Project: Modernizing a digital platform with new features to enhance the customer experience
Rush Enterprises, Inc. is the premier solutions provider to the commercial vehicle industry and operates the largest network of commercial truck dealerships in North America. The company offers an extensive range of products and services, including new and used truck sales, aftermarket parts and service support, vehicle leasing, and financial services. With a strong focus on customer service and comprehensive solutions, Rush Enterprises serves a diverse client base across the transportation and logistics industries.
Rush Enterprises’ premier solutions include a comprehensive digital e-commerce platform with web applications that enable efficient and easy procurement of truck components and vehicle servicing. The company decided to invest in platform modernization of their e-commerce platform to continue delivering superior customer service, enhance its market position, and expand their offerings to consumers and businesses.
Challenge: Integrate powerful features to simplify digital payment processes
The company approached HTEC for help customizing and reimagining their existing platform with new powerful features, including:
- Expanded payment options
- An improved checkout page
- A search indexing solution
By offering a wider range of payment methods, the company hoped to broaden its customer base. Optimizing the checkout page would allow Rush to simplify the purchasing process, reducing cart abandonment rates and increasing conversion rates. Finally, the company needed a robust search indexing solution to improve the internal browsing experience, boost product availability and information for the sales team, and assist customers in self-service shopping.
With these enhancements, Rush’s overarching goal was to optimize the user experience (UX) when interacting with the platform.
Solution: Customized user interface and streamlined online payment process for a superior customer experience
Over the course of their work, Rush Enterprises and HTEC identified the best architectural solutions to upgrade the e-commerce platform with new features and designed and implemented integrated solutions to achieve the project’s critical goals:
1. Expanded credit card payment feature
The HTEC team built and implemented an online payment feature using microservice architecture and the latest Microsoft .NET technologies on the Azure platform. The payment system can be used by multiple payment providers and in-house digital products, consolidating payment options for a streamlined checkout process.
2. Revamped checkout page
In addition to expanding the payment options, HTEC collaborated with Rush Enterprises to complete updates on the company’s e-commerce checkout page. The resulting solution included user experience, technical, and performance improvements, ultimately requiring 20% less application load time (without increasing application usage).
3. Development of a search product solution
HTEC designed and developed a solution that allows Rush Enterprises’ internal and external users to easily find the items they need among the company’s 1.5 million products. The system is designed to sync with different in-house sources, transform the data, and present it as a search indexing solution. The result is easy access to inventory and faster platform navigation. To launch the solution, HTEC designed the entire system’s architecture and product roadmap. Then, the team added all the solution layers from data processing and data transformation to the UI and deployment process.
In addition to overseeing these projects and offering crucial development support, HTEC helped the client optimize project management processes, enhance platform performance, improve code quality, and increase the team’s developer delivery velocity.
“Our two-year collaboration with Rush Enterprises centered around a great inter-team relationship, allowing us to tackle Rush Enterprises’ most pressing projects successfully. We’ve worked with Rush’s teams as a supporting player and a project leader. In one of our backbone projects, HTEC built an entire application, enhancing both the processes and architecture during development and implementation.”
Aleksandar Marin, engineering and delivery manager at HTEC
Success: A robust e-commerce solution empowering D2C model expansion
Together, Rush Enterprises and HTEC enhanced the company’s e-commerce platform, making it faster, more intuitive, and user-friendly. This is a major step forward that will allow the client to reimagine experiences across the customer lifecycle, strengthen their market position, and move to a D2C business model. The D2C approach will enable the client to communicate with consumers directly and gain unique insights into evolving consumer preferences. As a result, Rush Enterprises will be able to provide personalized customer service, drive innovation, expand its market base, and increase revenue.
“The solution we created together with HTEC has an enormous impact on our business, enabling us to increase our offerings to businesses and consumers. HTEC’s expertise and innovative approach ensured the successful integration of the new credit card feature, allowing us to expand our current business-to-business (B2B) model to a much wider direct-to-consumer (D2C) model. HTEC’s commitment to delivering high-quality solutions has undoubtedly contributed to this project’s success. We look forward to continuing our partnership with HTEC and collaborating on future projects.”
Asif Ansari, senior director, software engineering at Rush Enterprises
