€2M+ in daily transactions. Zero downtime.

The Challenge

A Fortune 500 consumer goods company was running their direct-to-consumer channel on a platform that had failed twice during peak events — once on Black Friday, once during a seasonal sale — resulting in significant revenue loss and brand damage. They needed a platform that could reliably handle €2M+ in daily transactions during peak, integrate with a complex SAP ERP and three regional WMS systems, and give their marketing team the personalisation capability to drive repeat purchase.

Approach

1. 1

   Started with a thorough load model: analysed 3 years of historical traffic and order data to define the peak load envelope, then sized and load-tested the platform to 3x that envelope before launch.

2. 2

   Built a MuleSoft integration hub connecting SFCC to SAP ERP and three regional WMS systems — event-driven inventory updates, order routing, and returns processing all flowing through a single, monitored integration layer.

3. 3

   Implemented Marketing Cloud for post-purchase journeys, loyalty triggers, and seasonal campaign automation — reducing reliance on batch email blasts in favour of triggered, behavioural journeys.

4. 4

   Designed a circuit-breaker pattern for all third-party integrations: if payment, fraud, or tax services degraded under load, the platform could degrade gracefully rather than fail entirely.

5. 5

   Established a full observability stack (Splunk + custom dashboards) so the ops team had real-time visibility into order throughput, error rates, and integration health during peak events.

Results

• Zero downtime across Black Friday, Cyber Monday, and three major seasonal campaigns in year one.
• Peak throughput handled: 2,800 orders/hour sustained for 6 hours on Black Friday.
• €2.1M in single-day revenue on Black Friday — a 38% increase over the previous year's platform.
• Marketing Cloud journeys drove a 19% lift in repeat purchase rate within 6 months of launch.