Services
Insights
Software Engineering
IT Consulting
Artificial Intelligence
Progress OpenEdge
Cloud
The pandemic accelerated the shift to online shopping, with 75% of internet users making eCommerce purchases in 2022, which drives 27.6% global sales growth since 2020.
This trend extended to pharmacies, where rising demand made clear that customers wanted fast, convenient e-pharmacy experiences requiring innovative IT solutions.
We're pleased to present a case study on the newly built eCommerce platform for Lithuanian pharmacy chain Eurovaistine.lt (Eurovaistinė).
EUROAPOTHECA is an international group of Northern European companies operating retail pharmacy chains, wholesale pharmaceutical companies, and online pharmacies in Lithuania, Sweden, Latvia, and Estonia. EUROAPOTHECA group was established in 1998. EUROAPOTHECA group comprises 796 pharmacies and 120 franchised pharmacies across four countries, with more than 5100 employees. EUROAPOTHECA controls the pharmacy chain Eurovaistinė (274 pharmacies) in Lithuania, Euroaptieka (55 pharmacies) in Latvia, operates the Euroapteek franchise network (77 franchised pharmacies) in Estonia, and has 50% shareholding in Swedish Pharmacy Holding AB, which controls pharmacy chains Apoteksgruppen and Kronans Apotek (467 pharmacies and 43 franchised pharmacies) in Sweden. EUROAPOTHECA is a member of 'Vilniaus Prekyba' – a private holding company which oversees, controls and manages the group of subsidiary companies operating the chains of retail stores, pharmacies and real estate development and management companies in the Baltic States, Sweden, Poland and Bulgaria.
Eurovaistinė also ranks competitively among the top ten most visited country's e-stores. However, the previous Eurovaistinė platform did not keep up with the growing demand, changing business and customer needs.
Eurovaistinė looked for a partner that could fully build an eCommerce platform – solving painful issues of lackingflexibility, scalability and top-tier security practices. Wherefore, Baltic Amadeus has offered to build a fast-scaling eCommerce platform based on Sylius, an Open Source Headless eCommerce solution. With a track record of previously partnering with Eurovaistinė, this project became another technology-driven milestone delivered by Baltic Amadeus.
Building a brand-new eCommerce platform was the core of the Eurovaistinė project. Moreover, we examined the possiblepros and cons of implementing a period of co-existence between the old and the new platform – thus, we have jointly decided to make a one-time platform change.
Evaluated that a meticulous user data migration is vital when launching a new eCommerce platform, especially for the pharmacy chain provider, Baltic Amadeus has chosen to use the Sylius solution for its well-designed and flexible code base, high performance, and proven security measures.
Baltic Amadeus introduced a powerful and high-performing eCommerce platform that can easily maintain multiple out-of-the-box and specifically developed functionalities, such as various shipment methods (same-day or next-day deliveries), veterinary goods selling possibilities, different payment methods, loyalty programmes, pricing models, integrations with ERP and warehouse management systems – all these features were successfully developed and launched by our team in Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia.
A newly created Sylius-based eCommerce solution addressed the essential issues that Eurovaistinė had dealt with on its former platform – multiple downtimes resulting in lost customers and transactions, poor UX, and instability as online business needs expanded.
Now, Eurovaistinė's eCommerce platform can easily manage an instantly spiked flow of users – similar to the peaks during the lockdowns in 2020 and 2021, as well as seasonal peaks during Black Friday, Christmas, or other major shopping sales – and quickly generate valuable insights from user data and extend promotional opportunities for customers.
On top of that, Baltic Amadeus highly enhanced an eCommerce platform's architecture. This enables solid resilience, flawless UX, and high flexibility. The project to build the eCommerce platform has established a full-scope foundation to enter the Latvian and Estonian markets with the newly developed platforms for Azeta.lv (Latvia) and euroapteek.ee (Estonia). Baltic Amadeus created and launched all the mentioned eCommerce platforms, helping meet rapidly evolving customers' needs and keep a competitive advantage when entering new markets.
