Challenge

LKQ Europe is the leading distributor of automotive aftermarket parts for cars, commercial vans and industrial vehicles in Europe. LKQ Europe employs more than 26,500 people and has a network of 900 branches. Euro Car Parts is the UK arm of LKQ Europe, and is a market leader with both retail and B2B distribution channels.

The goal of the project was to replace a 12+ year old monolithic ecommerce platform that had become difficult to support, creating a digital experience platform that will support:

• rapid experimentation
• UX optimisation
• product range growth (dropshipping, partner synergies)
• mobile apps
• in-store experiences (C&C, curb side pick up, digital kiosks)
• loyalty and CLTV

…with data as a foundational layer to drive personalisation, automation, and customer behaviour discovery.

The project also included a UX and visual design refresh of the first two brand websites delivered by Biglight. This is the first step in a programme of activity designed to provide customers with an enhanced end-to-end experience. The modular design system allows for: increased flexibility, greater control, rapid change, standardising and improving user experience across the site.

Foundational qualities required for the digital platform include:

• Speed to serve experiences
• Flexibility – build out new capabilities and experiences, adapt to changing and new business models
• Local Scalability – scale at the individual front-end layer to support future volumes without compromising quality and speed
• Pan-EU Scalability – technical foundation supporting expansion across the LKQ EU estate (eurocarparts.com and carparts4less.co.uk in phase 1)
• New customer experiences
• Data-first architecture to enable ML, AI, Personalisation and Automation
• Full stack and frontend A/B testing
• Headless and micro-services principles for rapid frontend iteration
• Back-office optimisation (order processing, management, fraud)

• Customer experience refresh
• Stability and security
• Reduced maintenance
• Improved employee experience
• Faster platform speed and release cycles
• Higher quality releases
• Market share growth
• Conversion, AOV, and CLTV improvements
• Reduced cost to serve

“I was impressed by the amount of change they have made through the stack. That is not something we see often now that there are so many similarities within retail. I start to look for things that are different in that sense and LKQ really stood out.”

– Sezin Cagil, Head of Unified Commerce Technology at Dr. Martens plc

Strategy

Building a multi-brand composable platform requires careful architecture planning and execution to achieve the desired outcome.

Collaborating with LKQ business and technology teams, Grid Dynamics implemented unique strategies (both architectural and process) to deliver the project successfully and meet the expected goal of modernising the LKQ B2C digital landscape.

The key differentiators were:

• Enabled the business with a multi-brand platform using a domain-driven approach to efficiently leverage MACH technology principles.
• Micro front end architecture for the customer experience enabled end-to-end autonomy for the different domains (Brand Home, Search, PDP, Basket & Checkout, Order Management, My Account, etc.).
• Modernising the digital capabilities with a “data as a first-class citizen” mindset enabled the organisation for “data first thinking.” This was achieved using a domain-driven design leveraging AWS Kinesis-powered data streaming as the central nervous system to streamline and govern all data/event flows (producer-consumer pattern). Data/event flows were governed, protected, secured, and audited with several producers and consumers working together using forward-compatible schemas. This enabled a fully decoupled, composable architecture, avoiding point-to-point data flows between best-of-breed systems and accelerating component delivery – something that would have been impossible with hundreds of point-to-point integrations.
• Redesigned existing mobile application to make use of the new MACH platform by integrating it via the new backend-for-frontend layer (GraphQL). This enabled business and technology agility in rolling out new features to the mobile application inline with the web channel. This also started the Phase 1 modernisation of the mobile application.
• The decoupled domain-driven architecture enabled the production roll-out of certain parts of the landscape earlier than originally planned. E.g., OMS, together with the event stream, was rolled out alongside the legacy platform first.
• Dual-running of the legacy and new composable platform side-by-side reduced risk, enabled the business to perform A/B testing, and brought customers gradually to the new platform. An innovative traffic splitting solution using AWS CloudFront was built, navigating the traffic effectively to legacy and the new composable platform without impacting the overall customer experience.
• Key unique features which elevated the customer experience and brand USP include:

1. Ability for customers to find parts using their vehicle registration – achieved using a combination of vehicle make/model lookup and search engine (Algolia)
2. Real-time, detailed delivery promise information throughout the customer journey based on customer location
3. “Fit it For Me” functionality connecting 30k+ workshops in the United Kingdom

Method

The MACH solution is modular by design, enabling LKQ brand teams to quickly and easily change components as business needs evolve over time. LKQ now has the agility and flexibility they need to adapt customer experience features as new business models or new brand websites and countries are rolled out. They are now in control of their own platform and destiny.

The implementation is the foundation for accelerated digital penetration and real-time insights to continually optimise each brand's unified commerce experience. Using Contentful, the content team can create new consistent content based on the global component library, reducing the time to market for content changes by up to 90%. Day-to-day site operations are streamlined, with LKQ digital teams able to design, test and launch enhancements to PIM, Search, Merchandising, Content 4 of 5 and Promotions seamlessly.

The composable platform implementation kick-started the modernisation of the existing mobile application by integrating it to the platform. The phase 1 modernisation of mobile application includes integrating with the GraphQL layer (Backend for frontend) to make use of the features from the composable platform. Mobile application is now powered by the search and commerce functionalities of the composable platform. This provides LKQ business with the capability to roll out new functionalities to the mobile and web application simultaneously. The API first composable platform provides the true headless capabilities for LKQ to roll out new channels easily (future e.g. kiosks in branches and workshops)

Streamlined process of onboarding new products using data from multiple systems - PIM, MDM, CMS,OMS and Commerce Platform.Delivery promise orchestration including information about nearest availability, delivery options, collection times, “fit it for me” using workshops. AWS Kinesis based real-time data streaming provides insights into the platform which can be used to optimise the customer journey and order fulfilment lead times. Business teams are now equipped with accurate and timely data visibility across the unified commerce systems which enables omnichannel visibility and single customer view.

The new “business as usual” MACH architecture has delivered 100% availability for the unified commerce platform and provides the most solid of foundations to support and enable LKQ's future strategy and global growth agenda.