerce will be m-commerce. However, it will not be understood as having a mobile website or using Responsive Web Design (which is a widely used standard in 2017). It will rather be understood as the combination of sales systems with the mobile application and the use of this connection as the next step in the implementation of the omnichannel strategy through retail networks. Currently, such work is being performed for one of i-systems customers.

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Strategic development of the organization

With the rapid development of the company, the demand for professionals grows. Twelve months ago, i-systems employed 57 people. Today this number has risen to 93. It is because the company was joined by 18 men and 18 women, of whom 12 new people were employed in the third quarter.

Keeping in mind the development of IT professionals’ local market, „Vacation with Programming” – a course for beginners in programming – was organized at the end of July. Several people, who stood out of the crowd, were chosen to participate. Then, from the 13 topics available, participants chose the ones that were most interesting for them. For the next two weeks, our specialists shared their knowledge of, for instance, MySQL, Webservice and unit testing.

In order to optimize and facilitate the implementation work, a decision was made to divide the departments responsible for each stage into micro teams. From now on, each team is run by a Project Manager or Support Manager and consists of testers and programmers and any other required persons to perform the tasks. More information on the new work organization and its impact on customer solutions will be published on the i-systems blog.

Internal projects for quality improvement

The internal Research & Development team has been working on i-systems software long-term technology development projects. One of the issues is Continuous Integration, which means merging the results of the development team’s work to the main repository. Thanks to CI, the customer will have constant access to the latest version of the system, it will also increase the efficiency of the developers’ work and database security.

R&D team works also on the new desktop application. This project is based on the latest Angular framework. This client application communicates with the store via the REST API. The project is built independently of the server and the only common line of communication is API, which makes development and maintenance of the application more efficient. Separation of the backend and frontend will make introducing changes faster and easier. Angular, a powerful JavaScript framework, allows building web, mobile and desktop applications. Applications built in Angular consist of components, services, directives and other available solutions. Angular uses dependency injection and module division, allowing developers to have greater control over the responsibility of individual application components. The most popular tool for building mobile applications is Ionic, which is created in Angular itself. Ionic is a rich framework for building hybrid mobile applications, that use the power of native features and a mix of web technologies like Angular, SCSS and HTML.

The work of R&D team is aimed at improving the quality of delivered solutions.

Selected awards

In the last three months i-systems has been awarded twice. In the plebiscite, organized by the Regional Chamber of Commerce and Industry in Gliwice and the Marshal’s Office of the Silesian Voivodeship, i-systems company was honored with the title „Marka Śląskie” [Silesian Brand] in the Service category. In September, i-systems received the title of „Ambassador of the Polish Economy” in the 9th edition of the competition organized by BCC.

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Vistula Group S.A. and W.KRUK S.A. with a new e-commerce system created by i-systems

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Vistula Group S.A. is a company listed on the Warsaw Stock Exchange. It specializes in the design, manufacture and distribution of men’s and women’s clothing. Due to the dynamic development, Vistula Group S.A. successively develops its e-commerce activities. Cooperation with i-systems has resulted in new dedicated sales platforms for Vistula and Wólczanka. The project also included implementation of a new e-commerce system for W.KRUK, the oldest jewelry brand in Poland, managed directly by W.KRUK S.A. – a part of the Vistula Group S.A. Capital Group. The i-systems company is responsible for all technological works.

Business analysis

The scale of the project and its level of advancement made it necessary to start work from business analysis. This particular type of examination of the current IT architecture has identified key processes, actors, and areas for the company. It also determined points which are worth to develop in order to achieve even better business results. The result was a document that laid the foundation for the implementation of all three systems. This stage took i-systems analysts team a month of work.

– The analysis showed the possibilities of the new system and defined a preliminary work schedule. At the same time it was flexible enough to correct a plan, for example by adding new options at the stage of implementation. It is important to stay open for new options during such large implementations – says Aneta Kazanowska, e-commerce Manager at Vistula Group S.A.


Effective implementation process

Development works started immediately after the business analysis stage. A team dedicated to the project was created, which included people responsible for each area (analysis, UX, frontend, price policy, integration, import, omnichannel solutions, etc.). The number of the team members was flexible throughout the whole process. All the design and implementation works for three brands were made in less than three months and ended according to the schedule. The new system for the company was launched in three stages. The first online store to be launched was Wólczanka, then Vistula, and the last one was e-commerce system for W.KRUK.

– It is one of the largest e-commerce implementations in Poland, which took such a small amount of time. It is worth appreciating the involvement of the customer’s team in the project – comments Marek Pawlak, Project Manager at i-systems.

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Omnichannel solutions

The Vistula Group has a rapidly growing network of stationary stores. It currently has 370 showrooms, with a total sales area of 30.9 thousand sqm. (including 118 Vistula stores, 116 Wólczanka stores). W.KRUK jewelry chain has 106 boutiques. Therefore, the implementation of multichannel solutions was immediately taken into account. These are for instance: the ability to check online the availability of products in the store, the ability to order home delivery products while shopping at a stationary store, a consistent customer loyalty program – regardless of the place of purchase, or advanced inventory management.

New systems in the long-term perspective

Immediately after the launch of the e-commerce system, the Vistula Group, W.KRUK and i-systems signed agreements for further development. The agreements cover Service Level Agreement, dedicated cloud infrastructure, and post-implementation support.

– The first stage of the new version of e-commerce system in W.KRUK is already behind us. Now it is time for the development of the systems. We have a lot of interesting ideas, which we plan to enforce – comments Bartłomiej Twardosz, e-commerce Manager at W. KRUK. 


More details about the implementation will be described in the nearest future in the form of a case study.

On the road to Continuous Integration

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Continuous Integration is one of the twelve practices of Extreme Programming, applied during software development. It is a practice of merging the results of the development team’s work to the main repository. For modern e-commerce systems, it means a constant improvement of software and continuous development. Providing customers with new features and system updates more frequently is key to achieving competitive advantage.

Integration of subsequent code changes should occur at least once a day. Next, integrated versions of the code are covered by automatic tests, and then, after validation, they are implemented into the customer system. The main purpose of continuous integration is to increase team members’ efficiency because they have constant access to the current progress of work. CI also facilitates the prevention of possible errors. For customers, it means constant access to the current software version.

Process of Continuous Integration

All changes introduced to the repository by developers are tested automatically. First, unit tests are performed, that is, the correctness of code is checked. It is followed by code compilation process, the so called build, on which acceptance tests are performed. If errors are detected, the system immediately informs the relevant people assigned to the project. If the tests are successful, the changes are prepared for deployment and become candidates for introduction into the base version of the software.

The advantages of CI

Continuous integration has a lot of advantages. Firstly, the customer has always access to the latest version of the software. Secondly, the efficiency is increased by combining the development team’s work on specific projects, resulting in a significant saving of man-hours. CI also facilitates detection of possible errors and thus – quicker response to them. Also, when there is a need to withdraw changes previously made to the system, it ensures the security of the database.

Work on Continuous Integration is a part of a long-term vision of i-systems software development, which aims to systematically improve the quality of delivered solutions.

Newsweek and PWC awards i-systems

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The i-systems company was awarded the title of “Innovation Initiator”. The 3rd edition of the competition was held on June 6, 2017 at the Copernicus Science Centre in Warsaw. The weekly magazine Newsweek Poland is the organizer of the project, and the content partner is – the global audit and advisory company PWC.

The purpose of the event was to distinguish companies for which innovation is the driving force. There were two stages of the competition, during which the jury assessed both achieved market success, internal innovation management, and implemented innovative solutions.

– We always wanted to make shopping on the internet a natural thing, but also fun. A few years ago we decided that we would make all the solutions ourselves. That is why the Innovation Initiator is a special honor for us, which shows that we are moving in the right direction – says Paweł Szewczyk, CMO i-systems


Photo during the Gala of the 2017 Innovation Initiator winners

Photo during the Gala of the 2017 Innovation Initiator winners

The jury appreciated i-systems for a thriving research and development department that creates pioneering e-commerce solutions, which have a real impact on the development of online sales – not only in Poland but also abroad.

The Innovation Initiator 2017 was awarded in three categories: large companies, small and medium enterprises and startups. Alior Bank won in the first category, while in the startup category, the competition jury awarded three more companies. These companies were: Smart Fluid, mReh and Hector24. IDN InDaHash Media Limited was the winner of the startup category. In addition, Business Insider, media patron of the event, has awarded a special prize to G2A company.



See Case Studies e-commerce



Log server – application in e-commerce

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The term „log server” for many people probably sounds quite enigmatic. To fully understand what this term means, you first need to know the meaning of the word “log” itself.

Every service, part of an e-commerce application, such as a store application, particular modules, databases, web server, mail server, or integrations – generates logs. They are created automatically, chronologically and independently of the user. They are saved in text files describing the event.

Individual logs may also have different degrees of detail. A single entry may include: information about the date and time of the event, its type, the name and IP address of the user, download data, and a text description of the event.

The main use of logs is an analysis of the way information systems work. They allow to check server’s performance, detect system malfunctions, as well as create statistics and detect security breaches.

A modern e-commerce system consists of multiple distributed services and components physically located on different servers. This allows scaling of the system, but it has consequences – the logs of the operations are also scattered across multiple servers. Analysis of one problem is therefore extremely time-consuming. The log server cumulates all events in one place with full-text, advanced search engine and analysis tools.

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Thanks to this solution, there is one machine for each system that transfers logs from all servers and provides a unified interface for their viewing. This facilitates the monitoring of the system’s condition. When it is necessary to check or analyze the operation mode of the system, both searching, comparing and graphing takes seconds because the logs are indexed. In the absence of log server, these actions can take several hours. That is why the log server is part of a modern e-commerce server infrastructure.

New era of B2B solutions

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Business is changing, both this oriented on the retail client and on the business partner. New technologies makes the customers’ demands evolve quickly, affecting the rules of running business in a significant way. In order to grow a business, it is important to respond dynamically to the current market needs, because as Darwin’s theory says, only those most responsive to change will survive.

Large business has to be simple

Modern entrepreneurs, using the latest technology, want to run a business in a convenient, simple and useful way. When buying online, they expect to find a specific assortment, a personalized offer, an intuitive navigation, and, above all, the ability to get information in real time.

B2C companies for a long time understood the needs of today’s customers, actively introducing newer and newer e-commerce solutions. However, the wholesale companies must also match the sales to the needs of the modern market. The new B2B era means decline of the wholesale systems, which are discouraging by the look and allow only to check the offer and place an order. Modern B2B platforms comprehensively address business needs, provide advanced analytics, full integration with external systems, and tools to support the daily work of sales team. This is a combination of functionalities, which are mandatory for building long-term collaboration between businesses, with solutions previously reserved exclusively for B2C.

Integration with ERP, meaning the consistency of data

For companies operating in the B2B model, merging the sales system with other external systems is especially important. Business partners have individual prices, terms of payment, or merchant payment limits. In addition, the B2B sales system is not just a tool for the company’s employees – it is primarily a solution for contractors who expect to be able to check their current prices, payment status or order status. Entering all data manually, on a regular basis, would be extremely time-consuming and it could generate errors.

The success of a business depends on long-term relationships

In business to business sales, tools to build customer loyalty are much more important than in the case of retail sales. This kind of sales is based on solid business partners, not individual orders, made by occasional users. It is therefore worth to implement such solutions as: the offline product catalog, the function to create individual wholesale prices, or call centers, which makes it easy to organize telephone campaigns of a sales or information nature.

In modern B2B platforms, it is common to provide knowledge bases or forums for the customers. With this tools, the system administrator passes to the contractor the necessary knowledge of the product offer, such as detailed descriptions, photos, or information about promotional campaigns. The solution also allows to focus the work of sales department on sales activities by minimizing phone or email inquiries about basic product details.

The line between the online stores and wholesale platforms is blurred. Not only retail customers, but also business partners are looking forward to make good purchases with an intuitive navigation system. Dedicated e-commerce solutions, that meet business needs of the particular entrepreneurship and ensure the good UX of the system, are the evidence of a modern approach to the business and give the opportunity to grow one.

The article was originally published in Fashionbusiness.pl.



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The summary of Q2 2017 at i-systems

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Another quarter of 2017 has come to an end. As announced, we present the most important events from this period.

New projects

Over the last three months, six new projects have been started. The companies that decided to begin a cooperation with i-systems, operates among others in furniture, cosmetic, fashion and sanitary industry. A company from chemistry sector has decided to carry out a business analysis. This shows the broad spectrum of modern B2B e-commerce solutions.

At the beginning of the Q2, e-commerce systems for Vistula Group joint-stock company have been launched. The scope of works included new sales platforms for brands: Vistula, Wólczanka and W.Kruk. More information on those implementations will be published in the nearest future.

Trends in system development

Increasingly important in B2B transactions are tools that are typically associated with the B2C sales model. They can build the loyalty of the target customer as well as increase satisfaction from the daily use of the systems. Examples of such solutions introduced in the second quarter of the year in company’s customer’s systems are: the ability to create personalized price lists for wholesale customers, the optimization of order fulfillment in a furniture company or multicart module in a company specializing in wholesale of fasteners.

Another trend is the development of sales through the use of external network marketplace.

Strategic development of the organization

To continue the adopted strategy of i-systems development in the international markets, i-systems representatives participated in Retail Business Technology Expo in London. At the biggest retail fair in Europe, they exchanged experiences with foreign entrepreneurs and customers. Polish conference, E-commerce Summit, has shed a new light on the progress and development of e-commerce, and during the Marketing Forum, the future of e-commerce has been outlined. The above-mentioned meetings and conferences have resulted in new business contacts.

The company also develops employer branding activities. As a result of participation in job fairs in Q1, Career Days were organized in i-systems. During the meeting in April, jobseekers were not only able to see what the company’s life was like from the inside, but also talk to the current employees about their day-to-day work, as well as leave their CVs for selected job positions. These and other activities have made the i-systems team grow by 10 new people in the last three months. Further recruitment is planned.

Internal projects for quality improvement

At the end of May, training on unit tests was organized for employees. Participants learned new solutions for unit testing. Moreover, scenarios for testing the upgrades of the base version of e-commerce have also been completed. Both solutions increase the quality of software delivered to the customers and are part of a long-term vision of software development.

In the last quarter, a log server service has been launched. The solution is part of a modern e-commerce server infrastructure. It facilitates work on a system and raises security.

Selected awards

Over the past three months, i-systems has been awarded four distinctions. The company was placed among the fastest growing companies in Europe, the ranking was created for the first time by the Financial Times, in collaboration with the Institute of Market Research – Statista.

– Being placed among the 1000 fastest growing companies in Europe gives us a sense of well-performed everyday work. We are doing our best to make a measurable impact on the development of e-commerce, not only in Poland. Being listed in the ranking of such a prestigious magazine as Financial Times is extremely motivating for us – comments Paweł Jaczewski, CEO at i-systems. 


Business Center Club awarded i-systems with European Medal. It is a distinction for companies with products and services which meet European standards and are innovative in the market.

The company was also honored with the title of Firma Dobrze Widziana [Goodwill Company] for its CSR activities. What is more, the i-systems research and development department directly contributed to the receiving of Innovation Initiator award. This contest was organized by the Newsweek weekly, and PWC was the content partner of the event.

We invite you to read another summary of i-systems events. The next one will appear in early October. Should you not miss the Q3 summary, we invite you to subscribe to the newsletter.



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Release i-systems – version 4.5

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A new update of the base version of the i-systems e-commerce system has been introduced. Release 4.5 includes significant improvements in price interpretation and memory optimization. A new Price List Module has also been created.

Prices in the product

Products in the database have their prices assigned. In release 4.5, it was possible to pin down any price source for a product, such as a price list module or a database of previous prices stored in products. This means that when a customer wants to use a price from another source, they will automatically be downloaded without importing them to the i-systems database.

Optimization of the store

A number of modifications have been introduced to speed up the store’s operation and reduce the amount of memory required. The profiling of the store was conducted, which resulted in accelerating the operation of the store, thanks to the reduction of the amount of memory needed. The time needed to render a page: the home page, the product listing, and the product sheet has been reduced. From now on, less memory is required, and the basic version of e-commerce system has been significantly accelerated. This means that the server response has been optimized as well as the memory requirement per query.

Price List Module

The new Price List module allows you to manage prices not only for products, but also for sets. Up to now, there have been four types of prices attributed to the product: standard, promotional, wholesale, variants. Nowadays, it is possible to create an infinite quantity of price lists and add an infinite number of prices to them. They can also be hierarchized by setting a pricing strategy based on the criteria. This provides a great price management option. This also applies to foreign price lists, which are not part of the price list module. An example of such a price list may be the currency price list, which retrieves data based on its exchange rate. Thanks to the Price List module you can download price lists from another module in real time.

Release 4.5 also includes other improvements, such as changing the way currency and the country are selected. The customer stores information about the country and the currency is assigned to the country. There has also been unified form generation for ordinary payments and multi payments.

The release is an update of the base version of the e-commerce system, where the new functionalities are regularly added. Thanks to the update, it is possible to develop the system and adapt it to the changing market. It is also possible to update dedicated solutions in subsequent releases.

The furniture industry invests in e-commerce

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Nobody is surprised that the fashion industry can show of innovative e-commerce solutions area. Whether it is clothing or footwear, online stores are introducing new, dedicated ways, not only to attract the attention of the customer, but also those supporting building customer loyalty towards the brand. Trends, however, permeate further sectors for which other functionalities need to be prepared to provide efficient shop management and customer service of top quality. The example can be furniture industry and the online store KARE24.pl, implemented by i-systems.

KARE24.pl is part of the DESIGN AG Anna Guenther group. KARE Design since 1981, thanks to its creative ideas, has been constantly successful, offering designer furniture, lighting and decorative accessories. Its showrooms are located not only in Poland but also in Germany, Austria and outside Europe. It also has 200 industry partners and 2000 commercial customers.

As the brand emphasizes, its main recipients are people of all ages, but with „young spirits”. In pursuit of modern trends, the company has decided to implement the e-commerce system, in cooperation with i-systems.

After the analysis, the solutions have been identified to match the specificity of the brands from the furniture sector. In addition to modules, such as discount policy or newsletter signup coupon, the new e-commerce system is equipped with modules designed particularly for business needs of the company.

– We decided to invest in e-commerce, because we are constantly tracking fast-changing trends and trying to match them. Online sales give more and more opportunities and are an effective channel to reach the customer – comments Anna Guenther, owner of DESIGN AG Anna Guenther.

The new e-commerce system, created for KARE24.pl, is another step in the company’s online sales strategy. Further activities are planned to expand the company’s activity in this area.
The new online store can be found here: KARE24.pl.

The benefits of working with upseller

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Very good knowledge of the product, awareness of the customer needs and ability to match the best IT solutions to meet these needs. This is how the work of upseller looks like in telegraphic brief. In conversation with Gosia and Krystian, our upsellers, we present the secrets of their work, the purpose of the profession and the benefits that their actions bring to their clients.

What is the job of the upseller, what are your duties?

Krystian: Our company creates dedicated e-commerce software that allows for unlimited system development. A customer can develop his online store for many years and adjust functionalities to changing market trends. Our task is to directly cooperate with the current customer and support the development of his e-commerce system. As every business relationship, in order to last long, it can not be based solely on e-mail or telephone contact. So we visit our customers and have direct talks with them. We inform about the solutions that R&D team introduces within the new software release. We also explain the principle of operation of the modules and advise which solutions are worth to implement as they will be effective for the particular client. Based on the plans, we estimate the IT resources needed and prepare the appropriate contracts.

Gosia: Our task is to support the customers who started e-commerce journey with us. As a part of supporting the development of their systems, we provide advice and, consequently, up-sell solutions that enable them to effectively build competitive advantage. There are brands that have a well-defined development policy, they know what solutions, and when, they will implement. On the other hand, some partners do not have such a well-defined action plan. In this case, our task is to inspire customers, prioritize individual ideas, or choose the best solutions that will give the customer the greatest business value at a given moment. Then, together with the customer, we create plans. They feel safe and know that we also participate in business creation with them.

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Is it popular to hire upsellers?

Krystian: Unfortunately not. The generally accepted model of work in the market is often based on new implementations rather than development of running systems. As such, collaboration is often limited to providing a call center or a single email exchange. Our e-commerce system allows long-term development. Several updates a year make it possible for our customers to keep the system up-to-date with changing market needs. Hence, we can make long lasting business relationships. We want the customer to know that the company that creates the e-commerce system takes care of both the technical aspects of the software and the effectiveness of the solutions.

What are the benefits for the customers working with you?

Gosia: Customers who work with us expect to understand their position, empathy, support in choosing the best solutions, and knowledge sharing. We talk with the customers about the latest trends in e-commerce and show how given solutions function in other implementations. Knowing thoroughly the specific tool, the customer can tell if he needs a similar solution or the completely remodeled one. Thanks to direct conversations the client also gets to know our company. We want our customers to know in what business environment we operate and what drives specific decisions.

Krystian: The Upseller, for every customer, has a well-prepared plan for system development. We treat each company individually, we check the tools it already has and verify if these functionalities meet its business needs. Often at the meetings, the customers say what they would like to implement and ask us for feedback. Due to the many years of experience in e-commerce and constant observation of market trends, we are able to determine what solutions will be valuable for the customer. In addition, we try to match our resources to the needs of the client, so that he had the optimal amount of contracted hours. Customers who are in constant touch with us can feel secure about the level of their e-commerce system.