HBM-Machines

Who they are

HBM-Machines is a leading supplier of machines, tools, and accessories for metalworking, woodworking, and automotive industries. They offer a wide range of products, from lathes and milling machines to welding equipment and air compressors.

What they wanted

HBM-Machines was growing their platform which still ran on an outdated PHP based site that was starting to struggle with the volume of customers and products. They wanted to modernize their e-commerce platform, improve their online presence, and enhance their customer experience. Together with Lab Digital they started a project based on their webshop skeleton and needed help to build the new platform launching it to its existing and new customer countries.

What we did

During our 7-month engagement, we helped HBM-Machines to modernize their e-commerce platform, improve their online presence, and enhance their customer experience. We built a new webshop using Next.js, integrated with Commerce tools, Algolia, and Flagsmith. We also set up CI/CD pipelines with GitHub Actions, Docker, and Kubernetes, and migrated their infrastructure to Google Cloud Platform using Terraform. Our team collaborated closely with HBM-Machines' internal developers as well as Lab Digital, following Agile methodologies and best practices.

Concretely, I mostly worked on integrating Flagsmith in such a way that they could launch new features regularly and safely using canary releases and by testing in production through feature toggles. I worked on creating and improving features linked to Algolia like merchandising. I helped restructure their developers into more effective teams rather than one big team and contributed a lot to the way of working using my experience. I also emphasized frequent code reviews, extensive commentary, and helpful engagement in those reviews. I tried to get them to collaborate more to increase productivity but more importantly to increase stability and thus reduce release cycle time.