PACK IT UP: BOISSET COOLS DOWN WITH COOL PACK ADD-ON

At GSATi, we take pride in creating innovative solutions that meet our client's needs, in as timely of a fashion as possible. These solutions are direct benefits for our client's customers, ergo a huge benefit for us as well. Read on and discover our newest development that's changing the lives -and wallets –– of Boisset. 

A Little Back Story...

With the rapid approach of summer, our client Boisset wanted to provide an easy, yet cost-effective way for customers to protect their wine shipments from the heat of the summer. At the time, their implementation required users to shop in the "Accessories" area of the site and select the number of required "Cool Packs," actual cooling inserts that would preserve the wine's temperature for up to 72 hours. Unfortunately, several customers found this part of the buying process confusing and difficult, resulting in frequent mistakes made by said customers and loss of perfectly good products. We were tasked with a seemingly simple solution: Create a check-off system that would provide the "Yes, I would like to keep my wine cool" option with a simple click upon completing an order. 

Overcoming Obstacles

With every journey comes a few obstacles. Our team goal was to quickly deploy this option bug-free, and add this as a feature that doesn't exist on any other Boisset website.  Doing that would require a lot of work. 

Business Analyst John Cockerham noted "one of the obstacles to this project is that it had two distinct components: adding in CoolPack(s) on one-time check out orders and adding in CoolPack(s) on auto orders. This means the development takes place in two different places and involves different structures. It also required a lot more testing. The other major issue was the time constraint. Summer was quite literally around the corner, adding quite a bit of pressure since it ideally needed to be complete before reaching August. Open Source Application Manager Bill Pirkle added that " we were already modifying that section of the code for a longer-term project. We had to carefully manage multiple code streams to be sure that all the correct changes made it to all the correct places, without anything being lost (bad) or being released before it was ready (worse)."

The First of Its Kind ( for some! ) 

Opportunities like developing all-new features for clients is an exciting venture. That's one of the reasons why we were so excited about this project; though it may not have been out of the ordinary for our team of Developers, it certainly is a one-of-a-kind build for Boisset.

"This build is unique because it involved a lot of updates to Shipping that we hadn’t worked with before, " stated JC. "Normally an order already has all the contents once the customer proceeds to the shipping page of the checkout."  When asked how this first-of-its-kind benefitted customers, Senior Drupal Back End/PHP Developer Gabe Lopez stated that " member[s] should now get the correct number of CoolPacks based on the order bottle quantity. It will also reduce any confusion for the member trying to figure out how many CoolPacks to order." Talk about a great addition for all! 

To the Future...and Beyond! 

New tools mean new responsibility — and future capabilities as a company. With the construction of the Cool Pack add on, new tools and thought processes were required in order to effectively and efficiently satisfy Boisset's needs.

"The code we implemented for adding in a Cool Pack to your order can potentially be useful later," wrote JC. "We are working on outlining the beginning of a new project with Boisset for adding in [new features] like Gift Packaging and Greeting Cards, which would be added in checkout instead of from the catalog like they are now. We are continuously trying to improve the customer/user experience." For Bill Pirkle, this build "[gave] us a chance to further refine some techniques that we were already using and apply them in a slightly different situation." 

All in all, we are genuinely excited for the future of Boisset and its customers as they embark on a new journey down the same path: bringing a customized, personal experience through innovation and constant consideration of the customer's needs. We're elated to have come this far with an amazing company and look forward to our future endeavors together.

Read more about our functions as a company here.