Groupon is Streamlining Its Technology Platform and Embracing Automation
June 14 2022 - 1:15PM
Business Wire
Foundational improvements expected to
accelerate pace of product development
Groupon, the trusted marketplace where consumers go to buy
services and experiences that make life more interesting and
deliver boundless value, is taking steps to simplify the company’s
technology platform and lean more into automation. Ultimately,
Groupon believes these changes will allow it to accelerate its pace
of product development and support better customer and merchant
experiences.
“We have amazing talent within our Product and Engineering
organization, and I believe that we can do a better job leveraging
our significant tech assets to create value for all of our
stakeholders,” said Sachin Devand, CTO, Groupon. “Currently, our
platform is too big and too complex, and this is prohibiting us
from moving as quickly as I think we can to launch new products and
features. So, I’ve empowered the entire tech organization to
challenge our long-held thought process of creating a new service
for every nuance and fundamentally rethink how we structure our
platform––only building and supporting what’s mission critical to
drive Groupon’s business forward.”
Devand, who was appointed to the CTO role in May after serving
as a consultant since February, is working with the Product and
Engineering organization to improve its operating processes and
streamline Groupon's tech platform. Some of the team’s big 2022
initiatives include:
- Embracing Agility –– Reorienting the product engineering
organization to be more customer centric. Product roadmaps will
better align with providing specific customer solutions, more
quickly. To that end, the entire team is embracing Agile software
development methods, doing rapid delivery of features versus
traditional methods that can take years. In addition, the team uses
OKRs (Objectives and Key Results) to prioritize these features
every 90 days.
- Migrating to the Cloud –– To date, Groupon has moved
nearly 75% of its data center capabilities to the cloud. Groupon is
already gaining operational benefits from the move to the cloud,
including better monitoring, observability, elasticity and ease of
deploying infrastructure. Once the migration is complete, the cloud
will enable Groupon to scale infrastructure up and down as the
needs of the business change, which should provide even more
flexibility and cost savings. The cloud also enables Groupon to use
cloud-native services that can unlock additional automation
opportunities throughout the company’s marketplace.
- Re-architecting Services –– The company is
re-architecting its services, taking stock of which services are
required and which ones can be combined or eliminated. At the start
of the year, there were about 700 services operating behind the
company’s global marketplace platform, which is too complicated and
big for Groupon’s needs. As the move to the cloud continues,
Groupon intends to move to a domain-driven design model which will
allow for a more nimble architecture with significantly fewer
services.
- Leaning into Automation –– Groupon is automating
processes throughout the entire business to create efficiencies and
improve productivity. For example, the company is scaling its
self-service automation features to enable more merchants to join
the Groupon marketplace without human touch. At the end of the
first quarter, 65% of new campaigns in North America were created
using Groupon’s merchant self-service tool that enables businesses
to create and edit campaigns. From a customer perspective, Groupon
is doing more to automate insights from search data to create a
feedback loop with the company’s sales teams to ensure that its
marketplace has the right inventory in the right places.
When this work is completed, these actions should significantly
reduce the size of Groupon’s tech platform and allow it to
accelerate its pace of product development focused on building a
larger and more differentiated inventory base and launching
products to support better customer and merchant experiences.
About Groupon
Groupon (NASDAQ: GRPN) is a trusted local marketplace where
consumers go to buy services and experiences that make life more
interesting and deliver boundless value.
Note on Forward-Looking Statements
The statements contained in this release that refer to plans and
expectations for the next quarter, the full year or the future are
forward-looking statements within the meaning of Section 27A of the
Securities Act of 1933, as amended, and Section 21E of the
Securities Exchange Act of 1934, as amended, including statements
regarding our future results of operations and financial position,
business strategy and plans and our objectives for future
operations. The words "may," "will," "should," "could," "expect,"
"anticipate," "believe," "estimate," "intend," "continue" and other
similar expressions are intended to identify forward-looking
statements. We have based these forward looking statements largely
on current expectations and projections about future events and
financial trends that we believe may affect our financial
condition, results of operations, business strategy, short-term and
long-term business operations and objectives, and financial needs.
These forward-looking statements involve risks and uncertainties
that could cause our actual results to differ materially from those
expressed or implied in our forward-looking statements. Such risks
and uncertainties include, but are not limited to, effects of the
ongoing COVID-19 pandemic or other pandemics or disease outbreaks
on our business; our ability to execute, and achieve the expected
benefits of, our go-forward strategy; execution of our business and
marketing strategies; volatility in our operating results;
challenges arising from our international operations, including
fluctuations in currency exchange rates, legal and regulatory
developments in the jurisdictions in which we operate and
geopolitical instability resulting from the conflict in Ukraine;
global economic uncertainty, including as a result of the
inflationary environment; retaining and adding high quality
merchants and third-party business partners; retaining existing
customers and adding new customers; competing successfully in our
industry; providing a strong mobile experience for our customers;
managing refund risks; retaining and attracting members of our
executive team and other qualified personnel; customer and merchant
fraud; payment-related risks; our reliance on email, internet
search engines and mobile application marketplaces to drive traffic
to our marketplace; cybersecurity breaches; maintaining and
improving our information technology infrastructure; reliance on
cloud-based computing platforms; completing and realizing the
anticipated benefits from acquisitions, dispositions, joint
ventures and strategic investments; lack of control over minority
investments; managing inventory and order fulfillment risks; claims
related to product and service offerings; protecting our
intellectual property; maintaining a strong brand; the impact of
future and pending litigation; compliance with domestic and foreign
laws and regulations, including the CARD Act, GDPR and regulation
of the Internet and e-commerce; classification of our independent
contractors or employees; risks relating to information or content
published or made available on our websites or service offerings we
make available; exposure to greater than anticipated tax
liabilities; adoption of tax legislation; impacts if we become
subject to the Bank Secrecy Act or other anti-money laundering or
money transmission laws or regulations; our ability to raise
capital if necessary; risks related to our access to capital and
outstanding indebtedness, including our convertible senior notes;
our common stock, including volatility in our stock price; our
ability to realize the anticipated benefits from the capped call
transactions relating to our convertible senior notes; and those
risks and other factors discussed in Part I, Item 1A. Risk Factors
of our Annual Report on Form 10-K for the year ended December 31,
2021 and Part II, Item 1A. Risk Factors of our Quarterly Report on
Form 10-Q for the quarter ended March 31, 2022, and our other
filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission (the "SEC"),
copies of which may be obtained by visiting the company's Investor
Relations web site at investor.groupon.com or the SEC's web site at
www.sec.gov. Groupon's actual results could differ materially from
those predicted or implied and reported results should not be
considered an indication of future performance.
You should not rely upon forward-looking statements as
predictions of future events. Although Groupon believes that the
expectations reflected in the forward-looking statements are
reasonable, it cannot guarantee that the future results, levels of
activity, performance or events and circumstances reflected in the
forward-looking statements will be achieved or occur. Moreover,
neither Groupon nor any other person assumes responsibility for the
accuracy and completeness of the forward-looking statements. The
forward-looking statements reflect our expectations as of the date
of this release. We undertake no obligation to update publicly any
forward-looking statements for any reason after the date of this
release to conform these statements to actual results or to changes
in our expectations.
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Groupon Nick Halliwell Press@groupon.com
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