Greetz: Rich Internet Application

Accenture helped Greetz leverage innovative Web 2.0 technologies to create a better user experience and scale to meet expected growth in demand. Working together, Accenture and Greetz have created an electronic platform that supports Greetz’s unique business model and enables high performance.

Client Background
Headquartered in Amsterdam, the Netherlands, Greetz is a young, fast-growing company that owns and operates an electronic print-on-demand service for personalized real greeting cards. Consumers go online to create their own physical, made-to-order greeting cards that are then printed and mailed to the recipient.

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Greetz’s personalized greeting card business needed a flexible interactive solution that would scale to meet the needs of international expansion and increased demand. The other core challenge faced by Greetz was to employ an easy-to-use, Web-based interface that would allow Greetz customers to customize greeting cards in four easy steps:

• Uploading a photo or choosing from the online card collection.
  
  
• Adding a personalized message to the card.
  
  
• Keying in the recipient’s mailing address and delivery date of choice.
  
  
• Paying for the service.

If created before three o’clock in the afternoon, the greeting card is printed and mailed to the recipient same-day, with the goal of reaching the recipient within two days by mail. The electronic platform manages consumer and B2B sales, partnerships, product creation and delivery.

“The challenge was delivering simplicity in the context of a highly complex IT environment and business model,” says Simen Schimmel, co-founder of Greetz.

After assessing proposals, Greetz executives determined Accenture was the right business partner to accompany them on the journey toward high performance. Accenture provided the most appropriate IT infrastructure capability to support scale; the optimal application architecture to meet Greetz’s growth objectives; and the right project management and user interface skills to provide a dependable solution

Accenture and Greetz formed a multicultural, multidisciplinary team of ten people with a blend of knowledge, skills and competencies in application architecture, integration architecture, reporting and data management, web interface design, IT system delivery and solution industrialization.

Accenture helped Greetz create a new Web interface, which includes Rich Internet Application (RIA) components that expose services for the company’s print-on-demand capabilities: Greetz provides the front-end as well as the IT platform while partners do the rest — from creating content to printing the cards.

Accenture’s High Performance IT research supports Greetz’s initiative. Conducted through an analysis of more than 900 CIOs, this research discovered that businesses with high-performance IT are more aggressive adopters of newer technology and drive more online transactions in customer, supplier and employee interactions to outperform their competition.

Greetz’ business was designed and tested to support 40 thousand cards per day or approximately 15 million cards every year. “Working with Accenture has been an incredibility satisfying experience,” says Johan Van Vulpen co-founder and Greetz CEO. “They understood the power and the value of our business model and the need for innovative solutions, enabling technologies and reliable platforms to support the business case.”

With its rich interaction and animation, the Greetz platform provides an immersive, what-you-see-is-what-you-get experience. It uses advanced background loading and caching techniques (asynchronous communication) so that customers get faster response times and an improved user experience. “It was a privilege to work with Greetz and to help them get their Greetz electronic greeting card service off to a running head start,” says Rob van der Krogt, Accenture’s client partner for Greetz. “We believe our valued client has the right plan and the right capabilities in place to continue on its journey towards becoming a high-performance business.”