E-Commerce: Consulting, Integrations & Search

An e-commerce isn't just a website — it's an ecosystem of systems that need to work together

Behind every e-commerce that works well there's a catalogue structured with logic, a search engine that actually finds what the customer is looking for, promotional rules that don't overlap unpredictably, and dozens of systems — PIM, OMS, payments, analytics, marketing — that need to talk to each other without losing data along the way.

The most complex part is almost never the front-end: it's everything underneath. Multi-brand catalogues with different pricing by country, discounts that change by channel, search indices that need to stay updated in real time, data flows that must be reliable and repeatable.

We work on this complexity. And we do it both as consultants — helping you think through how to structure your catalogue, categories, promotions, and pricing — and as developers, building the integrations and data flows that hold the entire system together.

What we can do for you

• E-commerce functional consulting. You don't always need to write code. Sometimes you need someone to help you think through how to organise the catalogue, manage categories, set up promotional rules, or structure pricing for multiple brands or countries. We're available for that alone — our experience on enterprise platforms lets us give you a concrete, technology-independent opinion.

• Integrate search engines and third-party systems. Need to connect a search engine, a PIM, an OMS, or a payment system to your e-commerce? We design and develop the integration, with attention to performance, data quality, and long-term maintainability.

• Build the data flows that feed your e-commerce. Product catalogue, search indices, updated prices, real-time availability: we design the ETLs and data flows that get data where it needs to be, when it needs to be there.

• Design search indices that actually work. Is your e-commerce search slow, returning irrelevant results, or lacking advanced filters? We analyse use cases, design the index, and optimise queries, facets, and ranking.

• Manage the project with you. Technical analysis, requirements gathering, roadmap definition, and coordination between teams (front-end, catalogue, marketing, IT). We help you keep everything together and release without surprises.

When it makes sense to involve us

• You need to integrate a search engine, a PIM, an OMS, or payment systems with your e-commerce
• You have a multi-brand or multi-country setup with complex catalogue and pricing and want to bring order to it
• Search is slow or irrelevant and you need facets and advanced filters
• You lack repeatable data flows to feed indices and catalogue
• You need someone to help you think through catalogue, categories, promotions, and discounts — even at a consulting level only
• You want a clear roadmap to integrate new tools without risk

Real-world cases

Search engine integration for multi-brand e-commerce — HCL Commerce

A client needed to integrate an advanced search engine (Algolia) on their e-commerce platform, with the requirement that the same solution work across multiple stores and brands within the same group.

We analysed the requirements, defined the integration roadmap, and developed the ETL that correctly populates the search indices from the product catalogue. The solution is in production and reused across multiple e-commerce sites of the same client in a multi-tenant configuration, without duplicating effort.

Search index design for a marketplace — Custom E-Commerce

A client was building a marketplace from scratch and needed a search index that could handle products and sellers, with advanced filters and recommendations.

We analysed the user use cases, designed the OpenSearch index structure, and coordinated the front-end and catalogue teams to ensure correct integration. The result: faster searches, filters that weren't previously possible, and an architecture ready to scale with catalogue growth.

Did you know?

On large catalogues, 500 milliseconds less on search can measurably shift conversions. Designing the index and the data flows that feed it well is worth as much as optimising the interface — perhaps more, because an irrelevant search result is a lost customer before they even see the product.

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In detail: our technical expertise

• Search engine integration — Connecting search engines (Algolia, OpenSearch, ElasticSearch) with e-commerce platforms, including index design, facets, ranking, and synonyms.
• ETL and data flows for catalogue — Pipelines to feed search indices, prices, availability, and product content from heterogeneous sources (PIM, ERP, feeds).
• Search index modelling — Data structure design optimised for user search and navigation patterns, with filters, aggregations, and suggestions.
• PIM, OMS, and payment integration — Connectors to catalogue management systems, order management, and payment gateways.
• Catalogue and pricing consulting — Analysis and definition of category structure, attributes, promotional rules, and pricing logic for multi-brand and multi-country contexts.
• Project management and coordination — Technical analysis, requirements gathering, roadmap, and coordination between functional and technical teams.

Technologies

E-Commerce: HCL Commerce, custom platforms

Search: Algolia, OpenSearch, ElasticSearch

ETL & Data flow: Apache NiFi, AWS Glue, Step Functions

Message broker: Kafka, RabbitMQ

Systems: PIM, OMS, payment gateways, analytics and recommendation tools